Day 5: Geoff Hoff

October 5, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“… there are a lot of people in my life who do inspire me for just that reason, because they stepped off the predictable path and are living this scary, gut-wrenching, wild ride of a life …”

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Toni Reece: We are officially being recorded for the Get Inspired! Project.  Thank you so much Geoff, for being part of this project, and before we go into the questions, can you please introduce yourself to us?

Geoff Hoff: Sure, my name is Geoff Hoff, and I am a cranky writer.

Toni: A cranky writer?

Geoff: Yes, cranky is a word that has just come up recently, so I decided to use it to describe myself!

Toni: Okay!  Well, then, let’s just jump right into those questions … that’s amazing … the very first question that we wanted to ask is who do you inspire, Geoff, and how do you go about that?

Geoff: Who do I inspire?

Toni: Yes.

Geoff: Well, one of my commitments is to inspire people.  I am moved when I see people that are living their dreams or are beginning to live their dreams, or figuring out how they live their dreams; and when I see that, it moves me sometimes to tears, and I try to do whatever I can to support them and inspire them to do that.  I’m always talking to people about getting in touch with their inner sense and their inner artist and that sort of thing, so I think that I do inspire burgeoning artists of whatever age.  I have a friend who is in her late 40s who is just beginning to write poetry — and so she is a baby poet even though she is not a baby human being — and so it runs the gamut of children who I always want to inspire all the way through old people who are finally realizing, oh, you know I can do something artistic.

Toni: Are these people that you seek out, or are these people that you work with, or are these personal and business relationships?

Geoff: A little of all of that, you know, mostly friends.  For a while, I was an acting teacher.  I did that for about 6 years, and I was very committed to inspiring my acting students not only to develop their acting chops but to develop their love for art and for creation and for following their passion.  I mean, passion is my favorite word, and I love passionate people, and I love people becoming passionate who haven’t been; so when I see that — even relative strangers on the internet — it is fun to find somebody who is a relative stranger who I stumble upon them or they stumble upon me and they are just discovering passion, and I always give them as many “atta boys” as I possibly can.

Toni: How do you go about that, when you are inspiring others and motivating them and having them develop that love for art and creativity?  Are there certain techniques that you use to help inspire others?

Geoff: I don’t know the technique.  That makes it sound so dry.  Probably, but I think it’s more instinctual then anything other than that.  Although I am very chatty and can talk a lot, I’m also a good listener and listening is involved, reading something on the internet — I call that listening even though I am just reading — and can sort of read between the lines and see that somebody is doing that, and I guess it’s just a matter of pointing out progress and then supporting someone and acknowledging it and celebrating it, I guess.  I’ve never thought about what technique I use, because I really don’t think of it as a technique, although it probably is.  I mean, I have probably done it enough in my life that I have a pattern; I just have never examined what that pattern is.   My cat is just in my lap; I’m inspiring her right now.

Toni: When you work with others, relationships or strangers that you come across that you know through conversation and you’re listening and questioning and inspiring them, how do you think you go about exploring potential in others, in getting that inner artist to come out?

Geoff: I encourage them to explore it themselves, you know.  When I see something … oftentimes … a friend of mine just wrote this blog about a dream that she had, and I read it and you know I told her, with some trimming and some adding of fiction elements, this could be a short story, you know?  And she went “oh, good heavens, I never thought about that” but it’s just sort of like I can see possibilities because I am outside of the situation, and people see possibilities with me, too, which is very inspiring.  I don’t see them as much myself, because I’m too close to it, but with other people it’s easier to see the possibilities, and you know, you can point out things, circumstances that they have that are like right in front of their noses, but so close that they can’t see it.

Toni: I actually have a phrase for that.  It’s called the “invisible obvious.”

Geoff: Ah, I like that!

Toni: Yeah, it’s things that are so incredibly obvious but very invisible to others, and it sounds like that that is what you do, that you help inspire others and explore their potential by seeing those possibilities which are very visible to you during your dialogue with them, but yet invisible to them.

Geoff: Right, exactly.  I like that way of putting it; I never would have thought of it that way.

Toni: So, what do you need, Geoff, to be inspired?  When you’re looking for inspiration, where do you go?

Geoff: Everything around me.  I’m inspired by a lot.  As I say, I love the word passion and so when I see someone who is passionate about something, especially in the artistic realms, but even, you know, as much as I don’t like to get into politics and religion, when I see somebody who is passionate about their politics or passionate about their religion, it moves me; and when I see other people being passionate, I am inspired by that.  You know, when I see people living their dreams, I am inspired by that and so I seek that out, and there are a lot of people in my life who do inspire me for just that reason, because they stepped off the predictable path and are living this scary, gut-wrenching, wild ride of a life, and I see that and it makes me feel like I’m on the rollercoaster right with them, and I love that.  Not that I like rollercoasters, you understand, that’s metaphorical.

Toni: But that scary, gut-wrenching life.

Geoff: Exactly!

Toni: That’s a little easier than the rollercoaster.

Geoff: I hate rollercoasters!  I don’t like uppie-downies.

Toni: You know what, I have to agree with you on that one … so basically, when you are seeking inspiration, are there certain places that you go that you might look to be inspired?

Geoff: Yeah.

Toni: Can you give us some examples?

Geoff: Art and movies.  A good novel.  I will be just like verklempt, as they say, by a good novel.  Getting into a conversation with somebody about movies makes me feel like I’m on some other planet; I just love it so much, because I love and am so passionate about good artistic … artistic is an awful word … good motion pictures, good movies, movies that move people, all the way from silly ones to, you know, serious Bergman-type things.  But art often is what inspires me.  But also people doing things for people.  I get inspired by stories like Bono if you want, or what’s his name from South Africa who was in jail for so long, my brain just went blank …

Toni: Mandela?

Geoff: Mandela.  I read stories about Mandela, and I’m often moved to tears.  Of course, you know, I cry at supermarket openings so that doesn’t say much.  (It was my mother’s phrase but it works for me too!) But I’m inspired by people who are passionate about things, but art is, you know, start me a conversation about movies and you know, you’ve got me forever.

Toni: How does that translate into your writing?

Geoff: My writing runs the gamut from generally subversive to very dark to surreal to very bright and life-affirming, but even my dark and my surreal stuff, I think, is passionate and I think is … I don’t know,  I don’t know how to answer that.  I am often inspired — and I’m using the word traditionally there — when I write.  That sounds arrogant, but it’s sort of like there’s this muse tickling me in the back of the head saying okay, start your fingers moving and I’ll give you something.  That is a different sense of the word than I think what you’re using, although it does come from the same idea.

Toni: Absolutely.

Geoff: When I get into that mode, time disappears and the world disappears, and I dive in and I know where I’m going and I keep typing till I get there, and then when I pop out at the other end it’s often 5 or 6 hours later and I’m starving and haven’t had any coffee and haven’t showered, and I go, oh, well, this is a good one, let me go back and read what I just did!

Toni: That’s amazing.  What do you need, Geoff, when you explore your own potential?  What things do you need?

Geoff: Oh gosh.  When I explore my own potential?  You know, I’m in my 50s now and ever since my 30s I started to get past the … I was one of these young men who reveled in what I used to call sensual depression.  I would put on Simon and Garfunkel, and I would just go deep.

Toni: Did you call that sensual depression?

Geoff: Sensual depression; it was where I thought one must live if one was an artist, and I have decided that that is not necessarily the case.  In the last 15 or 20 years I’ve realized, okay, I’m over that now.

Toni: So, just to clarify for people who will be listening to this or reading it in the blog posting, is that where you, when you were in your 30s, you went into sensual depression to explore your potential?

Geoff: Oh, absolutely.  When I was in my teens and 20s and into my 30s, absolutely.

Toni: Oh, I see.  So where do you go know?  I’m almost afraid to ask the question!

Geoff: Well, it’s funny but I really don’t know the answer to that.  It’s sort of like it just occurs.  It’s like … this is gonna sound odd, but Einstein was once asked how he came up with the idea of relativity, and he said “it started in my knee and it traveled to my brain, and when it got to my brain, I started exploring it.”  And it kind of is that way; it’s just an idea that’s present that finally worms its way up into my consciousness to the point where I have to acknowledge it; and if I don’t acknowledge it, it goes to somebody else and like a month later I’ll read somebody else having written it, and then I will kick myself around the block a little bit for not having accepted the inspiration when it was mine.

Toni: So, your exploration of your own potential, the potential that you’re defining as the potential for your next book or article or what you’re writing; but if you were to look at what other needs you have in other areas to groom your potential, where would you go?

Geoff: You know, what I do is, I stand up and get away from my desk.

Toni: Yes.

Geoff: I spend a lot of time at my desk; I mean, I’m usually at my desk at 8 o’clock or 8:30, maybe 8:40 in the morning, and I’m often there till 9 o’clock at night or later doing any number of things, and I have to remind myself to get up and go outside and walk around the block, and I have to remind myself to get … I mean, I live 5 miles from the ocean, for goodness sake, and I have to remind myself to go to the ocean.  But when I do that, and I stand on the beach and get sand in my shoes and feel the breeze and hear children screaming and, you know, people laughing, that fills me up.

I used to go camping a lot and I used to go hiking a lot, and I don’t do that as much, and I’d like to do it more; and I mean camping out in the woods, not in a dress, not that kind of camping at all.  But I used to do that, you know, to find inspiration and fulfillment, to sort of recharge the batteries, I guess.  I don’t do that as much, and I’d like to do that more.  I love driving.  I love getting behind the wheel; that’s something that I learned from my mom.  When she used to get depressed, she would just pile us up all in the car and go get lost in the woods, and I love that.  I love driving out and seeing the scenery by me and seeing a cow, seeing a mountain or seeing a stream or a waterfall, you know?  When I was on the East Coast, you know, seeing autumn leaves or seeing a firefly in the summer.  I still miss fireflies because they are one of God’s little miracles.

Toni: I tell you, listening to you, what I’m hearing is that how you inspire others and who you inspire as far as helping that inner artist to be creative and to develop that love that someone has for their creativity and exploring their potential, it sounds as though that very much correlates with what you need to be inspired, which is passion, because you are trying to inspire others by helping them ignite their passion and live their dreams, and that’s exactly what you need in order to be inspired; and by you describing how you explore your own potential, whether it is for your writing or to go to the beach and stand there and see beauty and nature and so forth goes right back to the inspiration that I’ve heard you say as far as developing that love for art and beauty and that inner sense.  Does that come pretty close to the way you described it?

Geoff: Yeah, it does actually.  It sounds very in a nutshell, you know.  Putting it that way, it does sound like … what I feel like I need to do to inspire others is also what I feel like I do to inspire myself, you know.  I seek out people who can inspire me — and they not necessarily are doing that consciously, but they certainly are doing that.

Toni: Well, Geoff, I have to tell you that I can’t express enough the gratitude that we have towards you for taking part in this project and this snapshot that you have provided others of your approaches as well as your needs that people will learn from and also benefit from; and so I thank you so very much for participating in this project.

Geoff: I’m very happy to do so.  It‘s been a lot of fun.

Toni: It has been a lot of fun, and I hope to talk to you soon, so thank you so very much.

Geoff: Thank you!

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For more information about Geoff Hoff:   www.ThatWouldBeMe.net

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