I was talking to my friend Willie Alexander, when during a pause, he started counting out a rhythm with his voice:

"Da ta, ta, ta. Da ta, ta, ta. That's just a rhythm I've been playing with. I know I want to use it in a song, but I don't have a home for it now."

He's a songwriter/percussionist — a true artist who never stops listening to the world as it offers up its own rhythms: cars going by, rain, other people's music, a little kid slapping on the counter.

"Sometimes there are just scraps of a rhythm that cry out to be recorded; they're thoughts that just need some other ingredient to become complete. It's a different brain that gives them to me." How did he remember them, I wondered out loud. "Oh, I write them on little scraps of paper. I even practice them sometimes, so they'll stay there."

I could identify, only with words, phrases, remarks people make. I file them in notebooks, and I gather them from all over my day, certain that, even if they remain dormant for months or even years in some notebook, someday they will ripen and mature, will shine in a space that's been waiting to receive them.

Particularly fertile ground for me is in my shop where I spend much of my time selling music. Even if they're not making a purchase, people pay me with their words, their thoughts, the recounting of an experience they've had somewhere before they came through my door. I notice the clothes they wear, or jewelry, or an unusual way they have done up their hair. They might share a bit of philosophy, offering to show me who they are beyond the way they appear. I save all that, write it down.

Later that night, my sleep is disturbed by a pounding headache. This is unusual for me; when I become fully awake, I hear an incessant, loud grinding, accompanied by a piercing bright light shining into my face. After a moment, I realize that construction is going on atop the A. Piatt Andrew Bridge after midnight, when traffic is at a minimum.

I get up, tuck a sheet of cardboard on the windowsill to shut out the light, and cover my ears with a pillow, but to no avail. So I take advantage of one of the few perks available when my sweetheart goes to Florida without me: I sit up, pull a sweater around my shoulders, and click on the television.

PBS is airing a fascinating documentary, "Becoming Human." It examines newly discovered evidence that pinpoints more specifically than ever before on the timeline of evolution, the convergence of a set of circumstances causing our ape ancestors to change dramatically, emigrating beyond the confines of Africa, an event that seemed also to coincide with the phenomenon of socialization, and the caring of one another.

I watched with mounting interest the expressions on the faces of the simulated creatures, watched the emotion reflected in their eyes as rudimentary bridges began to form between the experiences they had had and their expectation of experiences to come. Among all else that was going on for them, they were becoming planners, gatherers of information.

I felt a smile spread across my face as I cheered them on, suspecting that they were like Willie and me in a way, taking stock of their day, saving thoughts that were too precious to throw away. Their thoughts hadn't gone the way of rhythms and rhymes yet, or words and phrases describing customers in a music store, but surely theirs were hunting strategies and maybe mental notes on where the wooly mammoth was lurking and, how best to avoid him.

Perhaps these long-ago ancestors were setting the patterns we find ourselves following even today. Things overlapped for them, forming a primitive sense of cooperation not unlike things do in our 21st century world.

Infusing any art form with the energy of another strengthens, expands, sometimes even reinvents it. We see that in every form of expression: painting, poetry, architecture, prose.

I have a couple books of poetry by Vincent Ferrini, poet laureate of Gloucester until he died on Christmas Eve 2007 at the age of 94. I have picked them up occasionally, reading a few poems at a time, not pretending always to understand them. But his bold, gritty words appealed to me, caught my imagination, and I was determined to love at least, the idea of loving Vincent Ferrini's poetry.

Then one freezing day in January, I opened my mailbox to discover a thin envelope containing a sheet of paper on which was typed: "Dear Susan Emerson, Your full river of Joy's tidings is tingling through the veins of Cape Ann! Gratefully," (signed) Vincent Ferrini. My idea of loving his poetry became a reality.

After Vincent died, it was his friend, Willie Alexander, who had a little dream running around in his head. With a grant from seARTS, Willie delved into Vincent's poetry with a determination to use that "different brain" of his to set some of Vincent's poetry to music.

Earlier this year I was privileged to receive an advance compact disc of a few of the Ferrini poems Willie had chosen. Unleashed from stereo speakers in their reincarnated form, Vincent's "Folk Song," "The Gold," and "Life is a Poem," chilled and thrilled me; these were haunting, exquisitely beautiful musical creations.

"Do you think Vincent likes them?" I asked, jotting down in my notebook, for future reference, Willie's reply.

"Yeah, I think he does. He's up there looking down. Laughin' while he watches me perform them."

Vincent's words, flying off the page to capture a whole, new audience. Bravo!

Susan S. Emerson is a regular Times columnist.