Mother of Invention
When some people hear that I teach Creativity Workshops they say, “I’m not artsy enough for that.” Artsy is one way to describe creativity, but in our last Without a Net Workshop we looked instead at being creative through innovation.
We played with several exercises that asked participants to see with a new perspective, and create with various media in ways that stretched them out of familiar means of expression. As usual, the workshop was fun, deep, and insight provoking.
One of our assignments was to come up with an unpleasant mind state that plagues us. (We didn’t share it.) Then we drew an invention that would fix our problem. Beforehand I played a slideshow of images of silly inventions that you’d probably never use. The lightheartedness helped to loosen up the usual “I can’t think of anything” mentality that comes with such an open prompt.
All the inventions that resulted were hilarious and clever.
As with all of our exercises, they broke us out of our routine default mode mind and got some sleepy brain cells firing. I can’t speak for everyone, but I love the brain-feeling of brand new ideas/paintings/words. The common term “spark” really does describe it. It’s a feeling of ignition.
Our nutty inventions expressed a general theme. They all boiled down to a way to push a proverbial button and make everything better. This idea in itself brought some humor to the task. It’s hard not to laugh to think of turning a crank or putting something in a slot, doing nothing, and then having all your needs met. But the act of literally drawing up good results uplifted us. We pretended that we were, and could, solve our problems. Real or not, it felt good.
As I drew my invention I imagined some of the jobs my machine would have to accomplish, and in the back of mind I realized I could be that machine. It would take all the work and ingenuity that making an actual machine would, but I could do it. It changed my perspective from being stuck with “I dread marketing” to “my marketing machine,” which now acts as a stand-in for the idea that something could actually make it happen with less agony that I imagine.
I recommend doing something new, and often. (This advice is decidedly not new, I realize.) But take it from someone who has spent long years in constant radical newness (living on the road in a van) and other long years in a steady, reliable situation (owning Red Dot Gallery.) Newness in one area of your life freshens up all your endeavors. It stretches and opens you. It makes you smarter. According to science, it even helps prevent losing your mental capacities.
Write down a list of ideas of new things you could do. Google someone else’s list of new things to do. It won’t be long before doing something new is on your list of priorities. I know it is for me.
