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One day Tom Waits was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when a fragment of a melody popped into his head. He looked around for something to capture the tune – a pencil or pen – but had nothing to record it.

He started to panic that he d lose the melody and be haunted by it forever and his talent would be gone. In the midst of this anxiety attack he suddenly stopped looked at the sky and said to whatever force it was that was trying to create itself through the melody “Excuse me. Can you not see I’m driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist come back at a more opportune moment… otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.”

Waits said his creative process and the heavy anxiety that permeated it changed that day. In releasing the creative force he realized that creativity “could be a peculiar wondrous bizarre collaboration and conversation between Tom and the strange external genius that was not Tom,” — Gilbert said.

TED: Eat, Pray, Love Author on How We Kill Geniuses | Epicenter from Wired.com