Acrostic Quotes
Fox-Trot-9

16. Frank Capra

Anybody alive on this earth can have a hunch. You don't

Have to be a talent or a genius to have them,
Unless your dead. Needless to say, the dead can
Never have a moment of creative insight once their
Cranial fat-filled organs have ceased to
Have their neurological receptors firing.

It's like biology. It is biology; even animals have them,
Simple as they are, locked inside their animal instincts.

Case in point, the fight or flight response,
Responsible for raising the hairs on the backs of our
Endangered necks and for exciting our heart beats into
A frenzy of excitement. But the creative instinct is
The part of humanity that separates human creativity from other
Instincts; it hinges not on the need for sex or food, but on the
Vast wildernesses of mankind's inexhaustible
Imaginary faculties, driven by the need
To know and experience things (let's just call it curiosity)
Yet to be known or experienced by our five senses.

To have a hunch in terms of this creative instinct, therefore,
Reveals something about human nature—that while we have
Yet to experience the unknown things of this world,
It still urges us to discover them by expressing ourselves.
Needless to say, we are artists trying to paint the unknown with our
God-given creative hunches—trying in vain, it looks like.

The muse is a fickle and emaciated creature, whose whispers
Of creativity go unheeded by our deaf ears.

The trick is to listen attentively to the hunches we've got, to
Enter the quiet room of our creative thoughts,
Leaving the clamor and the chaos of our daily
Lives behind, listening to the muse's words like whispers in the wind.

Yet time and time again, we can't listen because
Of the many inconveniences of life. Let's face it:
Under how many circumstances can we listen to her words in

Silence? Those are few and far in between, I'm afraid.
Of all the instincts that hit us over our block-heads like
Melons, the creative instinct never raises itself above a whisper,
Even when we're listening in our computer rooms in the wee hours of
The morning when everyone but ourselves are asleep.
Hunches come and go like the whispers in the wind.
It's the duty of the artist and the writer to tune out the
Near-constant static of our lives and tune into the
Glimmers of light—for what are hunches but snippets of light in the dark?

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.
—Frank Capra

(To be continued...)

A/N: Frank Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life. His rags-to-riches story, having worked his way through college, has led film historians like Ian Freer to consider Capra the "American dream personified."

Meter: Free verse
Rhyme Scheme: None