why keep an inspiration log: the practice of psychic nourishment
four years ago, I wrote about the desire to open an inspiration library — a digital catalogue of everything that’s inspired me — books, writings, music, films, tv shows, poetry, everything — built and integrated into this web house. at the time, I was living in rural japan, in an old library house. it was during the pandemic.
a vital digital detox
in retrospect, I see that part of my physical retreat from the world came to mean a total digital cleanse of my psyche. I deliberately began a daily practice of digital solitude: I didn’t turn on my phone until 5pm everyday. I rarely checked social media — and when I did, I felt almost dirty; contaminated. I made an experiment to experience Sundays without using a screen. and, I consumed almost nothing — except books, music, and poetry.
all of this was so carefully thought out; so deliberate, because I wanted to see what my mind could do if left alone to luxuriate in its own creativity, or in its own emptiness. I wanted to be fully in the physical world.
the inspiration library didn’t happen then — not the way I wanted, at least. in retrospect, I think it’s because I had to go through a process of emptying out, before I could feel ready to absorb again. I needed to become empty, before I could hold anything.
but first, let me back up, and zoom out.
life phases of how I consumed culture & knowledge
If I were to map out what happened in terms of absorbing and consuming culture and knowledge, I might describe it like this:
Childhood and Adolescence (Age 0-14) | “Fed by my Environment”
I consumed the culture that was available to me (by my parents, my school, my immediate surroundings, what was available in the public library, or the local bookstore). this is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, or that the choices were bad; only limited. I went to the library every Monday and checked out 10 books. I went to the bookstore every Saturday, after Chinese school, and sat on the floor of the poetry, or self-help, or graphic novels, or art and design section, skimming. I mostly became a voracious reader because I was living in small town North Carolina, and I was so bored.
Late Adolescence + Young Adulthood (age 15-23) | “Fed by Educational Institutions”
these were the days of required reading. I learned how to deconstruct ideas, synthesize, and think — but I did not read for pleasure. there was no time. I’d come across academic papers and novels that inspired me, but the amount of text that I consumed felt like binge eating for my mind (in teenage years, I did, however, watch foreign films for pleasure, every friday night in my teenage bedroom, back in the days when Netflix sent their red envelopes of DVD rentals).
Post-Graduate Twenties (age 25-28) | “Fed by An Insatiable Hunger to Achieve”
those were the years when I swallowed every single book I could find about business, technology, self-help, design, creative process, creative thinking — all the “domains” of my study. I read all the marketing and entrepreneurship books by white tech dudes. (I also read poetry, the way I always did — like a liferaft for my soul)
I filled my head with other-people’s-process, in a hunger to seek the secret key to success. those were the days when I used social media the most, and I felt besieged by the feeling that I wasn’t doing enough. nothing was enough.
Saturn Return Years (age 28-31) | “Artist Hermit Life & Consumption Detox”
as described above, starting the year I left New York City and began to live nomadically around the world, I didn’t consume for a few years. instead, I choose to focus on creation.
not nothing, but almost nothing. no news. no books. no text. no articles. (barely any) internet (other than my own website). no social media. no youtube videos. no podcasts. I did listen to a LOT of music. and every now and then, I’d come across something that really moved or stayed with me. but mostly, I hermited into myself.
even though those years made me feel like I was living under a rock (not in a bad way), they were so necessary. only by emptying out the vessel of my psyche was I able to connect truly to my own wisdom, my own process, my own insight, the way I wanted to be in the world, and to trust in my own voice.
without those years, my work on world-building — and this website world — wouldn’t exist.
“deliberate nourishment & artistic expansion” (age 32-???)
I’m calling this current phase I’m in — the phase in which I choose to nourish myself, and my world with culture and knowledge.
after so many years of my mind luxuriating in its own solitude, sourcing and generating its own inspiration from my lived experience, now I’m craving a slow, deliberate fertilization and cross-pollination of creative work and intellectual ideas — across history, topics, and voices. I’m looking for teachers, guides, mentors, peers, collaborators — across medium, form, and time. they don’t need to be alive (and maybe, in some ways, it’s almost more interesting if they’re not?)…
I want to open and expand my own artistic practices — to a sense of greater possibility and fluidity. I want to grow my writing, my drawing, my animations, my web creation work — through meeting the minds of other people in their creations.
I want my ideas and creations to grow tendrails and form intertwining canopies with other ideas. I want to dance with the universal force of creative energy, itself.
cultivating a personal ecosystem of culture
I want to exist within an ecosystem of culture — and to do the work of actively creating my own curated ecosystem; a microcosm of art and culture that has informed, inspired, and fertilized my own process, and subsequent work — even in ways that are unknowable, unquantifiable. I want to influence and be influenced. I want to create jazz-like improv art, building off of what was created before, and transforming it in my own way.
I suppose, all this, to make me feel a sense of bounteousness, and meaning, and beauty — no matter where I am, no matter where I go. to make me feel that my artistic work is always expanding, in a universe of expanding ideas.
In this current phase of my own work, I’m ready to give a full deluge of my own creativity — and therefore, I’m also ready to receive the creativity that which most stimulates and excites me. it goes both ways.
the how: the process of active digestion
I’m the kind of person that will read books, listen to podcasts, watch movies and forget it easily (other than a vague, foggy shape, feeling, or impression) — if only because my psyche is too densely inhabited, otherwise.
when I say that I want to keep an inspiration log, I mean:
To seek culture with curiosity — to seek what inspires me, if only through following rabbit holes and threads of thought. to satiate a feeling, a longing, to answer a question, or follow an intuition with the path of the mind.
To digest what lingers with me — some things are experienced and simply enjoyed in the moment (then forgotten), but then there are the things that linger with you, over time. there is something there, in this lingering — and I want to actively write about it, think about it, let it ferment.
To allow it to fertilize my world, process, and creations — this will happen naturally, without me doing anything; only trusting in the ecosystem of the mind, my process, and my world, itself.
a small beginning
I started a rough draft of this inspiration library page.
everything else, I’ll let emerge and unfold naturally.
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PS. by the way, if you ever have recommendations for me, please don’t hesitate to write me, and share them. thank you.