Finding Inspiration

by Fiona Pitt-Kethley

In order to find inspiration easily it may be necessary to rearrange your life. Does the place you live in inspire you? If not, it may be time for a move. Do your hobbies inspire you? If not, it may be time to get some new interests. Embracing the new and moving on are two essentials for an inspiring life.

Look on many of the things you do as research for poems or prose. I have eventually found an inspiring place to live in – Cartagena in the South of Spain. It is inspiring partly because it has about 3000 years of history behind it if you go back to the days when it was Mastia, a city of Tartessos, long before the Carthaginians and the Romans arrived. It is inspiring also because it is set in wonderful countryside, something I can discover gradually on bike or on foot. Part of its charisma is the fact that some of this is under threat. A part of my life is taken up fighting with other like-minded people to save antiquities and threatened stretches of countryside. There is a perpetual conflict between industry and nature. Ironically, some of the architecture associated with industry is part of what we want to save. Since moving here I have spent a lot of time hunting minerals, going down mines and up mountains. I am becoming familiar not only with the outside but also the inside of the world I live in. It is all part of nature, something that many naturalists forget, emphasising only the importance of flora and fauna.

Grasping new opportunities is another part of finding inspiration. Recently I worked as an extra on a film by Alex de la Iglesia, one of my favourite directors. It was physically very uncomfortable as all the filming was at night in a freezing Roman Theatre. On many occasions we were sitting in puddles of dew by three in the morning. I had just got over pneumonia so it wasn´t exactly what the doctor would have recommended. But, it was inspiring. I have written both prose and poetry about this bizarre experience and made a whole new group of friends amongst the extras.

If you are finding inspiration difficult you must change your life and grasp at new opportunities and new friendships, surmounting whatever difficulties lie in your way.