BitterSweetLife

Our lights aren't self-igniting.

Several days ago, as I was driving down I-70 West with the measured abandon of someone eager not to arrive too early, I was inspired by some lyrics from Death Cab for Cutie’s Photo Album.

Information travels faster
in the modern age
in the modern age
as our days
are crawling by
so slowly

I knew I had just been given food for a post. I didn’t have time to write it at the moment, but given the time, the mind was there…

But on I-70, as the cerebral wheels hummed like tires, I found myself thinking about this phenomenon in general. Call it second-hand inspiration. In this case, it was Death Cab second-handing, and it happens frequently.

I remember, back in my teen days, listening to an Enya song—her songs have incredibly vague lyrics—and writing an entire poem based on what I thought she was singing. (Yeah, Enya. I know, I know—I was younger then.) Point is, an apparently “original” creation emerged.

I’d venture to say that few of our ideas arise unaided. I don’t think we have ex nihilo thoughts, which should tell us something about ourselves—created—and something about God—he who is-not-inspired-by-others.

In a sense, none of our creations are actually original when we get right down to it. (Forget Ayn Rand’s hang-up with “second-handing”—in this sense, she was a second-hander herself.) Everything we think or write or compose or draw is inspired by something else. I find this more enlightening that constraining.

We’re little creations who mirror the original...and sometimes brilliantly.