Creating a Wonder Wall
A non-rational tool for dealing with Creative Crisis
For decades, I’ve fantasized about a Wonder Wall … you know, those walls where the detectives pin all the details and photos on a wall and then stand back and suddenly see connections where they had missed them before. That wall where wisdom lurks amongst the metaphors and mysteries just waiting to be seen.
Two years ago, I was gifted exactly that fantasy … or at least the bare wall possibility of creating that fantasy: 18’ of hallway entering my apartment in the retirement complex I now call home. Now that I had it, I didn’t know what to do with it. It stayed blank for months and then one side gradually started attracting fabric art that didn’t fit anywhere else.
The other side just sat there until I finally created an eight-foot cork board, supplied it with post-its and push pins, and enlisted it as a thinking board for my then-latest learning project. That lasted a few weeks until it was reinvented as my Spanish learning board. However, I mostly ignored it. It didn’t call to me.
This morning, that incarnation began to crumble as I recognized its failure as a learning resource … its fixed nature conflicts with a rapidly expanding learning project such as a new language. However, centered at the top of the board was a card put there a few weeks ago and then promptly forgotten.
Encantamiento Salvaje … Wild Enchantment
As I stood there looking at those words, it dawned on me that I had completely missed the point of the wall of my fantasies. I was using it like it was a database rather than a … a … a wonder wall where images could mix and mingle and create new connections.
I’m currently in a creative crisis, pulled apart by the proverbial wild horses galloping in different directions. Part of me is headed toward an adventure in Mexico … the other part believes I should stay here and work for saving our democracy. Neither one is attracting clarifying attention from the outside world so I am flipping back and forth like a pendulum. It’s a bit crazy making, for me and for my friends who are kind enough to listen to my going on … and on … about it … and now, you get to tap into my confusion.
Writing this, acknowledging my angst, lights a fire … well maybe a candle. I want images and metaphors … the urge to take down the current wall needs music, so dancing through “Turn My Ship Around” and the haunting, extended version of “Far Over Misty Mountains,” I strip the wall bare, imaging a wisdom wall that would hold the answer to all my questions.
I start with laminated images from the years when I used them as ice breakers for facilitated innovation and creativity trainings and workshops. Gradually the wall takes shape making a place where I can stand, open and willing to let inspiration, intuition, and the unknown play their way into insight and answers … I hope.
It is now Wednesday; my next Substack post is scheduled for Saturday. I’ll pick this back up later … … …
Thursday: tearing through hundreds of laminated images, I find more “stuff” … sheets of Found Words cut from hundreds of magazines, folders and folders of unlaminated images. I realize I need more space and order another eight feet of cork board tiles.
Deciding to test the system, I ask for insight on my delimma … adventure in Mexico with all its uncertainties … or contribute to political sanity needed as we head into our November election. While it doesn’t have to be an either or, it’s likely that my head and energy won’t have room for both. One will teeter while the other totters.
So, I approach the board and one image seems to represent my challenge … too many options.
Words jump out: A Samuel Butler quote: “All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.”
And: “The experience is priceless.”
And: “moose bumps”
First thoughts: She’s enjoying having so much going on. Nothing makes rational sense. She can’t see through those glasses but maybe she doesn’t care. In some worlds, even banana peels dance.
All in all, a strong leaning toward experience and fun. The “moose bumps” though make me wonder. Moose bumps could be just bigger, harder to ignore goose bumps … or if a moose bumps into you, you will definitely know it. Going to let this stew awhile longer.
And then
brought me the story of Grace Linn who is still an activist at 101 against book bans … and, of course, Dan is 92 and still a brilliant voice in the current political wilderness. The pendulum swings back toward political activism. Come on Wonder Wall, speak to me.
Friday. The pendulum is still swinging, but gently. Timing for the Mexico adventure is April/May … I would still be back in time to do my part for the election … and wandering about a different land might stimulate ideas about what I could do that might be worthwhile.
Bottomline: I’m already love my Wonder Wall. Ideas are stirring about how to share bits and pieces of it with you, so please let me know what you think, starting with the poll below.
I would also love to know how you solve dilemmas like this?
I suppose that’s the key: to be able to differentiate that one, quiet and mysterious inner impulse from the morass of confusing and conflicting thoughts from the world.
As Rumi said, “There is a voice that doesn’t use words, listen.”
“I would also love to know how you solve dilemmas like this?”
A dilemma only exists when trust in my innate intelligence is lacking. That’s when the thinking mind comes online and starts presenting me with choices between this and that, now and later, and right and wrong. In my reality, I only have one choice in life: trust my inner voice or not.
To trust or not to trust. That is the question.