Art is not about thinking something up.  It is about the opposite---getting something down.  The directions are important here.  If we are trying to think something up, we are straining to reach for something that's just beyond our grasp, "up there, in the stratosphere, where art lives on high..."  When we get something down, there is no strain.  We're not doing; we're getting.  Someone or something else is doing the doing.  Instead of reaching for inventions, we are engaged in listening.  Art is an act of tuning in and dropping down the well.  It is as though all the stories, painting, music, and performances in the world live just under the surface of our normal consciousness.  Like an underground river, they flow through us as a stream of ideas that we can tap down into. As artists, we drop down the well into the stream.  We hear what's down there and we act on it--more like taking dictation than anything fancy having to do with art.