My ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. A conversation, a song, beautiful landscape, a dream. Anywhere.

The raw material comes in through various input devices built into my body. My eyes, nose, my ears, my mouth, the nerves in my skin, and also from the amalgamation of that material in my brain’s software.

In addition to the input devices I have already mentioned, parts of my body also serve as output ports. Neurons transmit information in and out. They trigger movement of large and small muscles to manipulate the tools I employ to make my idea tangible in the physical world.

I can transcribe the images in my brain into a form that can be scanned and received into the brain of another human being!

Bits of me then become bits of other people. Without touching, without meeting or even necessarily being alive at the same time, humans implant messages in one another.

We do this through images, spoken or written words, music. Also through touch, and a myriad of other non-verbal ways that we communicate.

Once that information leaves me, and goes into you, it is yours. It is you!

We can’t unsee things or unhear things.

What you do with it is out of my control.

Some people seem to think they can use creativity to escape. That would be like one woven loop in the fabric of my cotton shirt wanting to escape. We are intertwined. We are one thread. There is no escape. There is nothing to escape from, and nowhere else to go.

That’s how I see humanity. The collective unconscious binds us together.

This is not a bleak picture! It’s a wonderful thing to be so connected. And yet we are individuals within the whole of humanity.

My thoughts and my imagination help to make humanity what it is. It is not separate from the rest, no matter how novel, how surprising or bizarre my idea might seem.

So be creative. Be brave. Be kind. To hurt someone else is to hurt yourself.