Month: February 2007

Inspiration strikes in the most unlikely places. You can be walking past a shop and see something in the window that takes your fancy … you can be sitting quietly in a park meditating on your future or you can be listenting to a song and find the words mean something new for your day.

The word “inspiration” carries within it, a history of breathing. It sounds like “respiration”, it echoes in my mind like the pounding of a heartbeat. When I think of inspiration, I think of life.

Recently I have been the recipient of a wonderful gift. But when it first arrived, it did so with great fury. It was so sudden, and so unexpected, that this gift appeared to be wrapped in great pain and tremendous sorrow. We stood and looked at it, not able to fathom the torrent of our emotions. We daren’t touch or lift to shake. In the end, my family and I sat down around it, and waited — each alone in our anguish.

When I heard the news that my father-in-law had been in a cycling accident I had no words. There was only action. There was only urgency. And the clock marched on. We visited and left, waited and walked, distracted ourselves and went through the cycle of hope and despair over and over. The hospital corridors became familiar.

When I visited Noel, I would speak like he could hear me. I would tell him stories from the day, the week, the news. I would joke with him, and touch his arm. I would watch the instruments and monitors and listen to the din of the respirators helping him to breathe.

With every day came a new challenge to overcome. With every night came a new fear. We would wake, exhausted and at day’s end, fall into bed unable to sleep. But slowly, progress was made. Noel responded to treatment. He began to initiate his own breathing. He began to wake … the smallest of improvements was cause for celebration but an equally small problem would spiral us into depression.

In the midst of this crisis for us all, came an unexpected source of inspiration and generosity. My blogging friends had banded together and come up with a plan … and before I knew it, the generosity and energy had spread. My friends had put together a special blogroll — a FoGroll — Friends of Gavin.

FOGROLL
The Viral Garden
Resonance Partnership
Mindblob
Masi Guy
Marketing Profs: Daily Fix
Marketing Nirvana
Logic + Emotion
It Could Get Worse 2.0
HolyCow
Hee-Haw Marketing
Greg Verdino 2.0
eSoup
Drew’s Marketing Minute
CrapHammer
ConverStations
Conversation Agent
CK’s Blog
ChaosScenario
BlogHer
bizsolutionsplus
Biz and Buzz

Can we change the world? Perhaps. Can we change a person’s world? Absolutely. These generous people put their time, thought and energy into doing something for us when we were having trouble getting from day to day. They raised some money for our medical expenses, for which we are truly grateful, but more importantly, their words and their actions showed that belonging and friendship knows no boundaries.

Tomorrow we will visit Noel. He has a long and challenging recovery ahead of him. But he is not alone, and neither are we. Out of all this, we have all become closer … the dynamics of our relationships have shifted and changed. But at the centre of it all we have found a renewed sense of belonging and of our own place in the world. And it is a truly humbling experience to find yourself unexpectedly loved and cared for.

I want to change the world. But, I can tell you, my world has already changed. Thanks to you all.

Blogging is one of those intensely personal-public occupations. Just in the act of writing, we may let something slip, allow a thought or idea to break through in the text that reveals our “true” selves. Jean Genet called this the “holy of holies”, Kafka called it “the frozen sea” … And in the blogging world, your self-revelation could be read by anyone (or no-one) — it could be read by your boss, your lover, your ex-lover, your children or your extended family.

I have been pondering how blogging can generate strong bonds of friendship between people who have never met face–to–face. I was wondering how it is that we, as readers, enter into the spirit of relationship so openly (and at times, so fiercely) and quickly with authors whom we admire. And then I skipped by Maryam’s blog and my breath was taken away. I wanted to respond (but was black balled), but needed something more poetic than my own words … so I was looking through the writings of some of my favourite authors, and came across something delicious.

There is a deep philosophic and emotional linkage between reading and writing. In fact, I believe that a good write must be a good reader — and vice versa, that a good reader can be a good writer (with effort and discipline). With this in mind, I found a great quote from Proust’s small book, On Reading — which applies in the same way to writing:

The atmosphere of this pure form of friendship [reading/writing] is silence, which is purer than speech. Because we speak for others, but keep silent for ourselves. So silence, unlike speech, does not bear the trace of our defects, or our affectations.

I think this is partly what draws me to text over image, what drives me seek out and write stories and what makes me question the use of photographs on blogs. In a predominantly visual medium such as the web, the dominance of text amounts to a form of eloquent silence in which readers and writers can commune.

Oh … and in case you haven’t … vote for Maryam.