When I think about my inspirations I always think about who has the best words. Take my father for instance. When I was young, my father and I barely ever spoke to each other. On the way to school, picking me up from someone’s house, going on walks, or at the dinner table he and I would not speak to each other. He is an extreme introvert, and so am I. Conversations didn’t come easy. Silence was the norm. However when my dad would speak to me, like when he would say “I love you”, I felt to my marrow. He shaped me and how I understand words.
Words are powerful and dangerous. A song by The Protomen has this line that I tend to fixate on that goes “I wanna burn until there’s nothing left to burn about.” I will play that single phrase on loop because those words resonate so deeply within me. In my wallet, I carry a letter a girl once wrote to me. It is not a love letter. It is not necessarily mean or kind, but just facts about how she felt. I read that letter every so often because it seems to reorient me. Her handwritten words on that paper are truth. She understood the power of words.
When I write I tend to think about the strength of those words. How they make feel. What they make me want to do. I think about the people who said them to me, or wrote out the song or show. I write in the hopes that I can move them the way they moved me. I write hoping to move others too. That’s where my inspiration comes from.