"Fucking Think About It, Man."

A couple months ago, I watched the movie The Prestige directed by Christopher Nolan (Momento, Insomnia, Batman Returns).

It's a pretty interesting movie about dueling magicians...with a twist.

Afterwards, I was very curious about the life and times of Nikola Tesla (played by David Bowie in the film), who had a small, but critical, role in the movie.

That's when I came across the following interesting nugget of information on Tesla's Wikipedia’s entry:

"The single strangest invention Tesla ever proposed was probably the thought photography machine. He reasoned that a thought formed in the mind created a corresponding image in the retina, and the electrical data of this neural transmission could be read and recorded in a machine. The stored information could then be processed through an artificial optic nerve and played back as visual patterns on a viewscreen."

Suddenly I got nostalgic.

When I lived in Columbus, I had a creative buddy who I worked with at an animation sweatshop (calling it a company would be too nice).

Sometimes he would come in stoned. And during those times we would have interesting conversations about various topics ranging from movies and animation to physics and comedy. Sometimes the talks were serious. But most of the time, they were humorous.

And I remember he would always say "Fucking think about it man."

One day he came in (obviously stoned) and proposed an idea creating a camera or computer program that could take pictures of the thoughts inside our brains (Much like Tesla’s idea above.)

I was intrigued.

ME: "But instead of just taking pictures what if....."

HIM: "...we could film a person’s thoughts and dreams, record them onto some sort of computer database..."

ME: "...then edit them and release them as movies?"

HIM: "Fucking awesome!"

The brainstorm had begun. The creativity started to flow. Ideas were thrown out. Some good. Some bad. About 30 minutes later, the brainstorm ended just as fast as it had begun. We both went back to our work.

But as I looked over to my buddy, I could see the wheels still turning in his head.

"You know," he said. "If this concept was real. I mean, if it really worked. Normal people’s dreams would be more interesting; more fantastic then anything the best directors and writers in Hollywood could think up."

He continued.

"You would have bums, hookers, psychopaths and lowlifes all becoming instant celebrities off their dream movies. They would be instant millionaires overnight. It would turn Hollywood on it’s heels, man. In fact, Hollywood as we know it would no longer exist."

"Fucking think about it man." he exclaimed.

Another idea. Another spark. Another fun conversation.

It was those fun, impromptu brainstorming sessions that kept me coming back to my job even though I was barely eating and making shit for money.

I guess it goes to show what can get you motivated to get your ass up out of bed, put your clothes on, eat your Mr. T cereal and get you to work.

Fucking think about that man.