Keep your eyes and ears open for inspiration

In a beautiful essay written by Scott Barry Kaufman, he says, “we live in a culture saturated with evaluation”. It is so tragically and tellingly true. Many years ago, I exited that world. Ceased to enter awards. Stopped being seen at the right places. Ruthlessly avoiding the right people. It was not out of hubris. 

It was out of a dire need for self preservation, evolvement and relevance. I now live in a world and practise a culture of inspiration. And I find it in some writers. I am inspired by the clarity of thought and the emotional ink that runs through their pens. Even their nuanced nibs. 

David Brooks is one of them. Every day I Google him hoping to bump into a new piece. Some of David’s pieces are pointed poetry, read ‘The Machiavellian Temptation’. It says: “In the 19th century, there was a hydraulic model of how to be a good person. There are all these torrents of passion flowing through you. Your job, as captain of your soul, is to erect dams to keep these passions in check. Your job is to just say no to sloth, lust, greed, drug use and the other sins”. I visualise what David writes. 

In his book What is inspiration?  he writes, “inspiration demands a certain posture, the sort of posture people feel when they are overawed by something large and mysterious. They are both humbled and self-confident, surrendering and also powerful. When people are inspired they are willing to take a daring lark toward something truly great. They’re brave enough to embrace the craggy fierceness of the truth and to try to express it in some new way. Yes, hard work is really important for achievement. But life is more mysterious than just that”. 

And finally the two greatest books that I have read. Both by David are Bobos in Paradise and The Road To Character. The other writer who inspires me immensely is Cheryl Strayed. She thinks in flesh and writes in blood. Reading her is like getting a mental transfusion. Her ‘Dear Sugar’ columns speak of that.  

The Love Of My Life is an extraordinary essay, she writes, “healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing”. In one of her other pieces she wrote, “Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.” 

And in still another she tells you that “forgiveness doesn’t sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.” I don’t know about you, but I can see the fat man being dragged. Cheryl is such a competent bridge maker between the islands of words and images. That is irrepressibly inspiring. Read her glorious books Tiny Beautiful Things and Torch.

David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker. In his piece on Trump’s election ‘An American Tragedy’, he wrote, “His level of egotism is rarely exhibited outside of a clinical environment”. Glide through Leonard Cohen Makes it Darker in The New Yorker. Finally, read his staggering book: Lenin’s Tomb.

The Busy Trap by Tim Kreider is perhaps the most observant yet hilarious short essay that I have ever read. I have also used it as an axis for presentations that I often make to very serious, senior and hugely busy board members. 

The Busy Trap is a frivolous and light slap to our busy faces. I reproduce an excerpt: “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.”

Amongst food and travel writers, I have always been drawn to the work of AA Gill. He carried a frightfully playful pen with his palate. He revealed his battle with cancer in his review of the Magpie Cafe, Whitby. 

In that he wrote “I’ve got cancer. Sorry to drop that onto the breakfast table apropos of nothing at all. Apropos and cancer are rarely found in the same sentence. I wasn’t going to mention it, the way you don’t. In truth, I’ve got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English. There is barely a morsel of offal not included. I have a trucker’s gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty malignancy.” I wish I can write this way in my last few months.

I have never watched Tendulkar play. Either on the ground or on television. The most I know about Djokovic is that he models for Uniqlo. But there is a sports writer who is right up there for me. And I am his devotee. 

Rohit Brijnath. His elegy for the long player is Wisden writing. “Every day pragmatism and sentimentality collide in India’s cricketing universe.” Read From nobodies to Tiger, we’re all in search of confidence. His piece on Tendulkar is mountainous: Sachin Tendulkar, Genius in residence. Rohit’s writing is penetrative and poetic.

There are indeed buckets of inspiration to pour on top of ourselves every day of life. I seek them. And through this column make a feeble attempt at showing them for you.

Up until the next fortnight, keep your eyes, your mouth, your nose, your fingers and your ears open for inspiration. Because as Steve Jobs once said, “As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it”.