Six degrees of ideation
Hot ideas, when cooled too quickly, turn to glass and shatter
/ Once had a thought, and it was a gas /
Touch at my forehead. Can you feel it? It is a prickling, urgent heat, roiling and rising, ready to pop the top off my brain fart thermometer.
Idea. Coming in hot.
It comes to me in a searing spit of action, sizzling at the insides of my cast iron skillet skull. Fizzing and futzing, it dances in the fat and tallow and ghee, licking at the edge of some excitable, manic insanity.
So wickedly hot. So sinfully alive. This idea—I can barely stand the taste of its ache or the scorch of its pressing need.
Breathe. Oxygen will help.
The reds and oranges of its soul bubble and contort with lava-like sauciness, wriggling and stretching and threatening to spill out my earholes and nostrils to melt minds at will.
In this moment, all reality is flayed away, and possibility slips on a new skin. The shape of this thing shifts, steaming, radiating, indicating. It is shrugging its weight, threatening my landscape with the uncontrolled burn of its intent.
Adrenaline changes lanes as the flow dictates, and I see the finish tape in my mind. I know what I must do. I must tease this globulous scorching conglomerate into the mold of my vision. I must angle it and lure it into the crucible to determine its final form, with a shape I can work with.
Bellow to the belly of it, I huff and puff. The publication of its birth notice is upon us.
FIRE! HEAT! MAGIC!
What a process.
Dipping my mind r into the goo, with delicate probe and tongs and hammer and sweat, I twist.
Patience.
This idea is pure, unrealized magma. Blisters at the crust of it as flames lick at my vision. Spits and sparks and flares of protest.
Patience.
I must be patient lest it burn me to the ground.
Patience.
A sudden burst of intense hot protest and I close my eyes to the ash cloud of no.
My lashes evaporate in quiet pity.
/ Soon found out, had a brain of glass /
In a Pompeii-ish flash of hot ash, my brain fires suddenly to 3090°F and in a vitrification shrug, the idea—once hot and ready to rock—turns instantly to cold flash glass. Cooled too quickly, the blood and bone and crust and truth of it becomes hopelessly clear.
There is nothing here.
This idea is so transparent.
With the sweat of my effort slick on its exterior, it slips from my hands and falls to shatter on impact. No more lava waiting to take shape. Just a thousand fragments of sweepable debris.
Shards and slivers. I step gingerly away from the mess in a sort of clumsy, dumb shock.
Well, that didn’t work.
The difference between a shit-hot idea and a shattered nothing happens by degrees—the six degrees of ideation.
Idea comes in hot.
Idea is handled with care.
Idea is introduced to the crucible.
Idea is manipulated with tools.
Idea is placed on cooling rack.
Idea becomes a world.
The shattered idea—or the nothing—is murder at the second degree. The hotter it comes in, the more excited you are, and the more excited you are, the more likely you are to kill it before you can even attempt to mold it. Proceed with care in the heat of that first-degree moment, or that idea will cool too quickly and in a tragic instant, turn to breakable, highly smash-able glass.
Do not invite the vitrification of your dream.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a glass half full or half empty person. It’s the glass itself—not the perception—that is the problem.
Glass breaks.
A hot idea is like lava, flowing uncontrolled and mad hot, changing direction with the whims of your unexplored landscape. Will it become a mountain, create a cave, provide a shelf? All is possibility as the magma takes shape and cools slowly, by degrees.
Glass cuts.
Lava creates.
Glass is slippery.
Lava changes the world.
Glass can start fires.
Lava is the fire.
That’s not to say glass isn’t useful. Due to its transparent properties, it can help you find clarity about the legitimacy of your idea and help you move on to the next. See through is: “Next in line!” And the best thing about glass—if you’re looking for a silver lining—is that you can recycle it. Melt that failed idea down and see if it can be repurposed as something else.
In case of emergency, break glass.
Fire up the brain kiln and begin again.
Adjust your heat by degrees.
Go behind the scenes and see inspirations for this post👇
This week’s amends…
Mary Oliver, “Of the Empire” from the collection Red Bird, 2008
Via here
On Rotation: “Me and the Devil” by Soap&Skin
Speaking of glass. The ocean! (See what I did there?) Why didn’t you put Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” as the song, Janeen? Ha! You don’t know me at all!
Anyway, sometimes I don’t recognize or know myself either, and ever since I started going out into the ocean on the regular, I can’t seem to resist surf videos. I found Nathan Florence’s channel from this video, which was the first time I’d heard that song above….
…which lead me to the Slab Tour and holy dramatics, THE COLORS OF THESE GLASSY WAVES ARE GLORIOUS! (I’ve cued up the really lovely bit near the end so you can jump right in).
A reminder that all songs featured in this newsletter over the years are added to the giant mega super playlist of magnificents and magnificence which you can access with an effortless depress of this button. 👇
This is Colossal posted a piece on the Dionysian Fresco that was buried in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius Erupted in 79 C.E.. While this piece was where I got the tidbit about the brain turning to glass and learned the word ‘vitrified’, I wanted to point you to it so you can look at more photos of this glorious thing. Here are two images to whet your appetite.
I was hooked all the way through. Excellent video essay.
Via YouTube algorithm
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple