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Explorations may be considered projects without commitments. We explore places, things, and ideas just because they are there - there in reality, or just there in our minds. We explore lovers, friends, family, organizations, and institutions with more or less commitment, but obviously more sensitivity.

The lack of commitment characterizes explorations. We may pause - resume at will. We may leap to other explorations without looking back. We may record explorations or not. Explorations are recreational.

This section contains an essay and a bunch of anecdotes about creativity. Creativity is one of the things I explore. I hope someday to embellish this section of the website with photos and other mementos of actual explorations, or better yet connect it real-time to an on-going exploration.

I suppose it is possible to just be creative, but I would rather be deliberate about it - looking at and understanding not just what is created, but how it it is created. This might just be another remnant of having grown up poor - some bit of clinging. Or, it could be as normal a creative process as any. You read the notes below and decide for yourself.

In 1980 I entered graduate school at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute studying for a Masters in Architecture. The College was the best I would graduate from, the fourth, the School of Architecture was exceptional, and the experience, thanks to fine students and faculty, was life-shaping.

I really got into the process of creative thinking. In earlier studies I had focused on creative output and academic achievement. At RPI I discovered methods for alternating "deep thinking" with "creative output". Together these two processes are at once less directed and more productive. This article is about those methods. Thank you, RPI.

Deep thinking as I experience it is a blend of activities and states. The activities are research, prototyping, and analysis. Recursion through these activities is implicit. Whether not or research is the most critical part depends largely on how much there is to research. If the subject is truly leading edge there may be little to investigate.

The stages of research include lifelong research and project research. Creativity demands curiosity, the engine of lifelong research. Lifelong research is an attitude and a discipline. Demanding to know everything about everything is the attitude. Remembering it in a useful way is the discipline.

Project research is one of the great things about exploration. We can always quit right there and not go into production. Just add some knowledge, grin, and go on to some other exploration.

Prototyping can be the kind I did as a child lying in bed imagining forts and tree houses finally so real that I could see my brothers running and climbing through them; or, they can be quite real models of something; or, just the tricky parts of something; or, in two dimensions, quite real drawings.

Analysis looms in every instant of creativity as a sort of give and take background hum, but to stay on track in the project and to produce the highest quality of whatever it is, the analysis needs to be deliberate punctuation as well constant companion. Analysis can be the start point for each session in a longer exploration or explicitly tied to milestones if there are any established. Analysis can also be a very satisfying part of the process when it involves others.

That there are states o f creativity is a thing of dubious myth. Coming of age in the 1960s I was aware, but very skeptical of musicians who did their best work under the influence of those many drugs available at that time. I remain skeptical, if not downright doubtful. To be highly creative one needs control more than laxity. Matisse said, "Control is freedom."

The states I pursue always include euphoria and centering. The euphoria comes from the satisfaction of being on top of the subject, of being fully immersed in the research, surrounded by the prototypes, and well advised by others. Add the optimism that is essential to creativity and no other simulation or depression is needed.

Centering challenges environment, health, and discordance. To center on a problem we need to find peace with our environment. We need to feel healthy. We need to wrap the distractions in our mind into soft little packages that can wait comfortably for attention at a later time. Pleas note the verbs here, "find", "feel", and "wrap". These soft verbs.

This is not about control in the dominance sense. The process is more gentle. Some would say more feminine. An idea I resent slightly. Men are as capable of creativity as women are.

It not organizing or tidying. These processes are more rigid. It's like diving and swimming through sea weed. We cannot charge through, but we can part the obstacle with grace and strength.

Production is what most folks think of as creativity. It's the potter throwing the pot, the conductor in full swing, and the engineer directing one more piece of bridge into place. I enjoy the full swing of creativity, but in the context of exploration the engineer may stop with just the idea that there should be a bridge here. She may think or sketch that bridge as a single-support suspension bridge, or if under contract, form a team to actually design and build it. It is all creative.

But production is not just output. Humans produce at least two kinds of value. There is the physical product of our actions and there is also the metaphysical. Both are valuable. The act of sketching a bridge that will never be funded, never built, can be valuable to the engineer when next imagining a bridge that will be built. The sketch among the engineer's notes can be valuable to others.

It is this massive accumulation of the physical and the metaphysical that seems to be the destiny of human kind.

To create anything we have to start from somewhere. Before we may go somewhere we must be somewhere. This "somewhere" is not necessarily the river bank. It can be a somewhere in our mind. A center.

I like the word "centered" because it is less mystical than other words of this genera. Being centered is knowing where we are and who we are. It is more about the creator than about the creation. Being centered may implies having the research in hand and digested. It definitely implies having mastery of the production means. Matisse said, "Control is freedom." Being centered is about being able to feel oneself in the project while still being able to listen to the voice of the project. Being centered is being free.

Understanding and rationality are essential parts of creativity. Yet some find rationality to be the enemy of creativity. I have never found it so. I consider rationality to be just one of tools of creativity just as it it is only one of the tools of intellect.

One of my favorite analogs about rationality is this. If you hold a child you are learning about that child. You are learning non-rationally. I challenge you to rationally explain how you are learning about the child.

One of my most useful tools for analysis and for maintaining an open perspective is a quote from Einstein who said, "Two is absurd." So many arguments, so many choices, are presented as this or that, A or B.

Einstein's point is this. If there is more than one, then it follows that there are more than two. I quote this constantly. I am frequently inattentive as I hear these A or B statements make. I launch intuitively into the wonderful fun of inventing number C and then number D as the bi-polarist babbles on.

Exploring Creativity, Sources:

This requires being humble. Many have gone before us and many travel with us. Gather as much as you can from them. Attribute it to them in your own mind, anything less is intellectual dishonesty. Attribute it to them in your work. They deserve your recognition and you deserve their company.



This African mask I photographed in the Chicago Institute of Art expresses the idea that sources, here seen as art, belong to many more than just the one who produces.

If you take this image please do not remove the shadow. It symbolizes all that we can never know about this mask.

Exploring Creativity, Feeling

I once lead a group of 20 or 30 well-educated, talkative adults to the edge of a field overlooking a beautiful valley. They began to buzz words and descriptors to explain the beauty before them. I asked them to look down the valley and to spread their arms to each side. Silence and understanding followed.

I reinforced my point by not being present when they turned around to start talking about that experience. Through the hedgerow I saw them all turn back again to the valley and spread their arms. After several minutes they left quietly in threes and fours.

Exploring Creativity, Testing:

All creators must have a ruthless destructor mode. Most of what we create wreaks and deserves a quick, quiet death. It's not a matter of embarrassment, it's just matter of cleaning up. Whatever survives this destruction can then be tested by the others.

Here's the fun part - collecting those others. It is very flattering if anyone qualified will take the time to criticize what I create. Even if they hate it - just the fact that they repeatedly volunteer to criticize is a huge expression of faith in my output. These people are valuable. They are friends in the truest sense. I trust them to give honest response. They trust me to give honest output, as well as to accept their critique with gratitude.

There are established ways to collect critics:

1. Sign up for a course. The teacher will be the critic.
2. Get married.
3. Start a business about your creativity. The partners and employees will spend hours picking over your output.
4. Join or start a society of peers.
5. Paint your stuff on interstate overpasses.
6. Put it on your website.

Exploring Creativity, Being Creative

If you have read this far then you are interested in "Creativity" or you have been paid by the NSA to read lunatic rambling on the Internet. I find creativity in everyone, but if you feel you need to work on your creativity, then here's my advice. This is advice only for the creativity work done alone. Being a dancer is another thing.

What to do next? I suggest you set aside some time and some place. A regular time and a regular place. Go to that place at the appointed time everyday. Try to not skip. In this place you will have to find your way into creativity.

It might be lonely and difficult, but after awhile you will become fond of your own company. Then it won't be lonely. You may actually, sometimes miss yourself when you are with others.

It will remain difficult. Someone once told me the way to wealth was to do what others did not want to do. I assumed she was referring to hauling trash and changing bed pans. She referred to thinking. Thinking is difficult. People do not want to do it. You may become fond of this too.

There are great rewards. There are great distractions. There is adventure and joy. Explore your mind. It is the garden of creativity, the door to everything.