Shame on The Universe   Poetry and Thoughts on the Universe

The daily prompt have been a little lackluster lately. Fashion and junk food are fine and all, but they don’t really inspire me. So instead, I’m going to write about something I read recently.

The idea of today’s post came from one of my favorite joke/prank/puzzle/misc mischief book Scam School Book 1: Smoke by Brian Brushwood. In that book, he included an email that he got when he was a young struggling magician from Teller, of Penn & Teller, that gave him some life changing advice. After finding Teller’s email address, he wrote to him expressing his frustration at trying to develop a unique persona for his magical act. Much to his surprise, he actually got a response from Teller the next day.

The letter Teller wrote was full of really good advice, but on piece in particular is what I wanted to focus on. He said: (Paraphrasing slightly)

“Love something besides magic, in the arts. Get inspired by a particular poet, film-maker, sculptor, composer. You will never be the first ‘Brian Brushwood’ of magic if you want to be Penn & Teller. But if you want to be, say, the Salvador Dali of magic, we’ll THERE’s an opening.”

I thought is was a very good bit of advice. It’s not bad to have other writers you look up to for inspiration. But if you don’t diversify your tastes, you’ll end up sounding just like them. For example, I am a fan of Jim Butcher, and the snarky attitude he uses while writing his books influences my no fiction writing quite a bit. But when I do try to write fiction, I find I sound like him, but less interesting. Right now though, I’m mostly focusing on building my own voice.

However, when I write poetry, I draw heavily off of Justin Furstenfeld, some Neil deGrasse Tyson, with hints of Shel Silverstein.

I haven’t really found out how most of my influences affect my style, since im still new to blogging, but I imagine my interest in Einstein and other physicists, comedians like George Carlin, and magicians like Brian Brushwood. But I imagine it’s there.

Plus, you never know when I figure out the theory of general blog-itivity. 🙂 (Obviously they didn’t influence my humor.)

-Shaman

What sort of people influence you guys? Let me know in the comments below.