The photograph above, “Follow Me”, © 2015 by William B. Watkins, can be viewed in a larger format in the Image Gallery. On that page, just double-click on the image to view it in a large, slideshow mode.
As you know if you read the last blog entry, I waited to get a little more response from blog readers about the post “Towards a Multi-Disciplinary Approach” and the exercises in it before continuing on the subject.
While not completely unexpected, I have to admit that I was surprised at exactly how much confusion the exercises stirred up.
When I asked some specific people for feedback or about whether or not they had done the two short exercises in the post, the prevailing answers I got were along the lines of “I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do.” I asked if the directions were unclear, concerned that I had gone over people’s heads somehow. No, I was assured, they weren’t.
Hmmmmm . . . . I wondered what the problem was then. “I didn’t know what this was for,” someone said. “I wasn’t used to doing things that way,” said another. “I didn’t think I was smart enough,” a very bright person told me.
Aha! I was onto something! Finally, I began to get to the bottom of it. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” one friend finally confessed. “I didn’t know what you wanted me to do.”
There it is! And, ironically, this is something we see with students after they get to a certain age (younger than you might think, by the way — I’m talking mid- to late- childhood — age 7 — and certainly by puberty). The focus shifts away from the creative, intuitive, free, and fun towards the realm of pleasing the teacher (or boss) and concerns over being “right” or “wrong”.
Foundation board member Peggy Larkin Kelly, a psychologist, has worked with our foundation’s instructors several times in helping us to understand these unfortunate blocks from a developmental standpoint: Many of our students are at the age where they cross to the “concrete operational” stage, where desire for the “rational” and “logical” begin to reign supreme. And I think it’s where creativity begins to wane for most people.
This feedback was really helpful because it also reminded me of the “fear factor” that comes in whenever most of us are asked to try something new and particularly the “fear factor” that gets in the way of so many people who are in the performing arts.
Another friend, Jim Thomason, who is creative but not working in the arts, totally understood the concerns and this fear factor. He has seen it in business, where he’s tried different creativity exercises to achieve certain team results.
Jim completely got what the exercises in the post were about, by the way, as we discussed them. Jim’s contention that all “ego” arises from fear — “I’m not going to do it ‘right’ ” or “I’ll be ridiculed (or fired, or won’t get the job or the promotion, etc.)” — resonates strongly with me from my experience in working as a performer as well as in being a teacher of music and drama.
Two other questions that Jim raised for me about resistance related specifically for the exercises in that post are interesting, too: “Why should I do this if I’m not in the arts?” and “What is Bill getting from my doing this?” .
The first one we can deal with more extensively in another post but I’ll tackle them both briefly here. First of all, my purpose is to expose you to some of what we are doing in our educational initiatives at The Earl Wentz and William Watkins Foundation. I also believe, as Jim’s experience points out, that these techniques can be used in all sorts of arenas. They expand a person and help him or her to make decisions about what is most appealing to that person (NOT to me or anyone else) and then use some critical thinking skills in stating the reasons for the preference.
There’s no hidden agenda for me, there is no “right” or “wrong” answer, and I have no way of seeing who is responsible for what answer. Like you (if you get to the end of each exercise), I can only see the summary (e.g., 60% chose X) and the written response. There’s no personally-identifying information.
So, if you haven’t done the two exercises in the January 17th post or if you want to do them again, I would encourage you to do that before going on to the next set of exercises, which can be found here.
P.S. The answers aren’t for me; they are for you. Relax and have some fun! Stick with this and see where it goes!
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