Create
‘Glitter’: Nikon D200
“All change and creativity begins in the gap between one thought and another."
(Deepak Chopra)
Some days, all I have is poetry but the world wants geometry.
When ‘reality’ demands quick, easy answers, working creatively is a challenge. But this is the gap where we all need to stand.
As our organisations and social structures become increasingly stressed, we reach for the mythic precision and reliability of ‘hard data’. Suddenly, there is no time to dwell, to think slowly and well, to work with the elusiveness of our peripheral vision, or to imagine what we can’t see as we gently feel into our hunches and intuitions.
And so the gap reveals itself..
The gap between experiences we can conceptualise and calculate, and those coming to life at the edges of our ‘known’ world.
Working in this place, I know that my creative process requires time: ‘wandering and wondering’; loaded with my preconceptions and advocacies (as well as questions and inquiries), camera in hand, waiting for the world to disturb me.
Over the years, I have wandered about how we can recover our creative energies and find space for difference. This playful ‘glitter’ image was an exploration that I made a while ago then cognitively and digitally filed away. Now, as I ponder the meaning of creativity in this time of crisis and my subconscious rumbles, the image resurfaces.
I have long known that the linear certainty of text means that my thinking stalls and so I return to the image and write from there. I relax into its evocative qualities and aesthetics; paint, leaves, petals and glitter, and let them work obliquely on my question.
My image might never give me a direct answer but if can I ‘see’ enough as I peer deeply below its surface I will find insight and illumination. Each blog on this website is born of a similar process.
Yet this is the territory where expert professionals mustn’t tread. It’s the place where we don’t really know what we’re doing or where we are going. Where we we make the path by walking it.
But in every profession, every vocation, I meet practitioners who, seemingly paradoxically, quietly bring creativity, intuition and craft into their work.
They are among those who Steve Jobs called ‘the crazy ones’ and how their insight arises fascinates me. Now, as I support insight in others, our work together is a constant source of learning. And, of course, I’m delighted to offer that learning and those artful processes of questioning and inquiry as part of my day job.
So I’m taking a stand between image and event, insight and execution, creativity and production.
The place where we can find both poetry and geometry.
Notes:
You’ll remember Steve Jobs’ ‘Think Differently’ speech: “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” You can see the Apple commercial on YouTube here.
A little anecdote: a few months ago, I was working with a group of Chinese oil and gas executives on complexity and strategy when one of the group recalled Deng Xiaoping and said we will "cross the river by feeling the stones under our feet." Perfect! And a courageous nod to the realities of programme delivery in an uncertain world.
I’ve really enjoyed Marvin Heiferman’s “Photography Changes Everything” which brings imagery and text together and shows how photography has “shaped and changed nearly every aspect of our experience." You can find him on Twitter @whywelook.
By the way, if you can find a copy of ‘Creating’ by Robert Fritz you’ll find an excellent guide to learnable creativity. I thoroughly recommend it.
Finally, this image reminds me of a lovely quote by my late colleague, artist and academic, Chris Seeley who said: “I’m absolutely rubbish at poetry, but I’m alright at putting glitter on things.” In fact, she was pretty good at poetry too.
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