Aesthetic Space

Breaking the Rules

I never thought I was creative because my mom always said she wasn’t.
No one else in my family was either.
My friend Angela thought she wasn’t creative because her father was an artist and she thought there could only be one in the family.
We were both wrong.
Everyone is creative.
(You are creative.)

You just need to find your particular path, your particular voice.

What grabs you?
What juices you?
What do you love?

These questions are harder than they appear.
Why?

Because creativity always leads us in surprising ways.

It’s scary to trust that voice.
It’s much easier to trust other people’s voices.
Those voices that instruct you, telling you what to do and how to do it.

When you go with your creativity you often go against the norm . . .

I need space to let my creativity flourish.
Lots and lots and lots of space.

Beautiful space.

I moved to Montana to find more space.

Space can include a lot of different things.
It’s kind of like “breathing room.”

Sometimes it’s breathing room from people.

My friend Angela wants me to be her friend always and forever.
That makes me feel like I’m in prison.
To be creative, I need freedom in my relationships too.

Sometimes space is breathing room from too many ideas weighing me down.
I especially suffered from this in graduate school
INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Now, when I read too much I feel ill.
I know when I’m “too full” and need to quit.

I need room to breathe, space to think, and freedom from the ideas of others.

I need to discover my own ideas.

Everyone says critical thinking is important.
The other day a Ph.D. Astrophysicist from Princeton was on National Public Radio. (*WOW@!)
He spent an hour talking about how he was trying to get people to think critically.

For example, he wanted people to know that they were at the same risk of dying from an asteroid hitting the earth as dying from an airplane crash. And that days actually grow shorter in the summer, not longer. (The longest day of the year is the first day of summer.)

But this is simply inserting a different (perhaps more correct) set of information into our heads.
To me, critical thinking is more like creativity--
Going underneath the information he provided and pondering it,
Putting new thoughts together . . .
I wonder . . .
What would it feel like if an asteroid hit the earth?
Would it make a loud bang?
Would I lose my hearing immediately?

Creativity can happen in any subject.

There are creative mothers, creative gardeners, creative builders.
There are creative engineers, and maybe even creative politicians.

Can you think of any?

Some subjects are heavier than others
but all subjects can be made heavy.
How?

By giving us too much information to swallow.
Information is heavy.
Creativity is light.
Critical thinking requires space just like creativity does.

I need lightness and space to think creatively.

What else do I need?
Fun
Humor
Beauty

But mostly, not being afraid to be a fool.

Have you noticed that many creative things are childlike?

Think of Picasso’s art, Robin Williams, the Beatles (“Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” “We all live in a yellow submarine” $@#!)

Creativity needs play.

What is play to you?

I like rolling down hills, wrestling with my friends, exploring new city neighborhoods.
When I lived in Chicago I would stand in front of Grant Fountain and fantasize about climbing in.

Creativity requires paying attention and noticing.
It requires trusting myself.

Pushing myself to “work hard” stops my creative flow.
Lots of breaks are good.

And if something comes up,
I need to follow it.
Even if I’m driving, or standing in line at the grocery, or trying to sleep.

Creativity is a gift,
And it’s my job to put it out there into the world.

Even if it makes people laugh,
Even if it makes my face turn red.

May 2000.

Drawing on the Larger Wisdom

I finished teaching my last Psychology of Transformative Learning class yesterday. The title of the course felt daunting to me (I didn't come up with that title, the class I suggested would have been called "Imaginal Ways of Knowing" or "Psychology of Perceiving and Knowing"), but I did what I always do--I taught it from "third space." I knew that it wasn't me who was teaching this class. The subject itself (transformative learning) was teaching it, and I was there to learn about transformative learning along with my students. I didn't need to fret about the material, because the right material would show up.

Third space is similar in some respects to Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious and psychologists often refer to third space as “liminal” space. Theologians define it as a “Divine Third” and Martin Buber called it “Thou.” One might also call it the imagination. Our traditional institutions—religion, psychology, medicine, education—have removed the liminal layer from their practices. If something can’t be measured or seen clearly, it is presumed to not exist. Third space is where we find inspiration, creative renewal, and meaning.

Third space is that place of expanded knowing and intuitive wisdom; it's the great unknown of inspiration and possibility. We could define it as our creative process, or as a realm that is just beyond our ordinary, every day rational intellectual capacities. When groups of two or more come together in meaningful ways for a shared purpose, there is a larger wisdom available to draw upon, a wisdom that lies within the center of the group itself. Teaching from that place keeps me inspired and renewed. It ended up being a great class!

The Dimension of Not-Knowing

I'm teaching the first session of my "Psychology of Transformative Learning" course for graduate students at Meridian tomorrow. So in honor of that, thought I'd provide a quote from Derrida. Enjoy.

Language is an intrinsically unreliable structure for communication. Real meaning exists in a dimension that transcends reason and language. It is a ‘dimension of not-knowing’ and this domain of not-knowing is the appropriate domain for true education. Creativity and transformation require entering that dimension – going beyond language and reason and finding the common ground between all living things from which real creativity and profound transformation emerge.

--Jacques Derrida

That's where I like to play.

Do You Have a Key Image? Is it Real?

I had a disagreement with an old friend recently about whether the images and metaphors that show up in our subconscious are "real." I believe, just like with dreams, that when images and metaphors show up in our lives, they have something to teach us and I don’t think my friend would argue with that. His concern seems to be with something that I call a “key image.” I've been intrigued by poets and artists who have talked about having a key image that they keep "working" in their writings and art (or more accurately, an image that keeps “working them”). Stanley Kunitz and the Irish poet John O'Donohue are two who have written of this phenomena. In his book Beauty, O’Donohue wrote, “In the end, every artist is haunted by a few central themes. Again and again, they return to the disturbance and endeavor to excavate something new.” These key images typically come from childhood. For example, as a child E.B. White was fascinated by spider webs; he went on to author the bestselling children’s book Charlotte’s Web.

A few archetypal psychologists have looked at key images from a psychological perspective, namely James Hillman (who refers to key images as "acorns") and Bill Plotkin, who calls them “personal soul articulations.” He writes in Nature and the Human Soul that each person’s soul articulation “employs a metaphor from nature to point to an ineffable mystery—the unique way in which each person belongs to the wild world.” And finally, the philosopher and theologian Henry Corbin, an expert on Sufi philosophy, wrote that the Sufis believe that each human has his or her own distinct "image of God." In other words, [God] “can no longer be imposed by a collective faith, for it is the vision that corresponds to his fundamental and innermost being.” (I love that line. If only we could remember it, our religious wars and conflicts would surely go away.) In Native American cultures, visions are given prominence in one's life when young people go on vision quests to uncover them.

From these writings we can infer that perhaps each of us has an inner vision, image, or metaphor and this image may be the key to both our learning and development in life, as well as in a broader way, to social change on the planet. For me, the notion of a key image is more than an intellectual musing, because I’ve been aware for most of my adult life of a key image that lies in my heart. It has to do with growing something in nurturing soil. I have worked with metaphor and imagery for twenty-five years, both professionally and personally, and the image of planting and caring for whatever wants to grow in rich, fertile soil is an image that won’t let me go. And I wouldn’t want it to. It not only feels like part of me, I’m sure that it’s the best part of me.

My friend wrote in an email: "I have a deep-seated objection to the perspective of Jung, Hillman and others like them. It is based on my conviction that they distance and separate us from a part of our own, unique process. Metaphors and myths are and are not nouns. They can be studied as nouns (e.g. Greek vs. Celtic myths), but if we approach them in a more personal way…in terms of how we express ourselves and how that type of expression emerges from and impacts us and others... then we see that they are part of the river of being. As such, they co-mingle with the continuing flow of process…ever-changing as a result of context. On a personal level, they are empty shells until we put them on and give them life—and every time we put one on, even if it is the same metaphor, it looks and feels different. "River of being" and "empty shell" are two images that I have used before but never in this context, and they feel different, fresh, and new as a result.”

Research over the past forty years has shown that our thinking stems from our imagination and imaginal process (see George Lakoff’s work in particular). We're only conscious of five to ten percent of what goes on in our minds; most of our thought process is unconscious. So if we’re not conscious of most of the activity that goes on in our minds, key images may be very difficult to prove. Perhaps the best way is to ask you about your own direct experience. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Do you have a key image? Do you have something that won’t let you go?

What is Aesthetic Space…. (and Why on Earth is it Important)?

Philosophers throughout history have asserted that “the fundamental nature of the world is aesthetic” (Alfred North Whitehead, Gregory Bateson, James Hillman, Martin Foss, Donald Winnicott to name a few.) The word aesthetics comes from the Greek word “aisthenesthai” which is the ability to perceive. James Hillman writes, “Aesthetics in this primordial sense involves sensing the things of the world in their particularity and being affected by the many ways things present themselves.” Hillman often quotes an ancient philosopher named Marsilio Ficino who said that the world is an animal (meaning the world is alive and speaking to us.) The world shows itself to us as a living being; each thing has a face and calls for our attention. Our response to this call is aesthetics. Hence the word “aesthetic space,” because it’s only when we make space for beauty, that beauty presents itself to us. We pause, take a moment to notice and appreciate the particulars of some thing, and enter aesthetic space.

I recently published Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination. Much of the impulse for the book stemmed from my sorrow and despair at spending so many years in dry, joyless educational settings and a strong desire to reframe the experience of teaching and learning. Teaching and learning are beautiful, life-giving, creative processes. To teach, or to learn, requires courage, an open heart, and the willingness to be vulnerable. But instead of noticing, appreciating and honoring this inherent beauty and vulnerability, our focus is on achieving goals, setting our attention on some abstract thing in the future; something that is outside of the beauty of the present moment. The book is a call for “aesthetic space” in teaching, training, coaching and mentoring relationships.

The notion of aesthetics is closely linked to beauty, with beauty being defined not as “refinement” or “polish,” but rather, feeling the depth of something. Another way to think of beauty is feeling with our hearts. Elaine Scarry, professor at Harvard, wrote in her book On Beauty and Being Just:

* beauty attends with it a sense of abundance
* beauty makes possible a moment of largess or generosity
* beauty can usher in forgiveness
* in the presence of beauty, we have an opportunity to heal

In A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce wrote that beauty is “the communication of the hidden power behind the world, shining through some physical form.”

When we teach, train, coach, and mentor, we’re serving something beyond ourselves. If we’re aware, we can recognize beauty shining through the physical form of our clients, students, or group. Ideally, we can make space for that beauty. Paradoxically, making space for beauty greatly facilitates learning, because it fuels inspiration and passion--the desire to learn.

The writer Iris Murdoch said that beauty is anything that aligns us with unselfishness. Or to say it another way, beauty is the “process of un-selfing.” At our best, as teachers, trainers, coaches and mentors, we are serving something greater than ourselves. This is aesthetic space.

Pursuing Truth...and Beauty

Leonardo da Vinci's outstanding merit is to have shown by his own example that the pursuit of beauty and the pursuit of truth are not incompatible."

- George Sarton

this painting isn't leaving me alone

My current muse is this painting by Tsuguhara Foujita (1886-1968), a Japanese artist who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western-style paintings. There's something that's really captivating about it...the simple lines and muted color make me want to go draw and paint. I love the girl's expression and the cat is cute and hilarious. My photo isn't so good, but thought I'd share it anyway.

Here's what The Art Book had to say about the painting:

"The nostalgic and enchanting scene of a young girl holding a cat was created when the artist was 71 years old. The outline is painted with a fine Japanese brush dripped in black paint. The image was then delicately filled in using only a small amount of color. This is especially noticeable in the girl's pale flesh tones. Foujita was a master of drawing, and this painting demonstrates how he used simple lines to convey a sense of childlike innocence and purity. The Japanese tradition of art is mainly graphic, and Foujita continued this tradition by exploiting the use of ink, while absorbing Western artistic influences." (p. 160, published by Phaidon)

Enjoy!

When we are most vulnerable, we are most alive...

When we are most vulnerable, we are most alive, most open to all the dimensions of existence.
In our vulnerability, is our power. --Miriam Greenspan

When I began teaching, I met weekly with a very wise mentor. For me, teaching has always been about growing into my deeper, higher Self and uncovering my own gifts. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to not have this space that I could turn to for inspiration, ideas, support, and growth. So when someone asked me recently to offer a consulting group for teachers, trainers, coaches, facilitators and so on…I knew that it was the right thing for me to do. I feel grateful to be at a place where I can give back.

Also, I’ll be teaching at Esalen Institute in March and would love to see you there! I’m offering a free one-hour consulting session for anyone who registers by February 28th. Detailed descriptions of the consultation group and Esalen workshop can be found below. I hope you can join me!

For those of you who aren't familiar with my work, “teaching” is broadly defined as any situation where we are responsible for helping another person or sharing what we know with others. I’d love it if you would please forward this link to anyone who might be interested. Thank you!

Transformative Teaching: A Consultation Group for Teachers, Trainers, Coaches and Facilitators

Teaching, in any form, brings up our vulnerability. On the one hand, there is professional vulnerability: Do we know enough? Are we good enough? But there is also personal vulnerability, because we are usually sharing the most tender part of our selves when we teach. Indeed, the most effective teachers are those who love what they do and are sharing what they care deeply about. Not surprisingly then, there is little that is so powerfully transformative as teaching. As Peter Kingsley once wrote, “the teacher is a point of access to something beyond the teacher.”

The purpose of this group is to support and inspire your work, helping you deepen what you do and expand into new territory.

* Discover innovative ways to respond to challenging students or situations
* Receive feedback and creative solutions to your curriculum challenges
* Develop new tools for your teaching “tool kit”
* Gain more confidence as a teacher
* Learn to recognize the creative wisdom in the room

During each session we will set personal commitments for our work. Participants will use a portion of the group time to report on their progress, as well as to share personal challenges, issues, visions and questions, and receive feedback from the group. Anyone who does any form of teaching or training, in any professional setting, is welcome.

The cost is $300 for five sessions and includes a copy of my book, Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination. See the workshop page of this blog for further details.

Awakening Wisdom: Transformative Teaching, Training, Coaching and Mentoring
Esalen Institute Big Sur, California

In this experiential workshop, we will explore the concepts “third space” and the “imaginal world” in the teaching, training, facilitating, coaching, and mentoring relationship. Third space and the imaginal world are places of expanded knowing and intuitive wisdom; they are the great unknown of inspiration and possibility. We could define the imaginal as a realm that is just beyond our ordinary, every­day rational intellectual capacities. When groups of any size come together in meaningful ways for a shared purpose, there is a larger wisdom available to draw upon, a wisdom that lies within the center of the group itself. Themes will include:

* structure and structurelessness
* using creative expression as a way toward expanded group knowing
* working with other people as a creative process of embracing the unknown
* teaching from a place of higher vision and intuitive knowing
* embracing group resistance and conflict

Each participant will connect with and develop his or her own voice, personal vision, and unique leadership style. This workshop is recommended for all in the teaching and helping professions, and it will also be useful for those who are preparing to teach, coach, mentor, or facilitate for the first time. It may be particularly helpful for those who sometimes experience resistant or “difficult” audiences or clients, as well as for those who simply wish to lead groups with more skill, heart, and integrity.

To register, call Esalen at (831) 667-3005 or visit their website.

A friend of mine recently sent me this Rumi poem, telling me it reminded her of my work:

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Hope to see you soon!

The Blind Men and the Elephant

The coolest thing about publishing a book is the community and connections that happen. I didn't know it would be this way. Many years ago I had a vision of plunging into a dark abyss. It was scary of course--we never know what's going to happen when we plunge into dark abysses. In fact, our minds usually come up with something quite frightful to keep us on safe terrain. But in the vision, what happened was quite the opposite. Rather than being eaten alive or some other horrible fate, I eventually landed at the bottom of the abyss, which was a brightly lit room filled with interesting, passionate, joyful people. All of a sudden, brighter possibilities than I could ever have imagined were in front of me. I was grateful I'd had the courage to take the plunge. (Interestingly, that's what Getting Messy is all about...taking the plunge.)

Writing and publishing Getting Messy has been like plunging into that dark abyss. I had no idea what would happen to me or the book. Since I'm working with very limited financial resources, each thing that happens has been amazing and at the risk of sounding sappy, has brought joy to my heart. (I'm even tearing up writing this...) One of the true pleasures has been hearing people's responses, thoughts, and reactions.

So in that vein, I'm going to share a response that I received from a friend after an author event at Pegasus Books in Berkeley last week. My friend's analogy about the Blind Men and the Elephant has continued to stay with me. Here's what he wrote:

I wanted to congratulate you on last night's meeting. You were there in front of the unknown, and you walked the talk. Right from the beginning you upped the chances of educing collective wisdom from the group by setting up the chairs in an oval, rather than the serried ranks that were presented to you. Sometime in the middle of the group you said something like, "I like it when people speak up and contribute, it gives me something to work with". That fits in with the oval set up ..namely, when you have a truly interactive group that goes into unknowing with the support of the leader... then creative discoveries and learning are inevitable... and, as you pointed out.. each person learns what they need to learn.

Reminds me of the Blind Men and the Elephant metaphor-story (which I have been using when teaching psychotherapists-in-training). We all have our idea of reality .. and reality is much bigger than any of us can apprehend. So therefore it makes perfect sense that we interact with curiosity and openess and with a sense of unknowing in order to better learn about reality.

Wowie.. I had never taken that metaphor that far.. into the area of how to best teach. And it is in the process of writing to you that that new connection emerged.

We're all here connecting with our own piece of reality. Thanks to each of you for sharing your piece of reality with me.

About Discipline

Discipline is a tool that numbs the mind.

--Krishnamurti

It seems a little dramatic, but perhaps there's some truth to it. I often hear writers (famous and not-so-famous) go on-and-on about how they get up at dawn EVERY day to write for a specified number of hours. "It's a discipline," they seem to be lecturing. I myself don't work this way--I have to be inspired to write. Well...of course I can write without being inspired, but the words don't have any energy behind them. The writing comes out sounding like concrete, and the ideas don't jell. Sometimes it works for me to start writing and then I find inspiration for it, but in general, I'll go with Krishnamurti on this one. I don't believe that anything of much value happens by forcing it to happen. I believe that things of value happen when we first listen for the inspiration, and then act on what we're inspired by. Any thoughts, anyone?

Concrete Poetry and the "Creating" Space

I taught a Concrete Poetry class last weekend at Book Passage. It was a lot of fun. I have to admit that I've never actually taken a poetry class myself, either in college or post-college, although I've read a lot of books by poets about poetry. My favorite is Steve Kowit's In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop. Someday I'd like to teach a class where we use his book. His writing exercises are amazing, and really get you into that poetic space where poems flow. A lot of books about creative writing are written from a "heady" place...they're about techniques and concepts. They'll give you a subject and tell you to write about it.

From my experience, creative writing comes naturally when we put ourselves into a rich place where images, metaphors, and feelings emerge naturally. My classes are all about being in that place where the making of the poem is natural, inevitable--there's nothing else we can do but put the words and images we are receiving down on the page. That's the space I want to live in in my everyday life, as well. When I get too busy, I have to remember that that's the place I need to go back to--that place where art (my creative process) is happening naturally.

What I do in my classes is create a space and then see what wants to emerge...and something always wants to emerge. Life is naturally generative. It's a fertile field. I sometimes call it third space or metaphoric space, and it's available to us all the time. A piece of writing or art can always be tweaked or modified later, but nothing can bring richness to your words and images, except being in that rich, fertile place. The creative space from which the urge to write happens, can't be forced.

BTW, I'll be speaking about my book, Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination, at Pegasus Bookstore in downtown Berkeley on Thursday November 12th at 7:30. See you there!

An American Beauty

I wrote this poem ten years ago, and just recently rediscovered it. It's a poem about beauty (and my Great Aunt Thelma). I visited her in Wisconsin and was enraptured for the entire visit. It was the only time I spent with her as an adult, and it was also the last. Shortly after that I moved to Montana and she died soon after.

Addendum on September 29th: So I felt kind of goofy posting this a couple weeks ago. I don't usually post my own poetry. But it turns out that Goodreads.com selected this poem as a finalist in its October poetry contest.... and I feel a little less goofy now. :-)

If you're a member of Goodreads, click on this link to vote for my poem:
http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/24001?si=true&utm_medium=email&utm_source=poll

One commentator wrote this: "all the poems seemed to be sad or filled with some kind of anger. An American Beauty was full of joy and memories. i loved it."

OK. That's enough tooting my own horn. Here's the poem.

AN AMERICAN BEAUTY

What you notice first is how small and hunched over she is.
A big hump rises up between her shoulders, and
her head parallels the ground.
Yet her neck and carriage are strong as she peers up,
not missing a thing.

Her mouth forms a natural grin,
a grin she has generously shared with
the world for 93 years.
The grin subsides when she’s focused on you.
That’s when her twinkling eyes stare intently
and her lips purse together,
listening, remembering.

Her hair is what you notice next
long red hair that’s now mostly white.
A deep, rich color that’s not ephemeral
and can’t be dismissed.
I gaze enraptured as she braids it every morning
using 2 long hair pins to keep it in place.
When she’s done braiding
she casually flips it over her shoulder
like a young school girl,
immune to her own beauty.

When she walks, she scurries,
quick, solid, and strong on her feet.
She has a walker she scarcely uses.
She holds it up in front of her as she firmly moves
forward, all 93 years of her, moving out.
Her legs are strong, determined.
I long to touch them.

I spend the first day wanting to explain her—
create my own story on why she never married.
“She’s secretly gay.”
“She was unattractive and gawky.”
“She loved and was burned.”

None seem to fit.
I give up explaining and enjoy her.
If there’s a story it’s this one:
She was so open-hearted and bursting with pure joy
that no man could contain her in 1924.

People like her.
They say, “You’re doing all right, Thelma”
and ask her how she stays so pleasant.
Everyone knows her, or perhaps I should say
she knows everyone.
All day long I’m introduced to all within range,
as we gallivant around this small Wisconsin town
where she’s lived her whole life.

She talks, not noticing when people
are rude or too busy.
She continues on, asking questions, conversing.
“Can you imagine that?” she’ll say to me.
Or she’ll tell me to look at the birds...
for the fifth time. “I wonder why that one has a red beak?”

I soak in her light-hearted wonder, and
feel the joy of being alive and happy with the world.
I want more of her.
“Wonderful you,” she says, ending every encounter
with, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I want to touch her, hold her.
I want to breathe her in.
I want to swallow her.
When we watched the Grammy awards
I sat 3 hours at her feet.
I couldn’t sit in my own chair.
I couldn’t sit close enough.

She was jump-center on her high school basketball team, 1920 to 1924
Maybe basketball is the key
to open-hearted joy and powerful beauty
at the age of 93.

Inspiration from Project Runway

When I was 14, I wanted to be a fashion designer. I sketched some designs (which I thought were marvelous), and sent them off to a design contest that was advertised in the back of my Teen magazine. I never heard from them, and therefore I decided that I must not have any talent for design. In the meantime, my mother consistently claimed that she wasn’t creative, and I presumed that creativity must not run in my family. I gave up my dreams of design and graduated from college with a "sensible" degree in Computer Science.

Thirty years later, I’m finding myself fascinated by Project Runway—a reality tv show where fashion designers compete with one another, creating complete new outfits under challenging circumstances. I’ve seen every episode in every country (except the Philippines—I gave that up when it was too difficult to follow the language). It’s always inspiring to watch their creative process at work, but my favorite episodes are the ones when the designers have to make clothes out of unusual materials—trash, food, and recycled building materials.

In On Becoming a Person, the celebrated psychologist Carl Rogers wrote that one important condition for creativity was “the ability to toy with elements and concepts.” In other words, the ability to play spontaneously with ideas, colors, shapes, and relationships, juggling elements into “impossible juxtapositions,” shaping “wild hypotheses, expressing the ridiculous." (Making a fun, wearable dress out of chard and cabbage leaves probably falls into that category.) Playing with impossible combinations is the root of creative thought and experience.

The other thing that inspires me are the designers on the show who aren’t afraid to take risks; who stay true to their inner visions and put them out there, regardless of what the judges might think. Sometimes their visions don't work out and they are booted off the show, but thankfully, the designers who play it safe are more likely to be cut first. Watching the designers' struggles and triumphs is heartening. When something is creative, it is by definition something that we haven’t seen before. How scary to put it out there! After all, it may get laughed at.

On "The Fashion Show," another reality show about fashion design, James Paul Ancheta, a cutting-edge designer who made it to the finale said this: “You can spend the rest of your life making pretty clothes; you can spend the rest of your life making saleable clothes. But you have one chance to put your voice out there, and have it be heard.”

Bravo.