Can You Teach People to Be Creative?

Can You Teach People to Be Creative?

“Can you teach people to be creative?” is the wrong question. “Can you teach people to use their imagination more productively?” That’s a better question. But, if your goal is educate imaginative people to generate ideas that lead to creativity, then it’s still not...
A Death in the Kitchen

A Death in the Kitchen

It was a milk curdling scene. Our 20-year old refrigerator quietly passed away one night.  On the floor, a pool of melted water stood testimony to its incontinence.  Its silence—testimony to its demise. The repairman revived it.  Extreme times call for extreme...
She Took Mine

She Took Mine

Eager grade school students will keep waving their hands in the air even after a question has been answered.  So, when you call on one of the remaining hands, the student often says:  “She took mine!” There may have only been one possible answer—as obvious...
Bottled Sound

Bottled Sound

“Halloa! Halloa!  Mr. Phonograph are you there?” Chicago, May 1878   The call rang out in a Chicago Methodist Church as if they were contacting the dead in a séance, coaxing ghosts to speak.  With all eyes fixed on it, the machine distinctly repeated the call....
Palais Idéal

Palais Idéal

“What can you do when you always walk in the same setting, if not dream? As a distraction, in my dreams I built a fairy palace.”     — Ferdinand Cheval, the postman builder of the Palais Idéal   Ferdinand Cheval quit school at age 12 to be a baker’s...
Fire Medicine and the Elixir of Life

Fire Medicine and the Elixir of Life

I visited Fu Yue, bestriding a dragon, Joined in marriage with the Weaving Maiden, Lifted up Heaven’s Net to capture evil, Drew the Bow of Heaven to shoot at wickedness, Followed the Immortals fluttering through the sky, Ate of the Primal Essence to prolong my...
Singing in the Brain

Singing in the Brain

Business people often say that they want creative employees.  But, they can’t agree on what that means.  (They can’t agree because what becomes creative is unknown, defined after the fact.)  They don’t know what it is, but they want it. In the quest for innovation,...
A Doodle Noodle

A Doodle Noodle

Most people believe that time and imagination cannot be coordinated.  A good idea seems to appear unexpectedly, on no schedule at all.  And when an idea doesn’t come, we feel stagnated, desperate for a fresh breeze of insight that doesn’t come when we want it. Then...
The Ten-Year-Old Samurai

The Ten-Year-Old Samurai

“Perhaps it is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.” Akira Kurosawa* In 1920, a ten-year old boy in fifth grade, dressed in samurai hamaka pants and kimono, with a bamboo Kendo sword tied in his sash was attacked by 7 or 8 other boys armed...