"Without freedom, there is no creation."
- Jiddy Krishnamurti
You know those days when you have, like a hundred ideas what you would like to do, to write, but somehow you are having hard time to convey and articulate your idea? It’s there, you almost have a breakthrough, but your thoughts are fast racing and nothing is coming out. Maybe we should try another way of expressing it?
If you haven't made your inspirational box as suggested in the previous prompt, you can select different items that appeal to you and try to express your idea or come up with a new one, by rearranging items in a collage.
The idea here is that we challenge ourselves, as much as a situation, a question, a problem that we have.
A collage as an art form was especially popular in dada movement. Many artists used this technique to provoke their unconscious thinking and explore metaphysical origins of reality. For example Hans Arp was famous for making a series of collages based on chance; he would stand above a sheet of paper, let squares of contrasting colored paper fall on the larger sheet’s surface, and then he would glue the squares – in any position they took by falling. Arp was interested in I-Ching fortune telling (where coins fallen by chance were interpreted for future forecasting) and he was curios what kind of visceral reaction would his art produce.
So how can you use technique of collaging to exercise your creativity?
The basic idea is for you to find small items, pictures, texts and letters from newspaper –anything that moves you and that you can rearrange into your own collage poem. By collaging your items, a new reality will start to form. Prune anything you find excess and look at new relations, surprises, metaphors, combinations. Your mind will try to justify any item by its origin, position, and dimension. This is an excellent exercise for your creative rebel, to shout, to say, to sing, to whisper anything in particular you can’t. Let this collage poem be the messenger of your creativity. This exercise is a fun to do in groups also, as a team building game, an exercise in leadership skills, perhaps. Possibilities are endless – don’t restrain yourself – it’s good to rebel from time to time. For the example poem below, it is believed, the poet D.W. Snodgrass used a marine manual on self-defense, with some shockingly violent images:
After Experience Taught Me by
Take the first two fingers of this hand;
Fork them out—kind of a “V for Victory”—
Whether there might be something whose discovery
Would grant me supreme, unending happiness.
And jam them into the eyes of your enemy.
You have to do this hard. Very hard. Then press
No virtue can be thought to have priority
Over this endeavor to preserves one’s being.
D. W. Snodgrass