What Inspires You, Focus?

With creativity being one of our main "focuses" for the Focus Magazine, one must ask themselves what inspires the artist or writer or photographer. We lovingly asked a few of our Focus members to enlighten us on what inspires them to create, and here's what they had to say.

Sarah's Inspiration

They say that writers can find inspiration anywhere-- and I do believe that is true. Yet, there is nothing like sitting on the edge of the world and watching the ceaseless rhythm of waves breaking over the shore to remind you simultaneously of your importance and your insignificance.

When I became a writer, I promised myself that my writing would always be completely honest, naked and open, unafraid to touch subjects that others tremble to type. I have not been in the best place lately. The stress of AP and honors courses alongside the looming decision of college (aka my entire future), and the mounting pressure from friends and family to be more than what I am has really been getting to me, and I knew that I needed to get away. Thankfully, I have amazing friends and was able to do that this weekend.

I change almost instantaneously when I get to the beach: I sit straighter, breathe deeper, smile more, speak less. I find myself more present in my own life. Like a child, I can barely wait for the car to come to a stop before I am slipping off my shoes and running down into the waves. It didn’t matter to me that the water was well below proper swimming temperatures, or that Galveston isn’t the most beautiful of beaches.

When I stand in the ocean, it’s as if all the wrong in the world can not touch me, because in that moment, I am so intimately a part of it. I am standing in waters that stretch to Australia, the same waters that carried explorers to far lands, the same waters in which blue whales and zooplankton live in harmony. These waters host some of the most outstanding and untouchable creations, so much of it remains unexplored, untainted, unknown. Just like I am. So much of myself and my story remains unknown, unwritten, and untainted by a world that tries so hard to tear us apart.

I stand in the freezing waves as they rush into me, knock me down, take me off my feet. I stand strong against the ceaseless beatings, all the hurt and pain and passion and weights that sink in your stomach like hot coals have bled back into the Marianas Trench from whence they came. My salty tears mix with the salt water that has been a part of the globe longer than mankind has been here, and it will remain long after-- a piece of me now woven into the tapestry of the universe. It is an awe-inspiring thing to realize how completely insignificant you really are to the world. How you are just one miniscule speck in the most intricate artistry ever.

Yet, you are here.

For some reason, you are alive at this precise moment in all the eons of an endless timeline and you are at this beach and you are in this ocean and you are an important part of this world or you would not be here. Nothing can shake me like standing in the ocean and knowing with a certainty I do not usually possess that I have a purpose.

Understanding that this beautiful beast that soothes can rip you apart and swallow you whole if you surrender is majestically terrifying, being so flawlessly a part of the waves of the galaxy, feeling deeper and stronger and broader than you knew you had the capacity to, adding pieces of your soul to the Milky Way until this untouchable sadness turns into something that resembles the only peace you have felt in months-- this is inspiration. Carpe the hell out of that diem.

Gracie’s Inspiration

A very blurry picture of Ross Lightfoot (left) and Ross Gilchriest (Right)

Laughter; it is one of the most miraculous medicines in the world. Nothing left me more in awe until I saw the chapel full of people at Ross Lightfoot’s funeral laughing their heads off at his untimely and forgetful habits. While the loss of such a young life is horrifically heartbreaking, the only way to move on is to be inspired by the life they chose to live. While I did not know Ross personally, I feel inspired by his loving spirit. On August 16th 2016, Ross tweeted “life is now.” Recounting all the stories I have heard of Ross, there are no better words to describe his outlook on life. We are not guaranteed to always count on tomorrow, so today we must surround ourselves with the people and things we cherish so that when we look back on our lives, there is nothing to regret. We must surround ourselves with laughter so that we are overwhelmed with immense happiness. We must live now, because there is no other time to live it.

Jeremiah’s Inspiration

As much as I would love to say I write because I want to create some grandiose emotions in my readers, I can’t help but feel the opposite is true. I write for those pesky questions few ask but all seemingly know. Currently, I have been consumed by the seemingly easy question, when does something go from being white or black to gray? It’s philosophical questions like this that haunt my thoughts. This moral gray zone is so very mercurial (as in mercury's actual properties) and nebulous, that it requires a poet’s eye to describe the transition. Something in the gray zone is like a block of mercury in the palm; solid and defined gives away as contact causes shape, sureness to deform to the unknowable. You cannot justify or describe. Reason escapes and only emotion remains. Shiny, bright and hypnotic--yet scarring, unseen damage the carcinogenic seeps to your moral bones. Changing and confusing... It’s silly, I know, but as I sit here typing after sleep evades my grasp again, listening to music I would never admit to subscribing to, I cannot think of anything else. It overrules my feeble attempts to final meet the sandman. I wonder if anyone else knows this pain. I write for those who do, and have yet to rest. For those who ask the questions everyone else seems to know yet have failed to share, I provide the path to obtain the knowledge themselves.

Jayden's Inspiration

The people that inhabit this world are creative creatures. As every source of transportation does, creativity requires a certain ticket to take you into a whole new world: inspiration. As a writer, among other things, everything seems to have the potential to be a source of inspiration in my eyes. To start off, I just want to say that silly things, such as the sun’s warm golden rays showering a delicate flower a certain way, can fill me to the brim with inspiration. Mere photos of peculiar people in places all over do the same. It’s almost like random things can open you up beautifully, crawl inside you delicately, and elegantly infect every part of you until you are completely consumed in a certain thought or idea that just keeps begging you to make it real; begging you to open your mind and birth it into this world to add to it’s glory. An exact source of inspiration is challenging to pin down when the moon in all her glory, along with the crickets’ soft harmony, in the winds of a frigid night can lead to extravagant collaborations of lead and paper. A single scent or taste can be converted into creativity, as well. On top of that, even a single word or phrase can crawl into your ears, move into your head, and roam throughout the world inside of your brain, leading you to write chapters upon chapters of who knows what, draw brilliant pictures of the images in your head, or even write and/or play songs until you feel like an empty juicebox. All in all, the mind isn’t a picky consumer. Like an inventor, it can take scraps and pieces from all over and makes a masterpiece out of it all. There is inspiration around every corner of this world, and that is what makes it such a precious thing.