That Glazed Look I have all my best thoughts watching other people. It’s why I often dip i

That Glazed Look

I have all my best thoughts watching other people. It’s why I often dip into lulls at parties, sitting there with a half vacant stare on my face. It makes sense to me, after a fashion, because the inspiration is hanging thick in the air like so much perfume, teasing and tantalising my mind with just about the most heady concoction imaginable. 

It’s in the things people do, the little movements and half lost sentences that drift off into nothingness when they realise the other person has become distracted. It’s the pauses, the smiles, the occasional glances, sometimes snatched, sometimes lingered. 

It’s the writer in me, I’m sure of it. Sitting in the back of my mind with a flashlight in his mouth, shining shaky light on a notepad as he desperately scribbles down everything that he sees. It’s about saving it for later, to turn into something fictional, steal the seed of someone’s action, the heart of that moment, and slot it into something of my own construction, the perverted golemancer, giving his own creations life precariously through that of others. 

I might feel guilty if I was more of a plagiarist. If I was taking a whole person, rather than dribs and drabs that I sew together in a patchwork of people, something approximating a character that’s not recognisable as any one person, it might be a punishable offense. Something to feel bad about. But they’re just  moments, traits, slight personality ticks that could be anyone’s. Are anyone’s. 

So that’s what I’m doing, in those moments when I get a little quiet, seem to be a little lost. I’ve opened my mind and I’m scooping it all in, everything grabbed for sorting at a later date. I’ve become a sponge, and you’ve got no option but to be sucked right in, I’m afraid. Maybe I’ll write you a credit one of these days.