Ideas exist on a different plane.
I’ve found it helpful to envision this plane as a physical place.
For me, it’s a swimming pool.
For you, it might be the treehouse your grandfather built you, the small-town carwash you frequented with your mother to bathe her Honda Odyssey or perhaps the lake outside your aunt’s cabin in Quebec, Canada.
But, for me, it’s a swimming pool.
From the outside looking in, it’s a very ordinary swimming pool. It’s one you might find in the backyard of any upper-middle-class suburban home.
Even when you climb down the stairs and feel the water envelop your feet, ankles, legs and waist, you think you’re entering an ordinary pool.
It’s not until you tuck your head beneath the surface that an entirely different world appears. Once under water, you can see the pool is not so much a pool but a sea.
Your feet can touch—as you are still inhabiting the shallow end of the pool—but you can see, nearby, there is a steep drop-off that opens up into a great expanse.
Far off in the distance, something is happening—there is movement.
You can’t quite make out what exactly it is. Yet, you instinctively swim towards it. Something deep within you craves a closer look.
If you’re out of practice—which is to say it has been some time since you last swam—you return to the surface, almost immediately, for air.
This frustrates you.
You recollect the days when you could stay under water for hours at a time, without interruption. But, these days, your attention isn’t what it once was. Your focus is out of shape. It’s atrophied. It’s lost its musculature.
As the outside world beckons you to the surface, you remember that wonderful line by David Lynch. What was it? Oh, yes. The one where he likens ideas to fish…
“If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.”
You’ve got to go deeper. You must go deeper. You continue to swim, trying to stay under the water just for a little while longer—refusing to surrender to the shapes, sounds and lights beckoning you to the surface like Sirens.
At first, you poke your head out often to see what all the ruckus is about—like an otter bobbing in a river. However, with time, you find your rhythm. Your pace. Your perseverance. Before you know it, you’re swimming like you used to.
As you descend, you realize you haven’t been uninspired. You’ve just been distracted. It’s this distraction that has prevented you from entering into this alternate plane—where ideas are seemingly everywhere. This realization leaves your head buzzing with a slow-burning high.
You hold your breath longer, longer—longer still.
When you think you can hold your breath no longer, you see the first glimmer of scales. Suddenly, you’re like a child. You can’t contain your excitement.
You swim faster, faster—ever faster.
Then, suddenly, you’re upon the source of the shimmering. It’s blinding. It’s as if someone is shining a spotlight into a Victorian chandelier. It’s here you reach out and touch the source of the light. It’s warm. It’s radiant. It’s slippery—like greased lightning. You feel a jolt of energy wriggle through your fingers—up through your hands, arms and heart—finally settling somewhere between your chest and your throat.
You unclasp your hands. There, writhing in your palms, is an idea.