Involve Yourself In Folly
“To think creatively is to walk at the edge of chaos. In thinking the original, we risk thinking the ridiculous. In opening the way for a few good ideas, we open the way for many bad ones: lopsided equations, false syllogisms, and pure nonsense dished up by unhindered impulse. Even valid ideas, at the moment of discovery, give one a sense of giddiness, a fleeting impression of being drunk and sixteen. To be attentive to new messages, to sift them for validity and mercilessly reject the invalid, and to follow good ideas in spite of their forbidding strangeness all take a kind of courage.”
- Robert Grudin, The Grace of Great Things
As I read this passage, I was reminded of my friend Ato Essandoh, who among other things, is a New York-based actor and the co-host of the podcast Radio Zamunda. Ato and his partner Kwaku invited me and Perry to do an interview recently, and I was instantly drawn to his warm, openness, and curiosity. Ato and I stayed in touch, and he later told me about his regular Friday night gatherings other artists and friends in New York. They often challenge themselves to make something together, without regard for the final product: “Let's put it out there. It's OK if it looks like we made a mistake. There are no constraints about what the rules are, or even what the game is. We don't worry about, ‘Is anybody listening?’ It's just playing in a sandbox with your buddies. What we've learned is, if you pour your passion into it, it might be 10, or a million, but you'll find your people.”
I loved that sense of discovery and possibility, and the role that trust and freedom play in that space.
It reminded me of what Isaac Asimov said in his fantastic 1959 piece on group creativity for The MIT Technology Review, entitled, “How Do People Get New Ideas?”:
“First and foremost, there must be ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness. The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome. The individuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others won’t object.
If a single individual present is unsympathetic to the foolishness that would be bound to go on at such a session, the others would freeze. The unsympathetic individual may be a gold mine of information, but the harm he does will more than compensate for that. It seems necessary to me, then, that all people at a session be willing to sound foolish and listen to others sound foolish.
If a single individual present has a much greater reputation than the others, or is more articulate, or has a distinctly more commanding personality, he may well take over the conference and reduce the rest to little more than passive obedience. The individual may himself be extremely useful, but he might as well be put to work solo, for he is neutralizing the rest.
The optimum number of the group would probably not be very high. I should guess that no more than five would be wanted. A larger group might have a larger total supply of information, but there would be the tension of waiting to speak, which can be very frustrating. It would probably be better to have a number of sessions at which the people attending would vary, rather than one session including them all. (This would involve a certain repetition, but even repetition is not in itself undesirable. It is not what people say at these conferences, but what they inspire in each other later on.)
For best purposes, there should be a feeling of informality. joviality, the use of first names, joking, relaxed kidding are, I think, of the essence—not in themselves, but because they encourage a willingness to be involved in the folly of creativeness. For this purpose I think a meeting in someone’s home or over a dinner table at some restaurant is perhaps more useful than one in a conference room.”
From “Isaac Asimov Asks, ‘How Do People Get New Ideas?” a 1959 Essay on Creativity, Published in the MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/10/20/169899/isaac-asimov-asks-how-do-people-get-new-ideas/
Oh, for more of “a willingness to be involved in the folly of creativeness.”
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One of the defining contributions the d.school is helping teams ask themselves, “What kind of thinking is appropriate, when?” We call such clarity being “Mindful of Process.” And it can seem like semantics until you realize we need to show up in different ways.