Theory of creativity

"People think of creativity as if it was magic. It's not. It's just seeing links that aren't obvious, and the rest is hard work".
These are the words of my chance fellow-traveller I met on board a plane a year ago. He was asleep above a page full of formulas. I don't understand pages full of formulas. I need to see it in words. But he was asleep, and I couldn't wait till he wakes up. I just HAD to know what they were about.

 I used the opportunity when the stewardess woke him up to ask something probably very important (like: would you like coffee or tea, sir?) I fired my question straightaway, maybe too straight for a man that has just woken up: "is this physics?" he looked at me, almost shocked. "I'm so sorry, sir, I didn't mean to be rude, it's just that I rarely see people reading formulas on the plane. Are you a physicist?". "Oh, no problem. I just didn't expect that. Yes, I'm a theoretical physicist." he said. "What is it that you do, as a theoretical physicist?" "I develop models describing interaction between elementary particles". ("he's a poet, I thought")

What followed was probably the most interesting conversation I ever had on a plane. The time flew by, I almost didn't notice the landing.

All this brought me, metaphorically, closer to understanding the theory of relativity. This is what metaphors do: create links that aren't obvious.

Thank you, Mr. Unknown by name. Are there many clouds above CERN? There's no statistics that I know of to prove it, but my personal last-minute theory is that clouded skies boost creativity. If there are no clouds, you can't possibly be in them.