The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star. –Marcel Proust
I’ve been watching Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy with my family for the umpteenth time, it seems. There are parts of the dialog we often repeat, or wait for on the edge of the sofa. My favorite is Gimli’s famous line, while weighing the benefits of going to war against the armies of Sauron, “Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” a piece of dark irony that often leaves me in stitches. My younger son, Declan, even plays sections of the music on his violin, when he’s taking breaks from his lesson practice. The musical themes repeat, cycling around as various themes arise, and especially with the appearance of particular characters. There is a theme for the hobbits, a theme for the bold adventurers and warriors, and so on. This is a fairly common practice in film making across the board, for instance that famously dark melody that always accompanies Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies. And even writers will adopt particular rhythmic and tonal patterns in their writing, depending on the characters speaking, or the types of events that are unfolding. And repetition of these patterns is one of the pieces of the craft that give the work a sense of a whole.
The philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari call these repetitions of themes, personalities and events types of Refrain, a term they borrowed from musicology, and have found apt use for it ubiquitously throughout human endeavors, as well as in the both living and non-living natural worlds.
Our own most intimate refrains are our personalities, or the smaller patterns that make up our personalities. In their view these chunks of ourselves, or what we and others know of our selves, are like little melodies, and variations of melodies, that continually repeat themselves in a way that form a structure that is recognizable to ourselves and others.
These patterns change as we are faced with new challenges, or with epiphanies and inspirations, and so new variations are spun all the time, allowing us to adapt and grow toward new sets of ideals or desires. Except in rare cases, there is generally a firm sense of continuity to these changes, so the overall personality stays intact.
Obviously, the more fluid and prone to variations these refrains are, the more open to new patterns of ideas, and the more capable they will be to generate new ideas, i.e. to think outside of the box, which in essence, is to explore territories outside of one’s familiar territory.
The following practices will help engender such fluidity and flexibility, and may even provide the required leverage to create ruptures in habits that keep us attempting to solve problems in the same ways.
Reading challenging books
We are often most comfortable reading things constructed with familiar word patterns, ideas that are similar enough to our own ideas that they are easy to digest, and simple syntax that doesn’t twist our heads up in knots. However, some of the best writing is much more complex, and largely because of the distance it can take us as readers. This distance is the expansion of ideas we need to learn how to represent internally (understand), and those that we generate residually in the process, as you make associations with what we already know, and what we have been experiencing. The latter will, of course, be most invaluable to you as an innovator.
I remember reading that Steve Jobs was obsessed with the poet William Blake, and I don’t doubt that the strange worlds he encountered in Blake’s writing helped him envision his own worlds some of which we are living in today.
I have also emphasized in the past how writers like John Ashbery will literally force you to encounter meaning and use your brain differently. The very best and challenging writers always do. Try on some James Joyce or Gertrude Stein if your up to it, or perhaps some of our more contemporaries, such as Thomas Pynchon or Zadie Smith.
Writing and speaking differently
To further engage with strange and complex works, one can borrow from them and experiment with forming sentences utilizing vocabulary and syntax one is not accustomed to. Practice using new analogies, purposely wrought, run-on sentences, multiple parentheticals. Learn to hear your thoughts in a new voice, one you don’t readily recognize as your own. Imagine what it must be like to be the person who speaks that way. If you are male, write in what you imagine your voice would be if you were female. Borrow from the vernacular you are unfamiliar with using. Write your sentences backwards to see if they still make sense, or make another kind of sense. Remove every other word, and then swap them with other words. See what you can learn about thinking by doing these types of experiments. And of course, learning a new language is the ultimate way of experiencing this kind of shift.
Play with your internal sensory representations
When we think, we are not only thinking in language, but are processing internal images, sounds and generating feelings in response to them. If I hear the word dog, an image immediately comes to mind, either of a particular dog, or a composite of multiple dogs I have come in contact with. If I am thinking about what to eat, I reproduce flavors I’ve stored in my memory, and may even imagine what they may be like if I added some other ingredient. The same thing happens when I begin thinking of something like how I might build a bookshelf for a particular part of a room. I internally sample multiple design patterns, and choose from what I think are the best models and combine them in my imagination. We all do this.
Once you are aware of these sensory constructs you can tool around with them in a similar way to how you can with language. Where are the images in your visual field? What happens if you move them somewhere else? What happens if you change the color, change it from 2 dimensions to 3, make it larger or smaller? What if you change the voice to someone else’s voice? Move it around as well? Move the feelings you are having in response to different parts of your body.
Practitioners of Neuro-linguistic Programming call these practices, submodality processes – being subset details of the various sensory modalities: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. They believe that you can actually modify complete belief systems if they are done with enough precision and repetition. The same processes can also help to produce trance states that can take you out of your ordinary way of thinking and into other states where different things are possible.
Engaging with the plastic arts and music
Of course the masters of internal images are the folks who work them into paint and other materials, even into electronic media. The key here is not to look at a painting of a tree, and think tree, but to meditate on the way the materials have come to form the image, or even imagine what it was like to be the painter painting the tree, how it differs from the image in her mind’s eye, or how the internal imagine may have evolved as it was informed by the working with the material. Ask yourself how these images are different from things you encounter in the world. How is the crack in the sidewalk different from a similar abstract representation in a gallery or museum? Imagine things in nature, or haphazardly strewn around the world, as having a designer or artist. The combinations of processes, both inanimate and animate, such as the grass sprouting through and cracking the sidewalk, can be looked at as a specific instance of mind. What is it like to be that mind, simultaneously live and nonliving?
Do the same with music. How is the noise on the street, or the sounds of birdcall and leaves in the wind, like or unlike some music you’ve heard? Who is the composer? Perhaps it is you? What instruments are you playing?
Pretend
This goes without saying. Who are you? Are you sure? Try being someone else for a change. Try imagining what it would be like to listen to your favorite music if you were a dog. What would it be like to be someone who loves you, or doesn’t know you, but observes you from across the street while you are speaking to a friend? Try it and see. Fully embody it. Go in deep. You might find that person has a whole different set of ideas that might benefit you.