First: what is an idea? Its physical manifestation must be some clump of brain cells activating in some very specific pattern, but the result feels like something more. In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert describes ideas as beings that travel from person to person, bestowing their gifts upon an individual. She describes an idea she had for a novel that never got off the ground, which she discovered, years later, had worked its way to her friend, the writer Ann Patchett. Their theory was that the idea was transmitted by a kiss on the cheek.
If ideas are beings, they’re the flightiest, flakiest, most ephemeral beings imaginable. You can’t set out to Have An Idea; you have to wait until it comes to you. You can’t pretend to be relaxed in hopes an idea comes to you; you have to be truly relaxed, uninterested in having any ideas, and then it’ll come at you. Even then, you can’t look straight on at an idea; you must sneak a sideways glance at it, because if you come on too strong, it might run away. (Having a good idea actually feels a lot like having a lucid dream.)
Last night my brain woke me up and was like, “Hi, here are some thoughts on the project you’ve been struggling with for years.” I have no idea why then, or how they all came together. I am also not yet sure whether the ideas are actually good. After this literal brainstorm passed, I started to wonder: where do ideas come from?
- the ideas tree
- the little homonculus in your mind, typing furiously
- the ideas fairy gently waking you (only happens after midnight)
- in an envelope around the neck of a twitchy rabbit you must catch before it skitters away
- lightning
- the hatching of a little egg your mind laid months ago
- the plot of she’s all that (1999): she was there all along, you just didn’t see her that way yet
- a seed growing roots
- the grand puppetmaster
- something you read six years ago plus something your friend said six hours ago
- a cosmic whisper
If you feel so inclined, share your wrong answers below.
(Photo via Pixnio)
–the gray belly of a speckled salamander who never ever feels lost
–the moment when the horse’s hoofs are entirely off the ground in that old film reel study of a horse running
–the twitch of a sneeze that never comes to fruition
–the book on transcendental meditation a very curious (and serious) adult gave me when I was a teenager (especially the passages dedicated to levitation)
–the moment when you stop trying inside yourself to right some wrong (but you mustn’t try to stop trying, it just has to HAPPEN)
–when you step into the endless infinity loop of possibility and feel a kiss on the cheek (from a benevolent being otherwise known as a friend)
Ideas come from corners of your mind being at play with other corners of your mind to which they are not always connected. (Think of one of those kids that might show up on your doorstep asking to play with one of the kids that lives in your house. Yours slips out the door, they go off somewhere for who knows how long, and beneath some overgrown hedge are ideas (quiet at first, then louder and louder till you have to cover your ears or write the dang things down!).
– A Parnassius butterfly flaps it’s wings in Mongolia
– A spade-toothed beaked whale breaches off Pitt Island
– The first exhale of every baby born
– Sprouting asparagus shoots
– Yesterday’s ideas after a Rum & Coke tonight
– Every time a driver stops to let a pedestrian cross a roadway
– When a discarded penny is picked up off the sidewalk
Wherever they come from they are fickle, fleeting and must have legs. If I have an idea I like I had better write it down right there otherwise it will get up and take flight never to be seen again!