Dark Night

Written by Psychic Symphony

Yet another night... This one goes out to Adok...

It's quarter past nine pm. It's dark as hell, sweet music is coming out of my speakers, to my right is a big open window revealing hundreds of stars! It's cold outside but the sky is clear. My bedroom door is to the left. 3 light sources in my room! The bedsize alarm-clock digits, the hi-fi's info boards and the grim computer screen! The glow that comes out of the screen hardly enlightens the keyboard, no need though, I know the position of the keys by heart. The words just appear out of nothing on the screen.

Tonight is the night where they have predicted a star-shower due to the trail of some comet! The biggest in 33 years I heard announced on the telly! Nothing yet...

Well... Let's wait a little longer. Greenday with good ridance is now playing... TUM TA TUM...

'Tatoos and memories...'
'For what it's worth it was worth all the while!'
'I hope you had the time of your life...'
'It's something unpredictable...'
TUM TUM TA TUM
TA TA TUM
TA TA TA TUM
Finished!

Still no stars!

Hey Adok, you remember that article about inspiration you wrote? About the proper enviroment? It's bogus! Doesn't work... My eyes are aching! What you need is good music and an anti-radiation screen and you're off! No need for the glass of coke and whole pack of oookies and... Well, I'm lying! So, sue me! ;)

<5 hours passed>

Cold night

Whose brilliant idea was to wait for the damn stars?

I'm cold, it's dark, I'm out of inspiration, I'm on net vacations and fog started to clog! I can't see one damn star! FUCK!

I'm freezing my balls out here... Fucking cold!

I better go find something to do... Maybe work a little on Watcom, see if i can translate some Pascal... BRB.

I'm back! Did some snooping around on Watcom. The fog is starting to break open! I can see some stars. Too bad they aren't falling! What to do now? I'm bored... It's 3am. Maybe I should browse some book or some file! Let me check the books first... I can't see a damn thing on the book-shelf, let me turn up the light first. It's on the other side of the bed. I'm too bored to make weird squeekes in my bed at 3am. What would the neighbours think? :P I could go around it but then I would have to get up... Nah! I'm just going to stay here all cosy in my little chair doing nothing.

/me scratches his neck...
.
.
.
/me rolls his eyes...
.
/me moves his legs so his ankles don't feel so cold!
.
.
/me doesn't know what to write.

Hey, at least i'm hearing some xerxes music... And you all know how it sounds... All mellow and sleepy...

/me is sleepy!
/me is bored!
.
.
/me shakes his legs and also his head from side to side.
/me has a sore neck!

Long day. Damn stars! Damn fog! I wish I could track, I would have something to do...

/me is completly bored!
/me recalls that tune from... what's her name... that tall chick...

Er... What's her name... Damn it... Er...

/me folds his eyebrows like that would help him remember!

What's her name damn it! Not Natalie... Something with an s... Sheryl Crow! That's it... My favorite mistake by Sheryl Crow...

/me sings: It's 6am and I'm alone!
/me sings: Don't you know when you go, you're my favorite mistake!
/me recalls cardigans tune! And goes put the mp3 playing...

Sorry xerxes... But cardigans rule!

/me shakes his head vigorously
/me sings: I don't know what your looking for...
.
/me shakes his head: tu tu.. tu tu... tu tu!
.
/me sings: it's so sweet alone... and I'm losing my favorite game
/me sings: you're losing your mind again!
/me takes a look outside... Still that misty fog!
/me shakes his head... TU TU!
/me wiggles his fingers next to the keyboard...
/me sings: you're losing your mind again...
/me sings: I'm losing my favorite game...
.
.
/me shakes his head vigorously: TU TU! TU TU! TU TU! TU TU
.
/me can't stop moving his legs... COLD!

I better find something to do... I could code something... Yeah... Those circles I have been doing... BRB!

I'm back after half an hour of heavy coding. Now back with some xerxes tunes, bad news on the stars biz though... The fog is getting thicker, I can hardly see the buildings even! Oh, well, it's almost 4am. I better get to bed. Blip!

No more nights!!!

Not again... Oh well... I just heard on the telly that the star thingie was badly calculated and 24 hours ahead! That means I spent a whole night awake for nothing! Tough break!

It's the next day actually! I'm going to try to write something which might be slightly interesting... See if I can manage that...

Er... I'll write about inspiration. Yeah that's it, see if I can do a whole article based down on one theme only!

OK! So inspiration sucks, the more uninspired you are, the more uninspired you get, what you need is to either force yourself to get inspired or do something else besides thinking on whatever your trying to do. The problem is if you let it go for a little longer than you would want you start to lose notion of what you were seeking in the first place, examples are tunes which start with some style and then are finished later on with a complete different style. Or bloody articles such as this one, where I plainly am uninspired and just write whatever I feel like writing to see if I get the patience to get back to the design circles I have coded lately!

That's it, I'm getting connected to the Internet... I'm bored! I need to spend my time... I'll just put in a CD and disconnect when the music stops. Let's see... UHUHUHUHUH! FSOL takes whole 70 minutes, hehe! Just had an idea, let me find 3 questions to ask some ppl I encounter... Do some sort of polls on inspiration. And the questions are:

1) How often do you get uninspired?
2) What do you do when it happens?
3) Does it work?

I'll be back with a few answers after the break! BRB.

I'm back! Did you miss me? Ok, here are a couple of answers I got from a couple of friends/famous people on IRC:

TuO, coder for Skytech Team from France.

1) I really often get uninspired especially when I have to finish a prog or a demo. :PP Way much too often.

2) When it happens, I try to ask someone I know: all my friends, etc... I listen to music & watch movies or demos. :)

3) Hum... it seems it never worked, when I see the demo I made, eheh.

Will_Be, musician and gfxer extraordinaire for Theralite, French!

1) When I'm bored.
2) I go to bed (I'm sometimes bored about mass-IRC-idling :).
3) Sure it works, I sleep and dream. :) Dream is the key!

Big_bear, musician in Fake That, Swiss nationality.

1) Too often :) ... Actually inspiration mostly comes when there is no possibility to write music.

2) If the deadline's not very near I just wait for the inspiration to come back. Otherwise nature usually helps (walking in the sunset, lying around watching clouds etc. :).

3) It usually helps, yes. Other things like smoking weed and such don't seem to give me much inspiration, tho.

TMK, legend of graphotism in Dolphin and Inf. From Norway!

1) All the time, the only time I'm inspired is before my exams. Then I feel like doing stuff so that I don't have to study. :)

2) I try to study instead, but it doesn't work. Result is that I sit still listening to music and sleep :P or partying.

3) No way. :)

DC-1, keeper of massive 12-Giga FTP site ftp://demo.cat.hu! Hungary.

1) I'm inspired very rarely. Average once/week, or once/2 weeks. At those times I write letters, or try making some asciis just for fun. :)

2) Sometimes I try to make music...

3) ...but I always notice that I'm not a musician. :)

MRZ, certified blob-coder for Astroidea. Hungarian he is...

1) UNinspired..... hmm! Well, I'm uninspired about 80% of the time.

2) I watch TV and sleep then.

3) It doesn't work.

Shiva, German coder for kolor!

1) never

2) see 1)

3) see 2)

Whizzter, coder for Woorlic, Sweden!

1) all the time

2) go on IRC

3) no

Buckshag, coder for Superstition and author of an awesome 3D-engine, Holland!

1) I get out of inspiration a lot of times, especially when I worked on something and it doesn't work. And I cannot find the bug. ;)

2) I go read some game development mags and read and read and then most of the time I see something cool to implement in my engine and gonna code that. ;)

3) But it happens that I don't code for days. ;)

That's it! Picard didn't feel up to the job of answering such important questions but no harm done! Greets anyways! :) Thanks once again to everyone for answering the small 3 questions and I hope this will help someone! It certainly didn't help me since I seem to still be out of inspiration! Oh well... At least we got this nice big article to send to some mag!

- Psychic Symphony