A profound presentation – on creativity, learning and education and the insight to know the difference.
For Pamela
True love is my companion
She guides me in delight
She whispers all the names of love
With soft attending might
True love is my companion
A swirling heart of one
A blaze of pure intention
An illuminating sun
True love is my companion
She dreams beyond my dreams
She is where the compass points
And all that’s in between
She is sunlight bathing
A soothing gentle breeze
Water from the mountain
Harmony and ease
True love is my companion
As gentle as the dove
Within the heart’s dominion
My companion true in love
I am enamoured by the power of the question. More than that: I am enamoured by the power of the powerful question. A powerful question has the potential to invite consideration, incite imagination and open the mind to possibility.
A powerful question has ingredients. It takes time to form. In a paraphrased quotation, Albert Einstein said:
“If I had a problem to solve, and only had an hour to solve the problem and my life depended on solving the problem, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask; because once I had the proper question I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
The ‘proper question’ for me is a powerful question. Whether I am working in the field of personal transformation, cultural change or organisational reform I know that my ability to be effective depends on my ability to form powerful questions.
Recently I attended an Art of Hosting seminar in the Dandenong Ranges two hours outside of Melbourne. One of the sessions explored the qualities of a powerful question. The group conducted a World Café through a series of conversations.
Some of the qualities that were harvested from the conversations determined that a powerful question:
· Is simple, fearless and genuine
· Asks without disempowering
· Forces reflection and forges action
· Links to purpose
· Challenges assumptions
· Makes the invisible visible
· Evinces deeper questions that lead to enquiry and learning
Albert Einstein also said “the important thing is not to stop questioning”. If I consider a world without questions I see a world of no learning, a world with no design, art, creativity or transformation. I see a world that slowly and surely atrophies with mechanistic certainty into a state of oblivion. I see a world that accepts status quo and the power of ‘the other’, be it institution, government or autocrat to determine future and impose structure. I see a world of no answers: a world full of unsolved problems.
This is why I am enamoured by the power of the question. Without a powerful question I cease to grow and I cease to learn. The powerful question I have been asking myself of late is: “Who am I when I am in my greatest power?”
What’s your powerful question?
Our prevailing passion – to be on the water – together
Natural Thought
From his website – ‘Levi van Veluw´s photo series are self-portraits, drawn and photographed by himself: a one-man-process. His works constitute elemental transfers; modifying the face as object; combining it with other stylistic elements to create a third visual object of great visual impact. The work you see therefore is not a portrait, but an information-rich image of colour, form, texture, and content. The image contains the history of a short creative process, with the artist shifting between the entities of subject and object.’
Inspired by Glen [Murcutt] and David’s [Malouf] insights drawn from two different fields of creative practice I reflected on the diverse number of ways creative processes capture the principles of what is universally true.
David Malouf
When road conditions are good, operating a car takes very little effort. And as such, time spent travelling alone can provide an opportunity for contemplation and solitude. It is also possible to invite others into this state of reverie by tuning the car radio to a program that fits the mood. This was the case recently on the run home after a daylong appointment on the other side of town. I tuned into a conversation between two prominent Australians: Architect Glen Murcutt, 2002 Pritzker Prize winner (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Architecture) and David Malouf, celebrated as one of Australia’s finest authors. The recording was part of the 3rd Annual Sydney Architecture Festival held this year.
As the speakers shared their views on topics such as how ‘good architecture can help define and lift the human spirit’, ‘how houses we grew up in shape our way of using space’, and other matters to do with the human condition and the creative process, I was taken by the wisdom of both men and the accessibility of their language. I was also drawn in by the observations and insights they shared when speaking of the creative process. While they operate in entirely different artistic practices it struck me how closely aligned they were.
The host of the conversation, Julianne Schultz, drew together elements of Glenn and David’s ways of working as architect and author. She made the observation that for Glen, he is constantly dealing with complexity and working with the desire to find a core essence in his work and for David he is doing something similar as he works to reach an emotional essence, a core body, within his writing.
I was fascinated by Glen’s response which in summary was that: Architecture needed to contain emotion such as serenity and ultimately joy and within it the elements of light and shade and that inevitably architecture [like any art form] must go beyond the rational. He went on to say that for him: simplicity is the other face of complexity, he used the analogy of the beautiful meal being reduced to a simple stock, and in that reduction is the essence of all the flavours, in other words, complexity is embodied in simplicity. For him, good architecture is not dissimilar.
Glenn Murcutt
One might ask, could this be another way of describing the mastery attained from hours and hours of work, be it writing, rehearsing or designing when less does eventually become more?
David added that the purpose of emotion for him is to take the reader back to the body, which is where the emotion comes from.
I was also taken by another part of the conversation when Glenn and David spoke about the way they dealt with obstacles that arose within the creative process. When a client, in Glenn’s case, created an obstacle that could potentially lead to a compromise of artistic integrity, he held the view that this actually created opportunity.
To illustrate this point he told the story of receiving a piece of advice from his father. Who had told him that you should always: “…start off the way you would like to finish. And for every compromise you knowingly make in the work, the result represents the quality of your next client.” Compromise (Glenn continued) is not about arrogance, it’s about doing something you absolutely ought not to be doing.
Glen’s attitude was to ‘allow the issue (not seen as a problem) to give you the opportunity to make it better. You satisfy the need the client is asking for and the opportunity has been made by the client to make it better. If you consistently do the level of work you want to do you are likely to attract that level of clients that you want.’
David added that in his writing, ‘When you hit an obstacle you are forced to find a way that is more imaginative.’
I see that here both Glen and David are talking not only about solutions that arise from creative tension. They are describing the process of integrative thinking that sees an opposing view or an obstacle to a process as an opportunity to become even more creative and imaginative. Their attitude to an obstacle is not one of egotistical defiance but rather an inquisitive and inclusive curiosity.
Both men also agreed that their best work comes when they move into a creative state of discovering the work they are making, almost seeing it as it unfolds. This state has been described by many including Mihály Csíkszentmihályi as a state of flow or ‘flow-state’. David described it as ‘the state you are in that takes you so completely’, where time passes and you unaware. Glen also suspected that, ‘we think that we make things with our conscious mind…[and that perhaps] everything that is best takes place when we working in the subconscious.’
Inspired by Glen and David’s insights drawn from two different fields of creative practice I reflected on the diverse number of ways creative processes capture the principles of what is universally true. Absorbed and intrigued by the discussion I found myself turning the corner at the end of our street. Safely traversing our city streets and absorbed in my travel companion’s conversation the contemplation had brought me all the way home.
you have given me the gift of love
abundant and imperishable
and with it I embrace the world
you have shown me love unshackled
cherishing every second of existence
a smiling love that warms the heart
linking friend with foe
burying all enmity and acrimony
governing and determining to brinks of passion
where sights unseen are revealed in glorious circumstance
your abundant love holds me high
and I walk strong in your praises
you have smiled in me, and
held me briefly in this perpetuity of millennia
you have removed soiled garments
and found a shining naked newness
I am bathed in the glory of your love
and am welcomed unto my saviours
guardian angels steer fate’s course
and in celebrity hold cathedrals
full of chapels full of of abundant joy
where bravery goes you are my courage
where subtlety lies youÕre my discretion
where strength is needed you are my sinew
where succour goes you are my comfort
where fate leads I will follow
you will always be the essence of my love
Martin Challis © 2009
I.
Awash
A broken spiral-shell
A stream of moonlight through the imperfect aperture – the delicate intention.
The sure clutch of a seagull that turns this
in the foam of low tide. And
the sandy-wind turning out the dried-up husks of baby turtles,
once clutched surely.
II.
A fisher-man turns,
squinting from the moon to the sun.
Down through his nets are nests of old fish tales
and an old wife waiting for his return.
Ever awatch for a silver sprinkle under the wave-crest, and for
a basket of fat herring
to be thumped proudly on the table-top.
III.
A crane steps lightly on its mirror behind the sea,
fishes the land locked pocket with a spear in his beak.
An albatross,
no time for gulls or cranes and less for yearning nets, encircles.
The fisherman is for his pipe. Fishing in his pocket for a pouch of backy.
For waves.
For wind.
And for silver.
Martin Challis © 2009
Listening to the first awareness of morning
I sense the kind of clarity elusive
at other times of day.
She is still, a singular breath, formless,
offering insight into the endlessness
of something pure.
Yet she moves away as thoughts come:
those dissenting armies that tramp in
to involve me in the containment of opposites.
She will not be held in place by argument.
I long for her when she leaves.
She has opened up a space in me
And I’ve glimpsed a purpose.
My intention is to attend to her throughout the day.
To be the gardener who loves the flower.
That she might touch me when she will
That she mind find me, often
In the gentleness of contemplation.
Martin Challis © 2009
In the dream of death
when I surrender
the fall to earth completes me
and I know now
the last breath
precedes the first
When I have given names to all I fear
I will know these names
and call to them.
No longer afraid of enemies
I will dance with them and embrace them
as worthy opponents
and as teachers
who bring me fortune
Martin Challis © 2009
More Than Sound TED Blog Chris Corrigan – Art of Hosting