Speculative Creativity

I could tell by the body language of the couple in the vehicle ahead of me this morning that they were having a pretty serious argument. The waving hands and sharp head movements were an odd contrast to the soft drone of the road that hummed by under my wheels. I could only imagine what they were saying. This went on for five minutes before the truck eased its way through traffic toward a ramp I wasn’t taking.

I began to make up stories as I pondered their conflict in my head. Perhaps they were running late to some appointment; or maybe it was an issue regarding money (a common point of argument among many couples). Could it be that one of them was caught cheating on the other; or maybe it was just something as random as saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. I didn’t know. And to be completely honest, I didn’t care.

Naturally, I wondered what they would think if they knew that I was there, casually observant through the circumstance of traffic, curious to what my own imagination could make of the vehicle immediately in front of my own. However, I was there as a scientist to creativity, a researcher bent on finding a diamond of life placed right in front of me, and looking deep into its jeweled surface for something more.

I’m glad I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I didn’t want to know. Those words were not meant for my own or anyone else’s ears. My amusement was strictly limited to what could be seen publicly at that moment in time. The chance to observe a random moment and take from it what fate had given me: the chance to imagine other people in other places, fictional stories like a movie, played out in my head. I could narrate the driver as a spy defending why he’d been caught on tape. Perhaps they were both aliens, disagreeing on how best to destroy all of the humans.

Fuel for creativity is just this: take what life gives you and become inspired from it. Spending five minutes with two random people on a road, who never even knew I was there, gave me enough ideas to write at least three books. The catalyst for something more than reality.

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