During the past few years of venturing through my own, personal Creative Odyssey one particular tool has proven to be the most reliable in jolting novelty more than any other.

The creation of this post is no exception. In fact, it was during the creation of the image for the last post that this tool proved itself worthy, yet again. Not that I’ve got chocolate on the brain more than usual—because who doesn’t—instead, I applied a tried and true ideation technique that I’d like to share with you. The tactic that I so humbly refer to I call “WhoopSee,” as in, “whoops” for a mistake, and “see,” as in to use my own eyeballs and visual cortical brain juices. Coincidentally, mishearing things, names, events, etc. has also helped jumpstart my creative thinking as well.

I can’t tell you how many times a little “WhoopSee” has helped me break out of the box and venture into areas that have pleasantly surprised me. The challenge lies in one’s dedication to actually netting their conceptual objective of desire by either immediately writing the idea down or somehow capturing it, even if only in sketch form; it’s almost like working out a creative equation or theorem of the imagination.

To better illustrate what I’m talking about it, it would be helpful to borrow from the world of sensation and perception. Our eyes and brain can really only “see” or perceive that which it already understands or has some form of informational basis on (if you’re thinking that now would be a good time for a citation, I completely agree and am working on it ;). Anyhow, this sort of insight is interesting to me as it suggests that in order to really help dial up our creative capacities, a notch or two, we really need to go beyond—or somehow challenge—our perceptual faculties.

In the case of visual or auditory experience it helps to just go with the flow, make light of what comes, up and have a fantastic—and hopefully good-humored—partner to ping-pong some of our mis-perceived observations with. In a sense life can become one big brainstorm if we so choose and not take any experience, no matter how mundane, for granted. Simply choose to experience, or understand something, anything, differently than at face value. In particular, I like to play with words and ideas. The more quality human interaction I have with this, the better the opportunity for the playful slip ups that help jolt me into action and novel connection; hence great living equals great art.

Give it a try and see what comes up for you. If you’re needing a little bit of guidance with what I’m suggesting, then try the following on for size and see what feats of creative ideation, appreciation, or living you come up with.

EXERCISE THOSE IMAGINATIONS AND FEEL THE BURN OF YOUR OWN BRILLIANCE ;)

Dim-Witty: line your walls with various types of imagery and dim the lights to a level where it’s almost hard to make out or understand what’s depicted in the imagery and just chill out with pad and paper and not a hurry in the world.

Rhyme-Time: Pick a day or an event and intend on speaking in nothing but rhymes. This is not a solo-flight and is best practiced with at least one other person; small 3-7 person groups are THE BEST and most-manageable.

Other People’s Playlist: See if you can borrow other people’s playlist zone out and capture whatever comes up, emotion, thought, image or otherwise…but don’t go too far, young grassHoppa, for if you do, you’ll fail to capture what comes up on paper.

These are just a few things that help get me going. I’d be curious to hear what makes your creative clock tick. Chime in and let me know if you’d like.

Deuces, yo’s!!!

—
Robert