Inspiration
May 26 2014


It's as if nothing is original.

Ideas appear
holus-bolus, all at once.

Like motes of dust
dizzy in a shaft of light,

drifting about
on sun-warmed currents.

Settling by chance

or there to be grabbed,
plucked from thin air.

Free to anyone
receptive enough
to see, hear, touch.
And I am the medium,
taking dictation
writing as fast as I can.

They come
like those sub-atomic particles
that have no weight or charge,
passing through matter
as if it didn't exist.
Except when they hit,
chain-reacting, in a flash of light

like pint-sized Hiroshimas

too sudden to flee.

Sometimes, annihilate,
atoms smashed to smithereens.
And sometimes, ricochet
where someone else will think.

Or that afternoon, in my seat
at the sidewalk cafe.
A flaneur, a boulevardier
breathing-in the crowd,
the smoke, and smell, and dust.

When it struck.
And all the people

in their busy rush
never noticed a thing.

I tend to forget a poem as soon as I move on to the next. So on those rare occasions when I go back and read, I'm surprised -- even bewildered -- at the quantity and variety of ideas. And grateful, of course. That's where this poem began.

And I realize it's very reminiscent of another recent piece, Brainstorm. Which is fine. Because as much as there is variety, I realize there is also very much the opposite: not only how often I repeat myself -- the same themes, the same tropes -- but also how often I plagiarize myself (if such a thing is possible!) Anyway, it's great fun to have two goes at the same thing, and see how different they turn out.

I try to keep track of where my ideas come, the convoluted paths that converge on the sun-warmed upland of thought. That's part of what these blurbs are for: to record my thought process, before it vanishes into vapour. Often, it's something I read setting off sparks. But even then, it feels as if the ideas come as gifts, and writing is simply channelling. My job is to be receptive, and to sustain a state of flow. It's as if there are millions of fully formed ideas drifting about, and they simply drop in. Which would at least explain how the same idea seems to occur simultaneously all over; as much in science and invention as in art. (And as tempting as it is to invoke some sort of collective unconscious, I'll leave that to the more mystically inclined. Although I will add that some observers insist that there are repeated instances in which lab rats on one side of the world have suddenly solved an intractable problem at nearly the same time as rats on the other side did, and raised this idea of action at a distance, or a currency of thought. And with rats, we know they didn't Google the solution! ...Anyway, with "all at once" and "ricochet", this idea gets at least a tiny nod.)

As much as anything, my greatest pleasure here was finding an excuse to use such delectable words as "holus-bolus", "smithereens", and "flaneur"! The particle I had in mind was the neutrino. Which, unlike those favoured words, never made it. Just something about "neutrino" that doesn't pop. I very intentionally used "breathing in", so "inspiration" becomes literal as well as metaphorical. And, of course, it very conveniently allowed me to call back to "dust".

I'm picturing those passers-by in the final stanza all looking down, absorbed in their screens and walking on auto-pilot. Free ideas may be drifting about, but they will never land: all those "people in their busy rush" are as insubstantial to serendipitous thought as they are to neutrinos. Both pass right through. Because the real enemy of creativity is busyness. There is much to be said for indolence, unhurried leisure, unstructured time. So when you see me lazing around all day drinking coffee and reading, I'm actually hard at work! ...Not at the sidewalk cafe, however; I prefer my lonely garret ;-) .