The Play Date: A New Tool for Creative Development
10 Feb 2016
The Healing Power of the Imagination Journal has recently
published an article I wrote about a set of creative tools and practices
I've developed over the last year. In my article, entitled “Play Dates,
Brain Stretches and Mood Charts” I outline an approach to developing a
deeper sense of creative belonging by expanding out into uncomfortable,
previously unconscious fields. Below is an abbreviated version of my
article.
The Play Date is a contained, self-guided open-mode
practice whose purpose it is to free the potential inherent in feelings
and situations of creative block or stuckness. It combines techniques
gleaned from Buddhist meditation practice with an intuitive,
improvisational approach to our inner life in relation to our work.
Using mental noting (Mood Chart) and playful experimentation with
intentions and responses to an overall task (Brain Stretches), the Play
Date gives us the tools and space to find fresh insights into our
practice and the motivations behind it. It is a powerful tool that can
help us generate a frame of mind that is less goal-oriented and more
balanced, all the while being closely integrated with our work and
creative practice.
Redefining Creative Block
Creative Flow and Creative Block
Two types of experiences are very common for most creative
practicioners: periods of creative flow, and periods of creative block.
From an experiential point of view, flow is characterised by ease,
intuitive decision-making, a relative isolation from broader concerns
outside the focus of the current project, and often, a sense of
energised or even ecstatic well-being.
In contrast, the experience of creative block can seem like the very
antithesis of flow: characterised by unease, the unavailability or
cloudedness of intuitive resources, the intrusion of worries and
thoughts from outside the project focus, and moderate to severe feelings
of failure or stuckness.
It is my view that the creative block experience is not something to
be feared, but a unique opportunity for the deepening of creative and
personal development.
Open and Closed Modes
In a short but devastatingly effective talk given in the early 1990s
to a group of screenwriters in the UK, Monty Python veteran John Cleese
outlines two different modes of creative work: a closed mode and an open
mode. According to Cleese's model, the open mode is associated with
generating foundational creative ideas, germs for creative projects and
developing new insights and viewpoints. This open mode is characterised
by a sense that anything is possible, a playful light-heartedness, and
humour. It usually feels spacious and light.
The closed mode, on the other hand, is associated with implementing
already germinated ideas. It is characterised by focused activity and by
an emphasis on responding to external stimulation and previous steps in
the output. It feels more controlled and narrower than the open mode,
and can be a touch humourless. This closed mode of operating is
tremendously useful - it allows us to concentrate on a series of
successive tasks in a project, and makes sure we act decisively and
quickly under pressure.
This closed mode is highly valuable. However, if we begin to rely on
this way of operating, it can easily become the default mode. The
downside is that even when it may not be appropriate, when a more open
way of seeing is required, we cannot easily switch out of the closed
mode as it has become part of our habitual framework.
I would argue that the limits of the closed mode are not defined by
choice - but instead by necessity. Sometimes, it may be absolutely
essential to stop engaging in the succession of tasks of the closed
mode, and widen out into the open mode. But if we're stuck in the closed
mode, we are likely to ignore the subtler signs in our bodies and minds
that point to a need for a shift. It is my belief that the endpoint of
this process is creative block - like an internal emergency stop button,
our system grinds to a halt to show us that we need to change
perspective.
Creative block - an internal emergency stop button
A Structured Open-Mode Creative Practice
Lessons from Buddhist meditation
In the closed mode we engage in an ongoing process of reacting to
external input or output that we have just produced. We are continually
responding to some sort of stimulus with all kinds of practical and
communicative behaviour. Once we've established this as our default way
of operating, it can be incredibly difficult to step out of it. A
potential ally may come from Buddhist meditation practices founded on
the principle of non-reacting.
In some types of meditation, a form of mental noting may be employed
where events are formally recognised, but then allowed to run their
course without interfering by forming intentions of rejection or
grasping.
It turns out that this practice of mental noting is a great way to
fill the gap of what is required when the shortcomings of the closed
mode make themselves impossible to be ignored. In short, the question of
“how do I reasonably quickly get from the closed mode to the open
mode?” we can answer: “by practicing mental noting without reacting”.
Using these and other tools, I have collected a set of practices and
guidelines I have begun to call a “Play Date”. I use this template on a
weekly basis to get me out of the closed mode and to jump-start the mind
into opening up new avenues on a given project.
Let's Play!
Parameters
Clear boundaries
Our play date needs to start and end at a definite time. 1h30 or 2h
is a good medium-length duration to start with. It is best to formally
signpost the beginning and the end of the date: “Let's Play!” and “Nice
to play with you! Till next time!”.
Focus on Noticing, not Production
The overall focus on the play date is on noticing successive
thoughts, moods and energetic shifts. There is no quantity of project
output that is too small for the play date. Even a zero output session
can be tremendously helpful if the noticing has uncovered difficult
emotional, energetic or mental fields that were previously sidelined
Welcoming Discomfort
Often the decision not to engage in continuous productive activity is
accompanied by slight to severe bodily and mental discomfort. We need
to be patient and endure this. The key insight that can help us here is
that we need to feel vulnerable in order to go deeper. Our reactive
closed-mode habits keep us in a feeling of relative safety - but at the
expense of the greater safety gained from expanding out towards our own
profound potential.
No Expectation for Flow<
We can't expect to feel creative flow during our play session as it
will bias our perception towards this experience and disrupt the
openness of spirit required to meet what it is necessary to meet.
Bubbles of mirth or even small ecstatic streams may rise up, but we are
not going to follow them and engage in behaviour that tries to prolong
and repeat them.
Tools
1. Subject matter (input): These are the base data,
raw materials and limiting parameters we use to define and fuel our
project ouput. The project output can be defined by a high-level
framework task (What kind of artist am I?), a simple decision task (What
is the best name for this sculpture?) or anything in between.
2. Self-observation - embodied (input): We tune into our somatic (embodied) responses to ideas, thoughts and approaches and background states.
3. Self-observation - verbal (input): We tune into
our moment-to-moment thoughts. Our awareness of them prepares them as
fuel ready to be processed into receptive and active types of output.
4. Mood chart (output, receptive): The mood chart is
a receptive type of output, where we periodically keep noting down the
emotional, mood and energetic states and responses we come across in
verbal and somatic self-observation. The mood chart, along with the play
chart, is the focus of the play session - this is where we note down
the different sorts of impact our underlying attitudes, mental and
physical base states and new arising thoughts and ideas have.
5. Process observations (output, receptive): The
receptive output of observations concerning the play date process is not
a major focus. However, it can help to have a separate piece of paper
handy to note down how the process is working and record ideas on how to
tweak the setup for future sessions.
6. Play chart (output, active): The play chart is
one of the two active types of output, alongside the project output.
Next to the mood chart, it is where most of our energy and intention is
directed. Here we can experiment with different sorts of approach and
try out higher-level thoughts and ideas about the play date itself.
7. Project output (output, active): The second type
of active output. This is where we can register thoughts, ideas and
fragments pertaining to our project. Note: In the play date, project
output is not the primary focus. We might have incredibly insightful,
powerful ideas - or we might come up with just a few scraps in one
session.
8. A
Timer.
Stages
Setup Stage
During the Setup Stage, we prepare the ground by taking in
information important to our project output. Its purpose is for us to
feel like we have all we need to get started on our task. Sometimes, if
the task is only hazily defined (e.g. a general sense of unease and
stuckness/creative block), the Setup Stage is where we can clarify the
task a bit more.
Brain Stretch Stage
During the Brain Stretch Stage, we strive to radically expand our
idea-holding and -generating capacity. Often we will emerge from the
Setup Stage with a dry awareness of the task parameters and only a
narrow sense of what is possible. The Brain Stretch Stage is where we
are free to explode all previous preconceptions of what our responses to
the task might look like. The Brain Stretch Stage can be viewed as a
game whose objective it is to yank and pull our minds into odd,
unfamiliar shapes. We might turn the task itself upside down, seriously
contemplate utterly ridiculous notions (“I'm going to write a 24-hour
symphony for 55.555 hungry dairy cows from South America accompanied by a
car balancing on a barrel of whisky”) and experiment with mockery,
hyperbole and exaggeration of our own moods, thoughts and inclinations
as a way of undermining their strong hold on us.
Listening Stage
By the time we reach the Listening Stage, we will have defined the
task and brought to mind all the relevant raw data (Setup Stage) and
expanded our minds out into a more spacious, playful and light-hearted
shape (Brain Stretch Stage). We will be more relaxed and inclined to
smile. Now we are ready to wait and listen out for deep energetic
shifts, bursts of ideas and thoughts, and specific project output. There
can be a sense of non-doing at this stage, a simple resting back and
contemplating the outer and inner world. At some point in this resting,
answers to the project task will bubble up.
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