I’m talking about when ‘it’ all seems so suddenly clear.
Like in the shower. Why?
Is it because when we turn on the water we’re earthed, zap, straight to the core, and with the flow of water comes a flow of … what? Energy? Straight to the head. Ideas tumbling out of a somnolent fog into the front of the conscious brain and into articulate thought? Or is that bollocks? Whatever it is that makes these things happen, it’s worth keeping a pad of waterproof paper and a pen hanging from a hook. Ideas form, like holograms, glimpsed images of the whole finished thing, the arc of a story, the dramatic implications for the scope of a play, a conviction that there’s a poem or a song to be teased out of the chunk of an unhewn idea that leapt with the shampoo into the imagination. This morning, did I write it down? Can I remember it now? I can remember that I thought I would remember; ‘it’ was so clear. Do I have a pad of waterproof paper or a water resistant noticeboard in the shower? Would I be writing this if I did? Have I identified a gap in the market? Will I make millions from this idea? Nope.