Aesthetic Space

God is unknowable. All we have is metaphor.

Linda Pettway quilt

The same could be said for knowing anything of any depth or complexity ... our universe, each other, or how to navigate through a turbulent situation. The metaphors that we hold are what enable us to construct meaning and find our way. Metaphor is much more than a tool of language--it's how we make sense of the world. It's how we learn.

We'll be exploring metaphor at my upcoming one-day workshop at Book Passage. Our means of exploration with be writing and image. I hope you'll join us.

METAPHOR IN EVERYDAY LIFE workshop
Book Passage, Corte Madera
Sunday November 13th
10 am - 4 pm

To sign up: http://bookpassage.com/event/class-kim-hermanson-metaphor-everyday-life

Images have a very quiet voice

Lucy Mooney 1935

For a long time, the various parts of me have felt separate: I'm both an academic and a creative. I am passionate about teaching and learning, as well as creativity and the arts. As I've journeyed on my path, I've realized that it's my mission to bridge the academic and creative. Since images lie at the heart of the creative process, images also lie at the heart of learning.

I believe that my academic courses provide a strong foundation for the "legitimacy" of the arts--offering substantial evidence of their centrality in learning and cultural change. Some of these courses include Psychology of Metaphor, Psychology of Creativity, Psychology of Transformative Learning, The Purpose and Power of Image and Imaginal Ways of Knowing. (For course descriptions, go to Events & Classes page.)

I often think of image and imagination as the "language of the heart," and this language needs our support. While images are at the center of any kind of creative transformation, they have a very quiet voice. Images need to be welcomed and given space, else they will not be heard.

We're at our most creative when we actively engage with images

Florine Smith quilt 1975
Creative individuals mentally play with images all the time, no matter what field they work in. But research shows that all of us are embedded in the world of mental imagery all the time... and our cognitive systems are based in metaphor. Even individuals who define themselves as "less creative" are at their most creative when they actively engage with images.

Metaphor in Everyday Life - Workshop at Book Passage

Essie Bendolph Pettway quilt

In the case of every historic scientific discovery and invention that is researched carefully enough, we find that it was imagery, either in dreams or in a waking state, which produced the breakthrough.
--John Curtis Gowan

Humans have four ways of knowing: thinking, feeling, physical sensing, and imagination, but we tend to favor only one of these modes—thinking. Of these four modes of knowing, imagination (or image-ing) is arguably the most powerful and least understood. To shed some light on this matter, I’m teaching an upcoming workshop at Book Passage on image and metaphor. We will focus on the role of image and metaphor on the creative process, as well as its role in shaping the “lenses” that we use to view the world around us. Here’s the link to sign up:

http://bookpassage.com/event/class-kim-hermanson-metaphor-everyday-life

---------------

Metaphor in Everyday Life – Workshop
Book Passage, Corte Madera
Sunday, November 13th, 10 am-4 pm

Every aspect of our daily experience is influenced by metaphor. While writers may try to use metaphor to enrich their writing, the truth is that we are always writing (and looking) through a metaphoric lens. In this experiential workshop we explore metaphor as a potent force that shapes how we see the world. I hope you'll join us!

Pedestrian Poetry

Awhile back, David Brooks wrote a New York Times column about metaphor in everyday life. (He called it "Poetry for Everyday Life.") Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/opinion/12brooks.html?_r=1

My favorite line could be this one: Even the hardest of the sciences depend on a foundation of metaphors. To be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once called “pedestrian poetry."

Being Headless

When I teach, I work with something I call "third space." Third space is that creative place of openness, when new possibilities have space to come in. But in order to get to third space, I have to take off the “expert” cap and simply be present and open to what wants to happen. When I try to control or "be the expert," I lose third space. What happens when we exert our authority, either through maintaining strict control, or being the only one in the room who knows anything, is that we create a polarized situation—-us against the students.

We will not reach third space when there’s a strong polarity--meaning the teacher/leader/instructor is heavily invested in either their own expertise or maintaining control and authority. No matter how much of an expert we are, we need to be "learners" when we teach--holding what we know in one hand, holding the other hand empty. You could call this being "headless." If you can’t do your work when you’re headless, it’s probably not your right work.

At the time I wrote Getting Messy, my experience creating third space in group settings was new and experimental, but since that time I have come across Adolg Guggenbuhl’s wonderful book Power in the Helping Professions, in which he discusses something very similar. Guggenbuhl, a Jungian psychiatrist, does not use the term “third space,” but he does detail how those in the helping profession create polarities with clients, students, the elderly, and so on when they take the role of “knower.” He calls the polarization a “split archetype.” In Guggenbuhl’s view, as soon as we know what’s best for our patient (or mother, father, student, friend, lover), we have split the archetype. One of us is all-knowing and all-powerful, and the other is ignorant, neurotic and powerless. In such a situation, no healing or creativity has the space to occur, because the interaction is now about the polarity. Emilie Conrad, the founder of a bodywork method called Continuum calls this model the dominator model: “I will do this to you.” Unfortunately, in educational settings, the dominator model is what is typically expected. But the dominator model can happen in any situation in which a power imbalance exists--health care, government, and so forth...

The Purpose and Power of Image Course Syllabus

Hi folks. Update: This is a course I recently taught for Pacifica Graduate Institute. If you are interested in the content of this course, please let me know! You can send me an email by clicking "Receive Event Announcements" on the left side of this page. I'd be glad to share my sources. Thanks for your interest!

Teaching as Creative Process

The creative process is how we engage with life, and all of us engage with life in a variety of ways. Teaching has been my creative passion because it seems to me to be the ultimate “meeting of life.” When we work with a new group, we have no idea who is going to show up or what challenges (or gifts) lie before us. Jacob Needleman, one of my favorite authors, says that a sense of meaning is more important than anything else in life. Without meaning, we are in despair. He writes, “We’re built to serve something greater than ourselves.”

Getting Messy is a book about the beauty and richness of teaching. Here’s an excerpt from the Conclusion:

A friend who loves metaphors asked me what metaphor came to my mind for this book. My subconscious mind immediately gave me a very clear image, but I didn’t want to share it, because my image was the mushroom cloud after the atomic bomb was dropped. (That certainly was messy.)

My subconscious had been influenced by a play I saw recently about the science that led up to the bomb. What I remember from watching the play is that two different substances collide which results in the splitting of atoms, and the splitting of atoms creates an enormous amount of energy. Finding myself curious, I looked it up on wikipedia.org:

“In 1898, French physicist Pierre Curie and his Polish wife Maria Sklodowska-Curie had discovered that present in pitchblende, an ore of uranium, was a substance which emitted large amounts of radioactivity, which they named radium. This raised the hopes of both scientists and lay people that the elements around us could contain tremendous amounts of unseen energy, waiting to be tapped.”

There is something about the line “containing tremendous amounts of unseen energy, waiting to be tapped” that has to do with why this particular image came up for me. Getting Messy is about learning, creativity, imagination, and traversing into unknown space. It presents a higher vision of teaching and learning, a vision that bridges two well-established polarities: learner-expert and learning process- creative process. When we bridge these polarities, we create third space—imaginal space. Like the radium discovered by Pierre and Maria Curie, imaginal space is already present in our everyday lives. It is unseen energy waiting to be tapped. I believe it’s time for us to tap it.

*

Note: The quilt at the top of this post was made by Essie Bendolph Pettway. See more Gee's Bend quilts at http://www.auburn.edu/academic/other/geesbend/explore/catalog/slideshow/index.htm

Getting Messy Facebook Page!

Please check out my new facebook page for Getting Messy:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Getting-Messy-Taking-Risks-and-Opening-the-Imagination/201587503232115

Hope you're all having a wonderful summer. I just finished reading Adolf Guggenbuhl's book, Power in the helping professions. My favorite quote was written by John Haule in the preface:

“As soon as we know ‘what’s best’ for our patient or student—we have in Guggenbuhl’s language ‘split the archetype.’ One of us is all-knowing and all-powerful, and the other is ignorant, neurotic and powerless.”

The Amazing Lily Yeh

Before the 2009 Bioneers conference, I’d never heard of Lily Yeh. She was one of the main speakers and I cried through her entire presentation. Yeh is an artist whose mission is to heal. Among other courageous things, she went to Rwanda and made art with the survivors of the 1994 genocide. Below is an excerpt about it from her new book, Awakening Creativity. (from the foreward by Robert Shetterly):

“…Lily Yeh asked me if I would travel to Rwanda with a small group of Barefoot Artists to continue the work she had begun in a village of survivors of the 1994 genocide. I agreed, but with considerable trepidation. I had read the accounts of the genocide. Rwanda seemed a frightening place. And I had also read about how poor this village was. After the genocide the new government built a few villages to provide a safe place for the victims. But cement floors had not been poured, water and electricity was never hooked up, septic tanks never completed. No jobs provided. The bureaucratic agencies tasked with this job had disintegrated into half-measures as the funding dried up. Extreme poverty was compounding the trauma of genocide and reinforcing it with the trauma of neglect.

After our group arrived in Kigali, we were driving several arduous hours in the back of a jeep to Rugerero and the survivors’ village. I’m no longer sure what I expected when we arrived, but certainly not what happened. The back doors of the jeep were thrown open and there was a throng of joyous children calling for Lily. “Turabi Shimiya!” they shouted. “Turabi Shimiya!” “Happy to see you! Happy to see you!” On and on—ecstatic! Lily, not much bigger than the children, descended into their midst and shouted the same back at them. They all began running, shouting, around the village, on the hard dirt between the unfinished houses that had recently been painted with murals designed by these same children under Lily’s direction. Bird and beast and decorative motif murals transformed the depressing gray mud brick. Then came the warm embraces of the adults, bending close and inadvertently exposing machete scars on necks and arms and legs. Then came the singing and dancing. As friend’s of Lily’s, we were all their best friends now. What had happened in this land of grotesque violence to provoke such joy?

Yeh says that the places that are the most broken are the ones that are most ready for transformation. Her website is http://www.barefootartists.org/

What the *$#!@ Does This Mean

Indeed, powerful cultural forces still operate to deny us that re-visioning of the world would refuse us the use of the appellation 'research' for forms of inquiry that promote the disruptions required for that revisioning.

p. 73 in Jacobs (2008) The Authentic Dissertation: Alernative Ways of Knowing, Research and Representation. New York: Routledge.

The sentence above is from a book on alternative ph.d. dissertations. I've read it 3 times to make sure I typed it correctly. Have no idea what it means.

Note: In the introduction the author writes: "Academic habits that fragment and isolate have caused us to lose touch with what is really important (and authentic)... [we must] move away from an over-emphasis on academic writing if it tends to stifle creativity or one's true voice." Funny.

(I would say that we must move away from an over-emphasis on academic writing if no one can understand what we're saying. This is why academics get called out for living in ivory towers.)

Contacting Your Spirit Guides new book

A friend of mine just published a beautiful book on how to contact, identify, and work with spirit guides. My field is adult learning and in many ways I stay true to my academic roots. But to be honest, I've learned as much in my life from the unseen world than I have by following the rational methods of thinking and analysis that I became fascile with in graduate school. I met my own spirit guide in a private session with Asandra and it’s made a huge difference. For one thing, whenever I’m trying to make a decision I have someone to ask—-someone who wants the best for me, and who I can trust 100 percent. People often marvel at my intuitive abilities, but the truth is... I'm secretly asking my spirit guide what to do. I highly recommend this book.

Here’s a little blurb about Asandra and her book:

Asandra, a professional Channel with an international clientele for over 27 years, provides easy-to-understand instructions for the fundamentals of channeling so that you, too, can contact your spirit guides. The book includes inspiring channeled wisdom about the soul-path and special key points, along with lessons on how to use the unique set of 24 Spirit Guidance Cards that will assist you in developing your own channeling skills. Whether you are a beginner or advanced student, Contact Your Spirit Guides and the Spirit Guidance Cards will help you develop a direct relationship with your Spirit Guides. Published by Schiffer Publishing and available in bookstores now.

For more info, check out: http://contactyourspiritguides.com/
To purchase the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Contact-Your-Spirit-Guides-Asandra/dp/076433719X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308768040&sr=8-1

Alternative Ways of Getting a Ph.D.

I just read a book (Trent Jacob's The Authentic Dissertation) about alternative dissertations—-using art, fiction, dialogues, indigenous ways of knowing and so on for doctoral dissertations. I have to admit, my dissertation process was one of jumping through hoops to try to please my committee. My first draft was all “me” and I was soundly criticized for it (I was painfully raked over the coals.). So after I recovered from the verbal scolding I completely changed gears, listened to what my committee wanted me to do, and proceeded to follow their directions to a T. After all, I wanted the degree and I didn’t really feel like engaging in a battle. I was at a traditional university (University of Chicago) where these venerable professors had been guiding students through the dissertation process for decades. In other words, I wasn’t gonna win this war. The positive result was that I completed a dissertation that they were happy with and I received my degree within the next year. The negative was that I finished my Ph.D. without feeling like I had done anything meaningful. My dissertation chair wanted me to publish my findings, he said that he felt the world needed this information. I looked at my dissertation and couldn’t understand what he was talking about. For me, there wasn’t anything there. It had been a vacuous hoop-jumping experience.

Students often ask me to give them guidance on online Ph.D. programs. Up until recently, I had always suggested that they go to a well-known graduate school and get a solid foundation of traditional academic research underneath them, then start their real learning after they leave school. (This is what I did.). But after reading about all this arts-based research, I now see that there is another way to do higher education. The other way is to have the educational experience itself be a developmental journey where you are truly following your own inner voice. Although I’m happy with my degree, I admire the people who have used their graduate education to find their own voice.

(I’m not sure that there are many schools in the United States that really offer such an exploratory model--most of the example dissertations in Jacobs' book were from Canadian and European universities--but I would like to think that the two graduate schools where I teach Meridian University and Pacifica Graduate Institute do offer an experiential, personal model of inner exploration during the Ph.D. dissertation process.)

The thing that gets difficult is that since it's a Ph.D. degree, the scholarship for the dissertation needs to be rigorous, and if your dissertation is a novel--in my opinion--you have a more difficult task trying to demonstrate that you've done substantive research. (This point gets mentioned repeatedly in Jacobs' book.) But in any case, it's nice to see the experimentation.

I'll leave you with a quote from the book on the importance of the imagination:

“How do new paradigms of thought come into being? It is not simply a matter of pouring isotopes into different test tubes and applying vacuum distillation to measure their rates of precipitation. The only vacuum distillation that exists for the human mind is the imagination.”