The Flow and Ebb of Ideas

I am gaining an insight into the internal idea generation process that happens in the mind. Sometimes I have a dream where the music is of a totally different quuality and level of reality to any I've heard in real life. It drifts and flows like liquid and intricate sounds jump and splash throught the music. Sometimes its a visual mind fest such as flying through an alien landscape where the whole environment pulses and shifts through the colours of the rainbow and beyond. Or it is simply a case of becoming lucid and re-enacting some of my fantasies.

When awake I find playing nostalgic, hard electronic or futuristic music a particularly strong stimulus. This encourages the light bulbs to flash up everywhere in my head. Another good one is the watching of a good film with a multi-layered plot or playing a strategy game which requires thought in solving puzzles or overcoming an enemy. Finally, a good novel or technical book can work wonders for generating the desire to do extensive research online. Topics such as technology miniturisation, wormhole transportation, zero point energy and cloning all appear in my head at one time or another. Plus hundreds of others. Research and writing science fiction or composing lyrics for a song can satisfy some of this thirst. However working in call centres and watching mind numbing TV do not.

All in all we live in a society of change where eye candy is everywhere. And ear candy, nose candy too. So it is easy to have a myriad of unstable ideas and discuss these with friends. What is difficult is to keep such ideas in mind and develop them in spite of all the distractions around me. Use of a notepad, dictaphone/minidisk recorder and sketchpad can go so far until you end up with so much miscellaneous stuff that ideas become lost or old hat. Immediate reaserch and development is needed and placement on Website and forums can help. This is assuming that they are not patentable (i.e. money making) or plaigarised (mostly an issue with visual ideas and research reports).