I tend to think there are a finite number of stories out there and somehow those with the ability to tap into these, into the shared subsconsious, are the creative types, the poets, the songwriters, the writers.

And this partial from Breakfast is what gives me the abdabs: “…or because the human mind can interact with its surroundings in a way that extends around time?”

The inevitable quote is…”there are more things…”

So why shouldn’t that particular universe (or sub-set of universes) be our own…?

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick entirely (no quantum physicist, me…)

I find neither of those options unappealing.

On the other hand, Deepak Chopra once wrote in Namaste, April 2001: ‘The fact that something hasn’t happened on other occasions doesn’t diminish the miracle when it does happen. That may not be what’s currently called a scientific viewpoint, but it fits the definition of magic.’

So, which viewpoint do we want to follow?

The counterbalance to that I suppose is to look at how good we are at making patterns and wonder whether it is as much a question of remembering the coincidences that look significant rather than the misses, which may be more numerous but less memorable.

It’s a shamanic notion: the writer or poet as a shaman (Seamus Heaney touches upon this in many of his poems) tapping into the Muse or Muses. A scientist would say that – as remarkable as it may seem – it is nothing more than the mind tapping into all the sub-conscious and almost unconscious gathered cultural flotsam and jetsam, then processing it all coherently with a given point of – very often associated – focus. Not anything magical about it, but remarkable in terms of the processing power of the human brain.

Me, I tend to side with John Keats in drinking to the destruction of Newton for explaining the rainbow!