Dante thought his inspiration came from the “sky,” metaphorically raining down in him from heaven. Carl Jung thought we were all influenced by the same shared, internal “world soul.” Consider clouds to be a compromise of both ideas:
Surely one of the oldest conversation starters in human civilization is debating what images we see in the clouds. In the above photo, I see a terrier riding a manatee, but that’s not important. On any clear day, we can go outside, lay on the ground, and let inspiration come to us. Their abstractness allows near-limitless possibilities for where our mind might go, but they have just enough structure that ideas virtually form themselves in the back of our minds. Miles away, another person may be looking up at the same cloud – perhaps drawing the same conclusion, or perhaps a completely different one. Whether or not we are coming up with the same ideas doesn’t matter; what matters is that literally suspended above all of our heads is this blue canvas projecting images of inspiration to us every (cloudy) day.
I think Calvino would approve of this idea. While someone inspired by clouds would undoubtedly have been influenced by images, he or she might not be able to verbalize what is was about that cloud that prompted the creation of a novel, poem, or blog post. This, I think, is crucial to inspiration. It happens below our surface, like the iceberg metaphor. We can only be so aware of the concrete sources we have drawn from, which is why the wispy, airy clouds resonate so strongly with me.