Inspiration: Good or Evil?

Some art makes me laugh out loud, some I find tricky and ingeniously tedious, and sometimes it strikes me as something I might be able to achieve myself. For a moment I love this feeling because it strongly resembles talent... but reality eventually does set in and pretty much sucks the life right out of whatever art I thought I was in love with. If I have seen the magician's trick done slowly enough, the mystery and amazement is no longer enough to keep my attention. If there is an artist I particularly admire, it's probably because they have created something I could never do. At best, I can swing my own art in that direction and try to give it the same sort of "feel", is that copying? or is that "being inspired" by it?? Picking up on a key element in a piece and then using it in my own work creates something to look at but it doesn't really hold the same value as if I had dragged the idea out of the depths of my own head, visualized it, and manipulated another physical surface until it somewhat resembles my original thought. To do that I would need talent, otherwise the inspiration feels more like a program than a process.