Ideas are born in a very different way from which they are commonly portrayed. I’m talking about the “light bulb” that goes off in your head; sharp, crisp, concise, instant. Certainly that moment exists, once the critical mass of clarity is achieved. My point is that idea genesis is a process.
“Too often we are so preoccupied with the destination, we forget the journey.” -Some unknown on Google who was more articulate than the others
Writing entries such as this, for me, is, in part, to tap into the locus of creativity. Not that I’m writing creative things, but that the act pours out my consciousness into an abstraction; indexing and documenting it. In mapping my consciousness, I may be become closer to mastery of this creative complex.
And so the formation of an idea must first be understood. This is my attempt:
An idea is like the bursting of a bubble in a boiling vat of tar that is your subconscious.
Certainly there is more charismatic imagery to make this metaphor (See ‘lightbulb.’ Also, yes I know it’s a simile). However this prompted me to write in the first place, and has many effective aspects.
- It concedes to the arbitrary nature of inspiration, in that the bubble may surface anywhere in the reservoir. The convergence of whatever microcosms in the conscious pallet are temporal and corporeal (experience, environment); yet unplanned exactly how they converge.
- There is a simmering period whereupon the idea is formed over time.
- The motion of “bursting” is the unfurling of the idea from the mind, suddenly visible and apparent for what it is.
- There is a heat source, or source of the fumes — the point is there is a “source.” This is the creative locus.
Really I should have used a solar flare for this entry, come to think of it.
Anyways, that last bullet point is the main point. Beneath the entire conscious being is a source that drives the entropy of creativity. It’s not the point to direct this creativity; the dialectic of randomness and thought occupations are what define the “bubbles.” The goal is to have more source energy, to create more bubbles.
toxic, quixotic 