Secret 4: The Creative

The movie White Noise had a world premier at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2022. It was then released in select cinemas on November 25, 2022, before its streaming release by Netflix on December 30, 2022. It’s based on Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel, which won the National Book Award.

According to Salon, “Shortly after Noah Baumbach adapted and directed a film version of “White Noise,” now streaming on Netflix, starring his partner Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver, a freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in rural Ohio. The story is still developing, and the environmental impact may not be fully known for years, but the tragedy bears an eerie resemblance to many elements of the film.”

This synchronicity falls under the 4th secret, The Creative, in our book 7 Secrets of Synchronicity. “Creativity lies at the heart of synchronicity.” Over the years, we’ve discovered that creatives often foretell the future through their work. This one is classic in that sense. Think about it. A novel written in 1985 presages an event 38 years in the future:

Both the novel and the movie are set in Ohio, in the fictional town of Blacksmith. The movie was filmed almost entirely in Ohio. In the film, a tanker truck loaded with toxic, flammable material crashes into a passing train because of the truck driver’s drunk driving. The train derails in the countryside, the tanker is crushed, and releases a viscous substance. “A fireball erupts. The rest of the film deals with the aftermath of the crash, in both large and small, personal ways.”

The real event involving a rain derailment happened on February 3, 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio, a town near the Pennsylvania border. A Norfolk Southern train – with 20 cars containing hazardous materials – derailed, caught fire, and created a horrendous cloud of toxic material.

In both the film and real life, residents are ordered to evacuate, then to shelter in place.
In real life, the derailed and burned cars contained dangerous chemicals including butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene, and vinyl chloride, a substance that NPR described as “a carcinogen that becomes a gas at room temperature.” Since it breaks down in the sun, it can cause headaches and dizziness.As NPR writes, “People who breathe the chemical over many years may also experience liver damage.”

Here’s another weird facet of this synchronicity: some of the residents of East Palestine were extras in the movie.

When this happens to you, when your creativity delivers an actual scene from the future, you feel like you’ve entered The Twilight Zone.