Lightbulb Moment

Here is a very clever and rather sexy guy named Stephen Johnson talking about ideas, or to be more specific, the climates and situations in which good ideas come about. He starts his presentation talking about the lightbulb moment: that sudden flash of cognitive energy when inspiration strikes.

Of all the theories about ideas, this is the most prevalent. The concept of inspiration being a fleeting, momentary sensation is rather well established, going back at least to Archimedes, who had his trope codifying 'Eureka' moment while chillin' in the bath.

The generally understood notion is that inspiration strikes as an outside force: the solution to a problem bursts fully formed from somewhere else, some other situation, another piece of understanding, or perhaps simply from the ether. My favourite depiction of ideas comes from Terry Pratchett, who in one of his novels describes them as an actual universal force: actual particles of inspiration sleet through the fabric of the universe, occasionally striking a receptive neuron and leading to the birth of another idea. One of 'Leonard Of Quirm's' (Pratchett's counterpart to Leonardo Da Vinci) first inventions is a metal hat designed to keep these inspiration particles out, as he is embarrassed to keep waking up to find new designs for siege engines scrawled all over his bedsheets. 

In his presentation, Stephen Johnson points out that most truly good ideas do not come from nowhere, but are actually the product of a climate of intellectual discussion, industrial drive and general investigative discourse. My favourite moment in the talk is when he links the sudden scientific rush of the Enlightenment to the introduction of coffee into early modern British society. Up until that point most of what people drank during the day would have been alcoholic, which hardly pertains to an atmosphere of frantic industry. Suddenly people were sitting around drinking coffee all day instead of beer and the scientific breakthroughs started to flow (this might also explain why those swotty, tea-drinkin' ancient Chinese were inventing fireworks and paper and stuff while we were still messing around with earth kilns).

So the coffee house and the scientific institute became the nexus of good ideas, and remain so to this day. But Archimedes didn't have his revelation in a coffee shop, he had it half-way into the bathtub.

I'm bringing this up because I recently had what I consider to be a good idea myself. I'm off to America in the spring of next year, partly for research for the novel but mostly because I have itchy feet. I've always felt the need to go to America: it's the seat of practically all my culture, and so a trip there is a pilgrimage of sorts, as well as an adventure.

I had idly explored various ways to write about the trip. The simplest one would probably be a blog, something I'm obviously no stranger to. In fact, the first blog I ever wrote was a travelogue of my journey through New Zealand, Australia and Borneo with my girlfriend. The girlfriend sadly decided to find someone else, but the blog still exists, and you can read it  here if you like.

I decided, however, that I didn't  feel like writing a blog about my time in America. Firstly it can be a little bit time consuming, which doesn't always work out if you are constantly on the road. Also the pressure to keep constantly updating can make it seem like a burden or a chore, something I definitely didn't want on this particular jaunt across the pond.

But, while I was on the Megabus back from Leeds the other day, I had a lightbulb moment. Suddenly a whole project unfurled in my mind like a time-lapsed flower, and by the time I got back to London I had ironed out most of the kinks. I'm VERY excited about it: I think it's just the sort of thing I've been looking for. Even if I follow though with it the project won't be up and running for a long time yet, so I won't say too much now. Anyway, the point of this post is not the project plug, but the moment behind it.

Eureka means, literally, "I have found." Archimedes was searching for the solution to a specific problem (having been tasked by the King of Syracuse to determine if a crown was solid gold or of cheaper construction) before he got in the water. He was so pleased that he went running in the nuddy-pants through the streets, although in my opinion, he was probably more chuffed with the invention of hydrostatics than solving the specific puzzle.

Some good ideas may come, seemingly, out of nowhere. Occasionally, looking at a natural phenomenon or situation might lead you to consider a problem, a question, that you might otherwise never have realised existed. The apocryphal 'Newton and Apple' story is a good example, at least conceptually (again, I'm pretty sure it didn't take an apple falling on his head to make possibly the greatest scientific mind ever consider why stuff falls down).

But my point is that in order to find a solution, you have first to find the problem. I'm pretty chuffed with my good idea, partly because I think it really does have legs, but mostly because I'm just glad to have had it in the first place. It gives me a sense of my own potential, something that had been a bit thin on the ground lately.

I know there are people out there who think themselves capable of at least one big idea, and I agree with them. I bang on all the time on this blog about the individual's ability to take charge of their own life. But here's the kicker: inspiration is not like the particles in a Pratchett novel. It will only come if you make the conditions right.

Maybe you should start hanging out in coffee houses more. Perhaps you should spend more time in scientific institutions. I know you oughta start drinking less booze. But whatever you do, you need to set yourself a problem, a set of parameters, first. Like Archimedes, you'll find only what you look for.

Inspiration is more like a forest fire than a single flash of lightning. The lightning is just the start: you have to ready to burn.

An Ancient Chinese Recipe (for Self-Indulgence).

I've had a rough week, for reasons that are somewhat obtuse and, in retrospect, kinda stupid. I've been getting pissy over events that are long since passed, and to quote my man Bill, "what's gone and what's past help should be past grief." So there's a pleasing irony in the fact I'm dealing with said grief by remembering past times. Today is Guy Fawke's Day, and nothing, but NOTHING, helps deal with heartache like celebrating the brutal execution of a political dissident.

Bonfire Night is my second favourite annual festival (so I like Christmas, big whoop, wanna fight about it?). I like it because I like fireworks: lights and colours and big noises (which makes me sound like a toddler, but I'm not ashamed). And I like it because it gets you together with people, and it's an excuse to be outside once the clocks have gone back, and for the look on happy children's faces and all that other holiday special crap. More than that, I like lighting fireworks.

I mean, come one. They're big explosives that you get to set off in your own back garden! I'm not even slightly military minded, I think any obsession with guns and playing soldiers past pre-pubescence is lame (unless you're actually a soldier, in which case it's OK, I guess). But even a whiny beatnik pacifist like myself can appreciate the atavistic joy of making really loud noises once in a while. Bonfire night is my one chance to muck about with what is essentially brightly coloured gunpowder, and I plan to make the most of it.

Lighting fireworks is also another of those enjoyable tasks that menfolk have selfishly adopted for themselves by labelling them somehow arduous or dangerous. I've mentioned this once before in regards to my own love for flat-pack furniture. Lighting fireworks is a job for men, big manly men, possibly with full beards and a woodsman's axe balanced on their shoulder.

Fireworks can be dangerous, of course. Children should not be allowed to play with them, but as previously stated on this very blog, kids are idiots. Every year the fire service roll out the same adverts to be shown after Blue Peter (or its modern, ultra-violent equivalent, I don't keep up with what the little urchins watch). Don't hold lit fireworks in your hand. Don't keep fireworks in your pocket. Don't make dens inside bonfires. Don't throw fireworks. It's possible that you might have to explain this sort of thing on one occasion, to someone who had never encountered fireworks before, but it appears necessary to remind some folks each time. Every year hundreds of people are injured, sometimes seriously, by fireworks, but in almost every case it is less of a genuine accident and more of the 'which-one-of-you-was-playing-silly-buggers' sort of accident. If you understand what an explosive actually is, but still need to be reminded not to make it explode about your person, then you are not mentally cogent enough to handle lighting fireworks.I would boldly state that for most of us, it's not a hugely dangerous or difficult task.

But I play along with the fallacy (or should that be phallacy, am I right?) because I like setting off fireworks and I don't want anybody else to get to do it. I know that if, say, my little sister were given the task of setting off a rocket, she wouldn't just ignite the fuse with the firework still in her hand, and then wave it in my direction with a vague 'what-can-you-do' expression. Instead she would read the instructions on the packet carefully and follow them to the best of her ability, always paying due attention and respect to the brightly coloured bomb she'd been entrusted with detonating.

I'll pretend to her, and myself, and anyone else in the room, that fireworks require some modicum of skill. And in truth, I do have some area of expertise in the field. I spent all this morning out in the rain building launch stations for tonight's display, but this was largely to ward off my own blue mood, and probably not entirely necessary. I could probably have knocked it all together while everyone else was putting their wellies on.

So every year I put on a fireworks display because I like fireworks, and other people come round and tell me what a clever chap I am and pat me on the back. Sometimes they bring food and get this: occasionally they bring money. Actual cashpounds! For something I'd have done anyway! (To be fair, there's no more obvious waste of money than fireworks. If notes burnt in different colours you might as well just chuck them on the bonfire.)

This year it's even better, because I'm staying with my father till the spring, and the idiot bought the fireworks for me! I've barely had to spend a penny. And at the end of it I will stand, fresh glass of wine in hand, and accept the thanks of my adoring public with a bashful smile, telling them that it was nothing really, and that I was just happy to help. And they'll tell each other what a smashing young man I am, even though it really wasn't anything, and I was just happy to help, and in fact I'd have been a bit pissed off at their presumptuousness if they'd come wandering down the garden to give me a hand.

There will be a few people in the crowd who are in on it. A few, mostly men, who will be secretly wishing that it was they, rather than I, running boldly amid the smoke with a slow burning wick in one gloved hand. They won't be able to complain, though, because everyone else is having fun. I know their grief well, and sympathise. But if they think they're helping with my fireworks they can naff right off. Have a sparkler, mate, and shut your cake-hole.

"Yeah, all right mate, no-one likes a show-off." (Image copyright Ed O'Keeffe.)