Thursday, March 10, 2011

Right Side of the Brain Exercise #12...

OK, back to creativity, nonsense and purple lemons…

I used to teach creative problem solving to grade school kids, prisoners, continuing education paralegals, moms, family and some private gathering. I did it through drawing and imagery and challenging what is real, normal or the correct, conventional way of seeing, doing and thinking. It never failed to get some interesting results. I think I learned more than they did! So I thought I’d share:

Creativity exercise # 12:

Have you seen a purple lemon? A lemon can be purple if you use your imagination you can see a purple lemon. Now imagine biting into a purple lemon, what do you taste? Now grab a #2 pencil and a piece of paper and draw a purple lemon.

What’s that you say? You can’t draw a purple lemon with a black pencil? You can’t??? Why not? There are a number of ways to draw a purple lemon. Here are two:
Draw on purple paper (note I didn't say the paper was white did I?). Or draw with your eyes closed in a very dark room so you can’t see the color. No one else can see it either so it can be purple if you say it is. You can also paint a lemon purple and just draw what you see.

Which brings us to Kate’s Creative Rule #1:
“Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it’s not going to.”

 I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong
end of a telescope.  Which is what I do, and that enables you
to laugh at life's realities.
  ~Theodore Geisel