Just my imagination (Running away with me)

Like needing a shot of rhythm and blues, especially during these very uncertain times, we all need heavy doses of inspiration to get us motivated, because when this inspiration washes over you, it’s like a revitalisation and replenishment needed to go from surviving to living- really living.

I’ve been thinking about this more and more, and how the more I am too often around those who don’t give me this nourishment, I retreat into a deep, dark void to listen to the silence, inhale and exhale and which leads to me exploring new worlds and new thoughts and new ways of looking at life through my writing.

Recently, creative writing has become therapy of sorts in that it’s taken me back to my childhood in Ceylon where the relationship with my parents as a single child was never really close and how little I knew about their families.

I knew that my Auntie Berniece downed a bottle of cheap local brandy known as arak, placed her head on the railway tracks down the hill from where they lived in Newra Elya, passed out and waited for the 6pm train to take her away.

Having married my uncle Maurice who was her first cousin and given birth to two deaf and dumb children had become too much for her.

From what I remember, my aunt was a green eyed beautiful woman, and thinking of her made me realise that when we left Ceylon for this unknown place called Hong Kong, I don’t remember us saying goodbye to any of my parents’ relatives. We were suddenly on a Lloyd Trestino liner at sea for ten days before arriving in what I thought was Melbourne.

Well, that was what I was told by my parents and which I told my friends in primary school as, for reason never explained, most Dutch Burghers, a mix of Dutch, Portuguese and the local inhabitants of the island, emigrated to Melbourne when the once British colony saw the Sinhala Act being introduced in 1956 which was going to see English on the island lose its importance.

My parents and I didn’t make it to Melbourne. They chose Hong Kong because most of my father’s family were in this funnily named British colony, and thanks to his eldest sister marrying a Portuguese sailor, she helped us to find refuge and whatever new life lay ahead.

So where did the inspiration come in? I think that before understanding how inspiration works, it’s much to do with remembering where you came from and understanding who you have become over the years.

When you’re nine years old, you don’t know what to think, and your thought process is absorbing everything happening in the life around you with no one to teach you how to assimilate what’s going on and the onus is on you to put the puzzle together. This can take years, but it’s worth it.

What first inspired me as a young teenager? I really don’t remember, and I don’t know if it was inspiration, but it was possibly listening to the Beatles for the first time and being very good in my art classes in school. And then, at least for me, there was a lull, except for walks on the wild side followed by dating and marriage and watching television shows like “One Step Beyond” and “The Twilight Zone” which “prepped” me for “E.T” and “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” and delving into the career of Steven Spielberg and the power of imagination.

At the same time, the Beatles were also changing course, musically, and there was me going every afternoon to Sesame Street on television and meeting all those brilliant characters on the Children’s Television Workshop and created by the great Jim Henson- The Count, Kermit, Oscar, Bert and Ernie, Miss Piggy…

I was inspired, and energised because by now I was married, I was a young father and could see the wonderment on the face of my daughter watching Sesame Street with me and the crackling creativity of “Jungle Book” and everything else produced by Walt Disney, which added a new layer of inspiration to what I was seeing and thinking about and how everything could be more than what I thought it could be.

As we know, imagination has no boundaries, and from writing songs and poetry, I wrote a story about a girl who lost her shadow and discovered the world of Shadowra where shadows meet when we’re asleep.

A couple of publishers were interested in taking it further, but we couldn’t find the right illustrator and this has been shelved for another day.

PolyGram Video were very interested in another short story of mine about four baby clouds called Cloudniks and I was invited to Cannes to present the idea.

Looking back on this project, I brought someone in as a favour who I didn’t realise would turn out to be a nasty control freak and my original idea becoming something that wasn’t mine.

This is not to say that my imagination had run dry, but inspiration was running on empty. And inspiration has its ebbs and flows depending on what one is going through.

I have been involved in advertising, marketing, music, all of which must have been inspired by something, and which stopped my mind from wandering with the one constant for inspiration being the Beatles.

How did these four Liverpudlians produce everything that they did and how and why is it still so relevant?

I have put together a “journography” of my life for a few friends and this has helped me test the waters for things hiding inside.

It inspired me enough to create new things like the Happy Wednesday brand for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which, by the way, was inspired by the film “Field Of Dreams”, recorded new original songs and which led me to my imaginary friend Muzi and the stories built around him.

Imagination, creativity and inspiration are almost a triangle like the father, son and the Holy Ghost. It’s at least to me, the creative holy and unholy trinity. But we’re all different and arriving where we end up is our own magical mystery tour with the only passengers being the past, the present and the future.

What happened to me way back then in Ceylon and everything I never really knew about my parents’ families, and how this must have affected my own life is very probably somehow mixed up in that mulligatawny of everything that’s come before and is all part of inspiration and inspiring what comes next.

Even in the darkness, there’s a light that leads us to finally understanding ourselves better and very probably inspiring us to actually use sadness to heal.

It’s worked for me when a therapist I was seeing asked why I never showed any emotion. I don’t think I knew how, because, especially my mother, never showed any emotion, and though we loved each other, we never ever said it. But this day, talking to my therapist about the death of my then ex wife’s and my dog Nipper, the emotional dams finally broke.

There was a sense of exhilaration and embracing that what I cannot change and maybe I don’t want to because everything in life is very probably preordained- even those moments of Inspiration which almost always lead somewhere on the Lateral Stock Exchange.

Inspiration: It’s something I have been telling people, companies and governments for over five years and how this is something that should be built into EVERYTHING.

Inspiration means different things to different people and it can come together like magic to create the emotional paradigm shift needed to move us towards positivity.

*********************

ABOUT HANS EBERT

When he arrived by ship from what was then known as Ceylon to the British colony of Hong Kong, the Dutch Burgher- it’s a long story-thought he had arrived in Melbourne because that’s what his parents had told him- it’s an even longer story- until he saw all the rickshaws, women wearing cheongsams with slits up to their arse, and was given a pair of chopsticks during his first lunch in the city.

He had never eaten dim sum, but then again, no one told him that as a fledgling journalist, he would meet and interview everyone from Peter Sellers, Roman Polanski and George Harrison to Billy Joel, Norah Jones, Gorillaz, David Bowie and Quincy Jones, create the Happy Wednesday brand for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, win the Gold Award at the London Advertising Awards for his “Right Of Abode campaign, coin the term “Canto Pop” when writing for the American trade publication Billboard, and when in advertising not only helped launch McDonald’s in Hong Kong and work on the business as Director of Creative Services for over two decades, and was very much involved in the launch of STARTV, MTV Asia and PCCW.

He has written hits for some of the biggest names in Chinese popular music and wooed and married the model who was the Wrangler Girl. 

These days, he is rewriting his journography and working on introducing the world to his imaginary friend Muzi and their search for everything that leads to positivity by leaving the dullards behind to pursue nutworking.