As soon as we ask what creativity is, we invariably ponder the essential question of where good ideas come from and how we can coax them into manifesting. In 1926, Graham Wallace proposed a pioneering model for the four stages of the creative process, which was adapted into a five-step “technique for producing ideas” in 1939, and went on to influence present theories about the creative process. But despite what psychologists may delineate, the best answers come from the trenches and the front lines — from the artists, writers, inventors, and other creative troopers who summon and wrangle ideas for a living.

In this fantastic conversation at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, LIVE from the NYPL host and interviewer extraordinaire Paul Holdengräber poses this very question — where do ideas come from? — to legendary director David Lynch.

Lynch, who answers with equal parts irreverence and insight, speaks to the fragmentary nature of creativity and its combinatorial quality, echoing Arthur Koetsler’s seminal 1964 “bisociation theory” of how creativity works.

An idea comes — and you see it, and you hear it, and you know it… We don’t do anything without an idea. So they’re beautiful gifts. And I always say, you desiring an idea is like a bait on a hook — you can pull them in. And if you catch an idea that you love, that’s a beautiful, beautiful day. And you write that idea down so you won’t forget it. And that idea that you caught might just be a fragment of the whole — whatever it is you’re working on — but now you have even more bait. Thinking about that small fragment — that little fish — will bring in more, and they’ll come in and they’ll hook on. And more and more come in, and pretty soon you might have a script — or a chair, or a painting, or an idea for a painting. [They come], more often than not, in small fragments.

Pair with Lynch on the role of meditation in creative work, then revisit more explorations of how ideas are born from Neil Gaiman, Rod Serling, and Alice Walker.

Photograph courtesy of BAM