What inspires you?

My Dad always my inspiration to play 'ukulele ever since I can recall he being an excellent 'ukulele player on his Kamaka pineapple.
I haven't written any songs lately but I have written allot of poetry and my inspiration has always been the love of my life my wife of 28 years. Though lately... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vP1YUkweRA&feature=related
 
I try to let the spirit of uncle Jessy and his awesome hair take me over

Stamos_mullet.jpg


hm yeah, right now I'm just settling for not totally sucking as a form of inspiration and honestly the so many talented people on this site. It really opened my eyes as to what is possible on a uke.
 
I write and play because it's in my blood. I'm not as much inspired as driven by an obsession to write.

I have been writing ever since I can recall. I wrote stories and poems in my early teens. I was the editor of my high school paper. I've worked for newspapers, magazines, book publishers and web sites for the past 40 years - writer, editor, reporter. I've published poems, stories, columns, features, reports, news, opinions, editorials, travelogues, essays, even a book a computer book).

I've never published any songs (I've written a few), and never had a novel published (again, written a couple), but there's still time...

I can't go a week without writing something. I write a regular blog, make posts here and on other forums. I write at work - customers' brochures, flyers, resumes and so on. I continually rewrite my web pages. I can't stop posting here, either. I just have to write. Just look at what I've done with this post! I'm happiest when I can be creative.

For me words have a life of their own, as much a living part of my world as my dog, my cats, the birds outside my window, my wife, my friends. I hate to see them abused or mistreated - bad spelling, poor grammar, abusive punctuation, inept capitalization - as much as I hate to see any animal or child abused. Bad language is to me like someone using a ukulele to hammer nails is to many of you.

Music is different, but also similar. I play because it fulfills a need to make music. I can spend hours noodling on a uke, without actually playing a song all the way through. Just experimenting, trying chord patterns, strummming, picking, making the strings sing out in new or different ways.

It's like writing in one sense - I like to play with words, to work with them, to build sentences and paragraphs, to construct articles and stories like an architect designs a building. I do the same with music; assembling the bits and pieces into something that often resembles a song, more often a meander through tones and rhythms. But I don't do it nearly as well. More passion than talent in my music.

Perhaps some of it is hereditary. Just recently I learned about my father's musical background. While he lived, he never told me about it - I learned from an aunt that my grandmother played ukulele, my grandfather played piano and my father played banjo at family singalongs. Or possibly banjo uke. And my grandfather was a reporter for a newspaper. Writing and music making seem to run in that side of the family!​
 
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