It has been nearly 20 years since I attended a creativity workshop featuring a man named Gordon MacKenzie. MacKenzie was an artist and writer and what he did was pure magic. In the intervening years I have attended hundreds of workshops and classes and I have never witnessed or participated in a more memorable educational experience.
Mr. MacKenzie was an elfish little man with white hair and a beard who radiated warmth. He looked like a mischievous child on stage, fidgeting and strutting from one end to the other, as if he could barely contain the energy welling up from inside. Behind him on the stage was a clothesline, strung from one side of the stage to the other. Hanging on the line by clothespins were drawings on pieces of 8 by 11 white paper.
Each of us in attendance was given a single piece of paper when we came in the door. It was a Xeroxed sheet with miniature replicas of the drawings on the clothesline. Each drawing had a corresponding number. We were asked to call out a number if we wanted to hear about a particular drawing.
Most of the drawings were seemingly abstract, bearing no resemblance to people, places or things. Take number 11 for example, it was an upside-down dome with three attached fingers pointing toward the bottom of the page. Someone yelled out "Number 11" and Mr. MacKenzie launched into a story about his former boss, "a man who would yell at the cows for chewing their cud because they weren't producing milk."
The drawing was of an udder, a reminder that the creative process requires some cud chewing, time spent doing next to nothing. A painter can't always paint. Time spent watching the sunset or observing the interactions between a mother and child or reading a book, those are all part of the creative process.
That is my plan for the day: I'll be chewing the cud.
No comments:
Post a Comment