Jacques Tati, George Gershwin, a violinist and the sounds of a train
Sometimes inspiration begins not with an idea, but with a moment – one that slips by most people unnoticed, but not by Jacques Tati and George Gershwin. Here are two first-person accounts, from the filmmaker and composer themselves, illustrating how we might discover a whole new world, just by hearing and seeing things differently.
Jacques Tati on noticing the humour in things around us
“One day I was on the rue de la Boétie in Paris, walking past the Salle Gaveau concert Hall. Suddenly, I saw a musician who rammed his hat onto his head and put on his jacket. He looks furious. He has his violin under his arm. He slammed the door. I stopped and thought to myself, “What a great set up!”. The question: “What happened?”
After PlayTime, I'd have liked to do something with that idea: What happened?
Did he get booed?
Did the conductor throw him out for playing too many wrong notes?
Did he receive a telegram?
Did he spot his wife with someone else?
He could have been behaving that way for any reason. But I was the only one smiling. People walked by, and didn’t even notice this musician leaving Salle Gaveau in a huff for a reason that was unknown, but no doubt, quite funny.
But as viewers, we’d have wanted to be shown the whole picture. We’d have wanted to be told that the musician is acting so intriguingly because he broke his strings or he sat in the wrong seat.
So [noticing the humour in things around us] is based partly on observation, and partly on imagination.”
– Jacques Tati
George Gershwin on hearing music in the mundane
For George Gershwin, inspiration could strike anywhere, even on a noisy train. He explained the source of his inspiration for Rhapsody in Blue to his biographer Isaac Goldberg:
“It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer ... I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise. And there I suddenly heard – and even saw on paper – the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.”
– George Gershwin
On the art of being ready
Perhaps creativity works its magic when we trust that the world is already interesting, if we just pay attention. It is not only about thinking in reverse or treating the rare as the natural. It is about creating the right conditions for inspiration to arrive. It means being open to the wonders around us and trusting that they will reveal themselves to those who are ready to welcome them.
If I asked Fioravante about the nature of inspiration, he might put it this way:
“Inspiration is like a little bird in the piazza.
If you jump up to meet her, she flies away.
But if you sit quietly at your café table,
with a crumb of bread in your hand,
maybe the bird will hop closer
– maybe she’ll even stay for a while.”
Here, Leonard Bernstein conducts and performs Rhapsody in Blue with the New York Philharmonic (the piece Gershwin imagined on a train, inspired by its rattles and motion).
Works Cited
“Entretien avec Jacques Tati.” YouTube, 1978, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPwpkYaPwhw. Accessed Jan 29, 2026.
Clip 10:40 - 12:40.
Goldberg, Isaac. George Gershwin: A Study in American Music. New York, F. Unger Pub. Co., 1958.
Comments (3)
Accostare Tati e Gershwin funziona benissimo: due artisti che, pur diversissimi, hanno in comune l’attenzione al dettaglio invisibile, quel gesto, quel rumore che sfugge al mondo ma accende la scintilla creativa. Hai inserito Fioravante come una figura quasi socratica – silenziosa, ma capace di distillare tutto in un’immagine memorabile. La metafora dell’uccellino è deliziosa e poetica, con il tono giusto – toccante e umana. Mi ha fatto venire in mente una domanda: da dove viene davvero l’ispirazione? Viene da Dio? Dalle cose della terra? O forse viene da Dio attraverso le cose quotidiane – i rumori, i gesti, i dettagli minimi? Forse il divino si muove proprio attraverso i contesti, come suggerisci anche altrove. Forse la rivelazione – spirituale o creativa – nasce dentro una relazione. Non sopra di noi, ma in mezzo a noi.
Jacques Tati often preferred leaving things off-screen in his films, which draws audiences in and fires our imaginations, as with the story of the violinist storming out. He understood that sometimes the most meaningful answers are found in the silences and empty spaces – he made an art of asking “what’s missing?”
Your reflection really highlights how we can’t fully understand fields like religion, anthropology, or art (and by extension creativity / inspiration) from a purely objective, third-person perspective. As your piece both argues and demonstrates, we need first-person accounts - the voices of people inside the experience!