On premise and the need to write...

For about three months now I've been working in Tukwila and living in the Tacoma area, and while driving an hour-and-a-half each way is truly hilarious, I prefer to take the Sounder. At first, it was sheer greed and miserly instinct that drove me to it. Filling a gas tank every three or four days with $60 dollars worth of gas is a one-way ticket to an ulcer. After adjusting to the idea of waking my recumbent ass at 5 a.m. and vascillating between biking and busing between the train station and work, I settled into a routine... and discovered something.
The muse likes to take the train.
It's no surprise that inspiration can come from observing people, watching a landscape slide past, or seeing a sunrise pop over a hill nearly every day. The surprise comes from the sheer frequency of these inspirations. I find myself scrambling for a scrap of paper so often that I've given up putting away my journal altogether.
I spend most of these trips reading, writing, listening to some music, playing my DS, or (truth be told) asleep, but no matter how lost I may be (or how lost I try to be on some days) one thing or another will invariably catch my attention and lead my mind off. My mind usually comes backbefuddled, bemused, and beaten (if it comes back at all).
It's beginning to get annoying and downright bizarre. For instance, I had a premise idea come to me this morning: a play in which a man and a woman form a relationship based solely around their shared love of people watching. 10-minutes or so, the play consists of one afternoon (or other suitably generic time) on a park bench, watching people. This premise came about because I was peoplewatching and thinking about the fact that I have ideas while peoplewatching.
When inspiration gets recursive, I get lost.
I've wondered what it is about this environment that keeps tickling my neurons, and I keep returning to an idea from a textbook by William Missouri Downs and Robin U. Russin (Naked Playwriting: The Art, the Craft, and the Life Laid Bare; Silan-James Press, 2004). They posit that a good playwright takes a premise (plot idea, theme, what have you) and applies the filter of his/her experiences and knowledge, thus creating a play with a distinct flavor. Thus two playwrights with identical premises would write two different plays: because they are different, their plays shall be different. In order to be a good playwright, according to the authors, you must constantly broaden the set of your experience.
"Humans are creatures of routine" they say, "and will find any reason to go on automatic pilot. To be a playwright, however (or any other type of creative writer), you can't go on autopilot. Instead, you must strive for a deeper awareness that can make even the most mundane, ordinary moments interesting. Wake yourself up and go out of your way to meet people, see new places, feel, think, and above all, listen, remember, and interpret the noise of life. That noise, refined by choice and talent, becomes the music of drama."
The music of drama.
What is a musical composer but an organizing force, taking what would be a cacophony and making it move and sing ordered patterns (even John Cage took disorder and put intent behind it... it's still often chaotic, but intentionally so). By that measure, the playwright takes the cacophonic notes of daily life and puts them in order according to what will best serve the intent (i.e., the premise).
The crush of personalities, perceptions, situations and sights that inhabit the Sounder on any given day provides a fertile planting ground for the stuff of plays... or perhaps the page is the ground, and the Sounder provides the seed(s). Either way, instead of waking up with a sense of imminent displeasure (or at least discomfort), I look forward to the opportunity to apply the filter of my experience to the chaos of this particular slice of life.