I Love the Smell of Inspiration in the Monring

I won’t bore you with reasons why I haven’t been giving you the love and attention you and I both know you deserve…ok, I’ll give you some hints…

New house, dramas with new house and their resolution forthwith, 120 undergraduate essays and another 60 still to come, trips to Ikea, Goublburn, Queanbeyan, gardening, breakup with J-man, thesis, tutoring and counselling the kiddies, library fines, an early quarter- life ‘what-the-fuck-am-I-doing’ crisis, and a kicking housewarming.

Don’t you feel exhausted reading all that??? I do too, and I actually did it all!

So, I’m one busy lizzie, as you can see. And, as happens to the best of us, this busyness has left me feeling rather drained, in every way that a body can be. This, of course, extends to the sartorial. I’ve actually fantasised about coming to university in track pants. THE HORROR.

Which got me to thinking – how does one go about recharging one’s batteries – sartorially and spiritually? To who, where and what can one turn for inspiration when that creative kick up the pants is sorely needed?

Any newsstand would have you believe that inspiration, at least in a sartorial sense, comes from buying the latest Mari Claire and gallivanting off to DFO, backed by a cavalry of credit cards at the ready. Of course, being the recesisionista that I am, and also encountering the budgetary challenges of heating bills, this is not an option. Also, to be perfectly honest, I’ve never really been that inspired by fashion magazines. Firstly, they’ve got that styled-within-an-inch-of-their-life ethos, which is hard to put into practice, especially when the clock’s ticking and the hope of finding an available car park at uni is drawing ever closer to a snowballs’ in hell. Secondly, the whole disposable fashion thing raises numerous issues for me, in terms of the social and environmental implications – not to mention the storage ones! And finally, as I’ve said before on this blog, I don’t understand why we would all want to look the same, because then we’d get tired of looking at each other.

So, inspiration from fashion magazines; do not want.

Of course, one could argue that one draws inspiration from The Fabulous – those we admire and get all jelly-in-the-belly thinking about. The fabulous are not confined to the current flavours of the month – rather, they can be from any era, real or imagined, lauded or lampooned for their style. My personal list is too long and varied to go into here, but needless to say, it spans the known history of the world. But back to the point - dressing as a Fleetwood Mac era Stevie Nicks at my housewarming certainly got my creative juices flowing. There’s something mystical about taking on the mantle of another – of borrowing some of their shine – that can boost you even in the most trying of circumstances. Perhaps this is why ‘important’ people wear uniforms, or have ridged dress norms – it’s the hope that in dressing like a judge, a doctor, a rock star, or a politician, one might actually find oneself feeling like one. The same goes for dressing like The Fabulous – in times of inspirational crisis, it’s nice to borrow someone else’s shine for a while, especially when circumstances make it hard to be glossy in your own right.

However, borrowing someone else’s fabulousness can only last so long. It’s like a quick sugar hit – it keeps you ticking over, but eventually you have to take in something more sustaining. It occurred to me this morning, over my low GI nutritionally sounds breakfast of rye tost with tahini and honey, it’s the people we love that are the daily bread which both sustains and inspires me. How would we be creative with our style if there weren’t people at our breakfast tables, ready with the compliments and suggestions that stoke the fire of our sartorial inspiration? How would we continue to be enthusiastic teachers if we didn’t know our student were learning – if we didn’t have to read and grade their essays? And, most importantly dear readers, how would we continue to write if not for the gentle, and not so gentle, nudgings and naggings of our nearest and dearest? And, in a life full of dear ones, inspiration, sartorial or otherwise, is never too far away.