This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

When people ask us where we get our stories from,

the answer is usually hard to pen down.

It could be something one of us noticed walking around or something

a friend mentioned or some forwarded link on Twitter. It's nearly impossible to say where

inspiration comes from in any art form. It's a long way from the seed of an idea to its execution.

The brilliant architect Oliver Alto put it very well in an extended metaphor about a fish in a stream. He wrote,

architecture and its details are in some way all part of biology.

Perhaps they are, for instance, like some big salmon or trout.

They are not born fully grown.

They're not even born in the sea or water where they normally live.

They are born hundreds of miles away from their home grounds, where the rivers narrow to tiny streams.

Just as it takes time for us Beck of fishpond to mature into a fully grown fish,

so we need time for everything that develops and crystallizes in

our world of ideas.

This is a story about one idea born hundreds of miles away in a far-off stream, an idea that would travel

from Northern Europe to Southern California, where it would take on a whole new life before making

its way back again.

It's a story in three parts by producer Avery Truffman.

Part one, California.

California.

...