Hells Angels surfboards might have inspired a more delicate idea: barely there chiffon dresses with angel wings across the back.
"The idea barely existed," Dafoe tells us, "that wild landscapes might hold any kind of attraction". Well, up to a point Willem.
Now, as their calculation may have predicted, what was once an unsavoury idea barely causes a ripple in the fabric of public opinion.
But beside those arguments, both essentially political propaganda, there has been one of more weight: the notion that if Canada is divisible so too is Quebec, and that, were the province to break loose, such sceptical regions as its Cree and Inuit north, could stay part of Canada.That was once a fringe idea, barely taken seriously.
Clinton spends two pages on the concept of a shared national resource fund, an idea barely discussed during the campaign — "we would call it Alaska for America," a reference to that state's practice of cutting checks to residents from the oil industry's profits.
Seedling's solution for dissuading illegal immigration is to affix deportees with electronic collars that will stun anyone who tries to cross the Mexican-American borde an idea barely more outlandish than Rep. Steve King's electrified wall or Chris Christie's human package tracking concept.
One has opened and another is just about to... What synchronicity is at work to make an idea just barely worth having once suddenly happen twice?
But the focus is tight; other cultures' heavenly ideas are barely mentioned.Kevin Rushby's book, by contrast, starts earlier, spreads wider and ends later.
It's called Concerto in D, which throws up expectations of something classically formal – but while Marsalis has some nice ideas, he barely develops any of them, which is a problem in a work lasting a whopping 50 minutes.
