In fact, it's the secret to calming one's head, a secret that came to the Sixth Patriarch while threshing rice. Go and sit on a rock. Your haunches, as a matter of course, will cool. As the haunches cool, hot blood is drawn from the head. This is all a natural sequence of events, of that there can be no doubt. In like fashion, an abundance of varied methods have been contrived for cooling the head. Regrettably, though, no good method has been devised for exciting the head. At first glance, one might conclude that nothing good ever comes from a hot head, but to conclude so in haste is to widely miss the mark. Certain professions demand a hot head, without which nothing gets done. The best example of this is the poet. A hot head for the poet is no less essential than coal for a steamer. Cut off the flow of hot blood, even for a day, and the poet's touch is gone. He bides his time, leisurely taking his meals, but produces no verse. When it comes down to it, hot-headedness is really just another name for madness, but madness as a prerequisite to plying one's trade is indecorous, so poets refrain from calling their madness "madness." Instead, by mutual consent, they use the high-sounding term "inspiration." This is simply a term they've concocted to delude the populace. In truth, inspiration and madness are one and the same. Plato was with the poets in this, refering to poetic passion as divine madness. However divine, though, madmen are shunned by their peers. At the end of the day, inventing the new term "inspiration" and peddling it like a patent medicine is the poets' wisest play. That being said, just as kamaboko is made from yam paste, just as the "found Kannon" is nothing more than a rotten chunk of wood, just as duck noodles are prepared with crow meat, and just as the beef stew served in a lodging house is actually horse meat, inspiration is, in fact, madness. A rush of blood to the head is only temporary madness. It comes and goes, and hence prolonged confinement in Sugamo is not in order.