One of my favourite authors ever is Eric McCormack and since one of my teachers is good friend with him, I’ve been treated on more then one occasion to readings and lectures by Prof. McCormack. His strange and fantastical, yet somehow slightly believable style of writing has always been an inspiration to me.
Who inspires you?
Ayn Rand.
It shouldn’t be long until those who interact with me on this site start getting sick of hearing about her. I’ll try to be careful =)
I feel like all the problems and misunderstandings that frustrated me for a lot of my younger life were made clear by her ideas, which also gave me a lot to work with for the creativity and intellectual growth that the help of her ideas would have inspired and allowed in the first place.
She also escaped a dictatorship, then lived in the United States for more than a decade doing small-time jobs in near-poverty, before finally succeding and becoming a famous writer.
Ayn Rand.
It shouldn’t be long until those who interact with me on this site start getting sick of hearing about her. I’ll try to be careful =)
I feel like all the problems and misunderstandings that frustrated me for a lot of my younger life were made clear by her ideas, which also gave me a lot to work with for the creativity and intellectual growth that the help of her ideas would have inspired and allowed in the first place.
She also escaped a dictatorship, then lived in the United States for more than a decade doing small-time jobs in near-poverty, before finally succeding and becoming a famous writer.
Rand is one of those people I find inspires love… or loathing. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who, having read her work, was ambivalent towards her (of course, ymmv).
Whenever I need inspiration, I watch Seinfeld. The way they can make every simple, every-day sort of thing become funny inspires me to look at the world and smile (on the inside, I’m against public smiling).
Another great inspiration for me is Rod Stewart. The guy can’t stick to a note, and he’s got the voice that whenever you see him get near a microphone you should run away. But in spite of having little singing talent (in my opinion anyway), he became a huge star in his day and still rocks on at an old age. So that inspires me, because it shows how even without great skills or talent, if you believe in yourself you can really do anything… whether you should do it or not is a whole other story.
I realize these aren’t really writers… I don’t really have any special inspirational book. I like reading anything and everything… and I can always write stuff, whether I’m inspired or not.
Coleman Barks has been getting up every day for the last 25 years or so and channeling Rumi through his 20th century southern American mind. His translations of Rumi and Hafiz and Lalla have broken open the minds and hearts of hundreds of thousands of English speakers who would never have ever HEARD of a Persian poet.
Coleman taught me the English Romantic poets and the southern American novelists and supervised my undergraduate honor’s thesis way before he found his way to Rumi. (I used to babysit his young children when I was in college…That tells you how old I am…) He is a truly remarkable human being who has made a Life out of poetry. I love his translations and the ways they have helped to expand the minds and hearts of English speakers/readers. I also love and deeply admire the man he has become in the process of sharing Rumi’s directions for how we can find our way clear of the brambles of heart and mind.
If you haven’t read any of the more obscure books of Rumi’s poetry, or if you’ve missed the work of Lalla, check out his website.
