Want to be more creative?
Read, play, move, imagine. You have to nurture your imagination like a botanist nurturing a tropical flower. There’s no way forward with dry dirt between the ears. It must be a mellifluous, trippy-ass dynamical world where conclusions drip into each other and summations roll together like vine leaves.
The imagination is no place for rock hard facts or woebegone conclusions with red scratchy eyes and dry hacking coughs. Immerse yourself entirely. Stick your head under the surface. Open your eyes; what can you see?
Over there, a unicorn prancing up a rainbow! And there – a brandylag chasing a kurly-roo. Can you believe it? Look here – all of humanity getting on peacefully. And there: everyone’s putting their weapons down, sharing a meal and really talking things through.
If we want to think, build and move towards a better, cleaner, happier, richer, more exciting and meaningful future, we must be able to imagine that shit.
Here are 5 ways to flex your imagination:
Read fiction.
Lie on your back in the grass and look at the sky.
Next time you pass a stranger in the street, ask yourself where they’re going.
Look closely at a potted plant and imagine what it would be like to be 3 inches tall.
Pretend someone walked into the room with a gun right now – what would you do? (Thanks, Raymond Chandler for that one.*)
* “When the plot flags, bring in a man with a gun.”
– Raymond Chandler