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Invest Your Agony in Ecstasy

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While reaching up to smear off an unsatisfactory cloud-form she had just swirled on, Gail voiced our mutual frustration. “Why does creative work,” she wanted to know, “always demand that you give everything?”

On this third day of practice—one more than we had planned for—we were both tired and more than a bit discouraged that it was taking so long to develop our technique. Thinking we had perfected it, we had begun the final test of rendering it on an actual piece of sky (a 4-by-8 sheet of masonite attached to the ceiling of my studio). But there we stood, the test having failed, still wondering how to get the precise effect we had envisioned so clearly in our minds.

Its not as if we were novices, though. Nor that we had not already worked hard. My partner for this job was an accomplished muralist.  both of us had successfully completed a number of sky-finishes in a variety of styles.  And between the two of us, we had a rich compliment of skills.

Then there was all our preparation. Beyond the class-time each of us had devoted to learning this finish, we had done a fair amount of research—studying cloud-forms in books (and on our various commutes!), taking pictures of actual clouds, analyzing a number of artist’s renderings, and consulting with colleagues. We had even researched and ordered a custom-made brush from a company in England! What resources could we possibly have that we had not already tapped dry?

But, of course, despite our experience and study, we had taken on a challenge. While we had each done sky finishes before, the style and scale of this project was new. The space was a great room with a 16-foot, box-beam ceiling which measured approximately 24-foot square. And we wanted the box-beam frame to seem like a skylight, as if the spaces between the beams were covered with glass. The finish, then, had to appear as realistic as possible.

“Why is it that creative work always demands that you give everything?”  This question is worth pondering.  What it highlights that is distinctive to creative work is the inevitable, frequently overwhelming struggle one finds oneself dragged into when engaged in this kind of work.  I will call it the creative struggle…though one might be tempted to call it an ordeal.  And though the terms might sound extreme, this struggle can sometimes be downright agonistic.  Invoking this word, agony, call to mind a phrase that has become something of a cliche in the art world and beyond, that is, “the agony and the ecstacy.”

The Contrast Between Agony and Ecstacy


Why does the word “agony” go so well with the word “ecstacy”?  I suggest there is something like a karmic relationship between these terms that justifies associating them together.  That is to say, it is the agony that makes possible the ecstacy.  Yes, I do seem dangerously close to invoking yet another cliche, namely, “no pain, no gain.”  But before my reader lets out a groan and throws the magazine across the room, let me explain.

Consider, first, ecstacy.  The word itself is derived from ex-, meaning out, and -stasis, meaning center, standing, or sameness.  Ecstasy is the experience of being transported away from the center, away from sameness.  When put in relation to agony, it suggests the experience of having faced a seemingly insurmountable barrier or limitation and having overcome it.  The experience is exhilirating.  To have a deeply ecstatic experience is to be renewed in one’s spirit.

Creative work can be exhilirating in this way.  When Gail and I overcame the limitations in our technique, we were rewarded with the, always surprising, experience of seeing our efforts come to life, our agony transformed into ecstacy.  As the ceiling began to look less and less like a ceiling and more like a sky, we became inspired with new energy.  As we became confident of our technique, we lost the initial stiffness with which we had applied the paint previously, and we began to play, experimenting with variations, enjoying the task, being playfully child-like.  This energy got infused into the clouds themselves, bringing them to life.  Gradually, we became separated from this work which had taken on a life of its own, even though we had created it!

Our satisfaction, in turn, was not unlike that of a mother who looks at her newborn child and mits that this life must be a gift. Even though she had endured the pains of birth, this life she is holding has a centeredness of being that is independent of her.  It is this otherness of being that any authentic act of creativity produces; it brings the work to life. Though not as emotional as the words suggest, there is an ecstatic satisfaction to this kind of work.

But how does one get to this point of satisfaction? As T.S. Eliot says in The Four Quartets, “one must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.” To achieve ecstasy, one must often go through agony. But agony is the kind of pain we associate with death. What kind of death, one might wonder, leads to ecstatic satisfaction?

In creative work, we are required to reach beyond ourselves, to do some-thing we have never done before, to do something new. But to do some-thing new, we must simultaneously let go of something old. And this letting-go, which is a kind of death-experience, is what accounts for the agony. Letting go of the familiar is agonizing because we are comfortable with old ways.  Their familiarity lends them an, albeit illusive, sense of safety and security.  And they are easy.  We know what to expect with old ways, and we know how to produce it without any chance of failure.  New ways, on the other hand, have to be discovered.  There is a lot of risk–one doesn’t know if they will work. And because everything is new, nothing can be done on auto-pilot. Depending on the depth of creativity it involved, this labor can be agonizing.

Investing Agony in Ecstacy

But not all pain is gain.  Beating one’s head against a wall, for instance, won’t make a person any less rigid in his thinking.  Nor does every kind of agony lead to ecstacy.  In order to invest our agony in ecstasy, we need to orient ourselves properly during the creative struggle.  I want to suggest several guidelines that will give direction to this investigation.

1.  Perseverance.  Simply recognizing and accepting the creative struggle as a normal part of the creative process, rather than allowing it to become an occasion for self-doubt, significantly reduces the difficulty of the struggle. And once we recognize the creative struggle as a normal part of the process, we can more easily find the resolve to persevere. There is a simple kind of genius which is accessible to almost anyone; it is the genius that comes simply from persevering. I like the way Frederick Nietzsche expressed this thought when he said “A long obedience in the same direction has rarely failed… to accomplish something of significance.”

An important point at which perseverance is most needful is when the work seems to come to a standstill. Fortunately for myself, this has happened often enough that I have come to recognize it for what it is. Precisely when I am working the hardest but seem to be making the least visible progress—that is when I am doing the deepest work. If I am working (as opposed to just spinning my wheels; admittedly, the difference is difficult to detect), work is being done, whether I can see the immediate results or not. It is at this point in any creative work that it is good to remember Winston Churchill’s advice: “Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.”

2. Mindfulness.  Because the creative struggle involves the breaking down of habitual patterns so as to create something new, the mindlessness we come to rely on to sustain our habits has to be replaced by mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the state of being  fully present in the moment. But to be mindful does not mean to be focused in a mode of drivenness.  Whereas a driven form of attentive is fixed on a single goal, mindfulness is completely open-ended. In this sense, it is leisurely. Mindfulness draws on what the Zen philosopher, Suzuki, calls “beginner’s mind.” “In the beginner’s mind,” writes Suzuki, there are many possibilities. But in the mind of the expert there is only one.” It is this openness of beginner’s mind that is characteristic of the focal point for mindfulness.

Gail and I looked at a lot of clouds in the process of doing our finish. The longer we looked, the more we were able to see what is actually there. By setting aside our expert-mind—”I know what a cloud looks like!”— and taking on the child-like beginner’s mind, we were able to approach mindfulness. The infinite possibilities of creative perception opened up for us as we moved from habitual at-tentiveness to mindfulness.

3. Grab Anything…Including the Kitchen Sink! Why does creative work demand that we give everything? Well, actually, it doesn’t. It just seems that way. And it seems that way because creative work asks us to draw upon a wider sphere of resources than we are comfortable drawing upon. Because this is so exhausting, it seems like we are being asked to give everything.

When we approach any given task, we establish parameters of resources that may be relevant to this task. But we are relying mostly upon past experience of similar tasks in setting the parameters of what we consider the relevant resources. What happens, then, when our re¬sources don’t seem to be equivalent to the task?

The decorative finishing field is no stranger to this problem.  Consider, for instance, the task of applying paint to whatever surface we are decorating.  The most recognizable tool for the job, the paintbrush, just won’t do for a vast majority of the effects we hope to achieve in the field of decorative finishing.  And that is why decorative artists have thrown down their paint brushes and have picked up everything short of the kitchen sink–plastic wrap, cork, pieces of potato, chamois, sea sponges, credit cards, combs, steel wool, the palm of one’s hand.

Creative work asks us to break free of habitual expectations about how we are going to accomplish a given task. For this reason, our expectations of the skills, tools, materials, and other resources that are relevant to the job have to be called into question.  They may very well be a good place to start.  But once one finds oneself deep into the creative struggle, the best way to proceed is to engage in a mode of proactive resourcing, pulling out all the stops so as to draw upon any experience, memory, resource, tool or material that has even the faintest possibility of usefulness.

The most obvious way Gaind and I made use of this proactive resourcing was when I drew upon my love of quotations and cliches, a fascinations that is more of a part of my academic background than my work in the decorative finishes.  An explanation of the context will illuminate the importance of pulling out all the stops in the midst of the creative struggle.

“Ah, But a Man’s Reach Should Exceed His Grasp …

or what’s a heaven for?” This quote by the poet Robert Browning is printed on the wall in this picture. I believe I first learned it during a class titled “Oral Interpretation of Poetry” which I took during graduate school. Browning was one of the po-ets we studied.

How this quote made its way into this project happened this way. Our client for this job has a good sense of humor. Wanting to incorporate a bit of her own whimsy into this project, she focused her attention on this corner of the room which is conveniently framed by the bulkhead shelf and wall. It provided an appropriate canvas for her “deconstructed sky.” What she wanted was for the sky finish to extend down the wall, but to remain unfinished. The idea was to suggest that the painter had simply given up in the middle of this extended section of sky. He had left it unfinished. The illusion seemed incomplete. I didn’t think people would be able to interpret what was going on in this corner. But I didn’t know quite what to do. As I tried to expand my recollection of resources that might help me find a solution, I suddenly recollected this quote from my study of Browning.

It seemed a fitting quote, not only for the space itself, but also for the client, who is a published author and, at the time we were working with her, was considering furthering her education in poetry. Ironically, the quote also seems appropriate as a final response to Gail’s question. Why does creative work always demand that we give everything? Because, as Robert Browning would say, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

Oops@#$@#! Huh??? Ahah!!! (Part Two)

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Accidents happen… which is sometimes a good thing. When the plans we had made get thwarted in ways that direct our attention toward something better than we had intended, we call it a “happy accident.” This kind of experience is particularly common for persons engaged in exploratory tasks, such as artists and inventors.

As I noted in part one of this article, this kind of mistake is so common to the creative process that it warrants closer inspection. What is it about these kinds of “accidents” that lead to discoveries? Is it possible to learn from them so as to become more adept at the creative process? Can we distill the insights such an analysis yields so as to apply them intentionally (rather than having to wait for another accident to happen)? These questions are particularly relevant for the decorative arts painter because of the powerful role which spontaneity plays in the creation of many decorative finishes.

In part one of this article, we noted that there is a progression that flows from the experience of Oops! (the ac-cident) to the Ahaah! (the discovery). The critical factor linking these experiences is the Huh???, the inquisi-tiveness of the artist or inventor whose agile mind and curiosity cause him or her to take note of things that happen which don’t go according to some predetermined plan.

Of course, the context in which an accident occurs is also essential. It is difficult to take a positive attitude to-ward a spoiled finish when the acci-dent occurs during the installation process. Even then, one can most often realize the learning experience which an accident affords. But the truly “happy accident” happens during the design phase of the creative process.

“Happy Accidents” of Note

With this context in mind, then, I want to consider something peculiar about the “happy accident.” What I have noticed, from my own experience and from my investigation of other people’s experiences, is that the happy accident oftentimes yields what appears to be only a minor alteration. And yet, as minor as the alteration is, the consequences are large. A few examples will clarify my point.

Joe Gregor was trying to figure out a way to speed up the process of cook-ing dinner rolls. Gregor also happened to be a volunteer fireman. When he got called away mid-task of baking rolls to respond to an alarm, he quickly pulled them from the oven half-baked. When he returned, hours later, he reheated his oven and finished cooking the rolls. The minor interruption of his task had prompted him to discover the method by which to produce brown ‘n serve rolls—that is, to package them half-baked so that the purchaser merely needs to finish the cooking process.

Or, consider Joe Pemberton. He was trying to invent a remedy for the alcoholic hangover. Claiming to have discovered a medicine which relieved exhaustion and cured headaches, he instructed his assistant to mix the syrup with water and chill it with ice. While it tasted good, they discovered it tasted even better when the assistant accidentally mixed it with carbonated water rather than tap water. This minor shift through the accidental addition of bubbles resulted in the invention of Coca-Cola. A small shift in ingredients, maybe, but not so small a shift in investors’ bank accounts!

Finally, we might note that the original Frisbee was actually spelled Frisbie. It wasn’t made of plastic but, rather, of metal. And it wasn’t even intended to be thrown. It was a pie tin, stamped with its name brand, Frisbie Pies. Yale University students bought a lot of Frisbie Pies. When they were done eating the pies but still needed a diversion from studying, they began tossing the empty pie tins back and forth. But, being the civilized students that they were, they were careful to yell “frisbie” when they tossed one, so that passersby would know to watch out for the flying object. This minor shift in purpose from a device to hold and heat pies to a discus-like object for recreation, combined with a measure of politeness, led to the in-vention of the Frisbee. While none of these inventions may have been of monumental significance, they demonstrate the same principle that more substantial discov-eries also confirm—that is, that the shift of intention was prompted by the “happy accident,” and which then re-sulted in discovery, was slight. Stated more succinctly, we might note that invention lies just around the corner from convention. But why is so hard for us to turn this corner? Why must we wait for some accident to happen for us to recognize that small but critical alteration of convention that would prompt invention?

I know what John Cage would say. John Cage made a name for himself by “creating” such compositions as 4′ 33″, four minutes and 33 seconds of silence broken into three movements (each indicated by the silent “piano player” lowering and raising the lid of the piano). His point was not that peo-ple should attend to the silence but rather to the random arrangement of car horns, creaking chairs and what-ever other noises took place during the “silence.” This composition of random, accidental sounds was the intended content of his composition.

Cage’s point behind 4′ 33″ and other compositions which he arranged by means of chance operations is to emphasize how our likes and dislikes and, consequently, our habitual pat-terns of perception and action, all collude to interfere with the process of creation. His chance operations offered audiences the opportunity to challenge their own notions of what is worthy of attention. Why do we find it so hard to turn the corner from convention to invention? Cage would say it is because the arbitrary narrowing of our likes and dislikes combined with habitual modes of perception, preference and action make it difficult to redirect our attention and intention away from conventional frames of perception and appreciation.

This, then, explains how an accident, which I have defined as the thwarting of one’s intentions to pro-duce what one had not intended, can sometimes result in discovery. For the agile mind, the mind that is pre-pared to entertain the unexpected outcome, the accident becomes a means of escape from the limitations imposed by our habitual patterns of perception and action.

Three Procedures

And so, one thing we learn from the “happy accident” is that our habitu-ated patterns of perception and action often interfere with our capacity to en-ter into the creative process. The sup-posed accident yields fruitful results when it redirects our attention and we allow ourselves to appreciate some-thing new. We might achieve similar results, then, if we were to figure out a way to escape our own habituated lives so as to enter into the realm of discovery. I want to suggest three procedures by which one might do so without hav-ing to wait for an accident to happen.

But first, let me suggest a context in which one could easily experiment with these procedures. The decorative artist who is serious about breaking through habituated patterns that are interfering with the creative process might commit him or herself to practicing with a particular technique. For instance., I once decided to experiment with feather dusters. I happened to be working in several Victorian houses at the time, and I knew the pattern the feather duster makes in a glaze goes well with Victorian style. So, I decided to dedicate myself to discovering every possible application of this tool I could possibly imagine to create broken color finishes. By limiting one’s scope to a given technique in this way, one develops the intimate knowledge and familiarity of context which facilitates both the likelihood and the recognizability of creative discoveries.

1. Playfulness. The first way to break habituated patterns is to engage in playfulness. Playfulness is effective because, by its very nature, it stands in opposition to habituation. When a child dresses up as an adult and acts the part, he is not relying on his ha-bituated ways of acting. Rather, he is experimenting with something new. Just like the clothes he puts on, he is trying the new role on for size.

Stephen Nachmanovitch describes, in his study of creativity titled Free Play: The Art of Improvisation in Life and the Arts, a particular kind of play that encourages the diminishment of habituated responses. He calls it “galumphing,” borrowing this term from anthropologists who define this action, in Nachmanovitch’s words, as “the seemingly useless elaboration and ornamentation We galumph when we hop instead of walk, when we take the scenic route instead of the efficient route, when we play a game whose rules demand a limitation of our powers, when we are interested in means rather than ends.” (p. 44)  Galumphing is the exaggeration of actions that causes us to throw off the constraints of habituation so that we are free to test out new ways of seeing, thinking and acting. What would happen if I thrust my feather duster at the glaze covered wall as if it were a sword? What would happen if I held three or four feather dusters in my hand and swirled them across the surface so that they swayed like the hem of a ballroom dancer’s dress as she waltzes around a room? What would happen if I pretended the wall was a surface to be dusted and I just used the duster the way it was meant to be used? Granted, all of these methods are ridiculous. But that is the very nature of galumphing—to be ridiculous! In the context of serious play, this ridiculous exaggeration helps us break free of our habituated and constraining ways of acting, thereby freeing ourselves up to discover some new kinds of magic.

2. Randomness. A second and related way to break free of habituation is to embrace randomness. Staying with the sample of the feather duster, the artist might set a bunch of dusters down on her workbench next to a glazed wall and, without think-ing, grab a feather duster and manipulate the glaze in whatever way comes to mind. The object of this experiment is the same—not to try to come up with a new technique, per se, but rather to try to break the grip of one’s own habituated perception, understanding and action.

3. Unlikely Combinations.  A third way to encourage exploration and break down habituated patterns of ac-tion is to embrace what I call “the peanut butter and whatever” experi- ment. In this experiment, one plays with unlikely combinations. The point is this: If creativity can be defined as the marriage of differences which produce newness, then one might court this difference by forcing the most unlikely combinations of things. The person experimenting with a feather duster might, for instance, try odd combinations of color or medium. How about dabbing a feather duster loaded with acrylic glaze on a wet, alkyd ground of glaze? Or how about a feather duster loaded with graphite powder that is dragged and swirled or stippled over a wet ground?

These methods hopefully seem ridiculous and fantastical; the more useless they seem, the better chance they have of breaking down habitu-ated actions and preferences. The whole point of such experimentation is to break free of our habituated ways of doing things so that we can loosen ourselves up enough to turn the corner from convention to meet up with invention. It’s hard work. And precisely be-cause it seems so useless, it can be difficult to embrace. But the joy of discover which one finds around the corner makes it all worthwhile.

WORKS CITED Hyde, Lewis. “Two Accidents: Reflections on Chance and Creativity.” Kenyan Review. V. 18 (Summer 1996): 19-35. Jones, Charlotte Foltz. Mistakes that Worked. New York: Delacorte Press, 1991. Nachmanovitch, Stephen. Free Play: Improvisation in Life and the Arts. New York: J.P. Putnam Sons, 1990.

Synaesthesia (Part 2): The Sound of One Room Clapping

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“Whistle while you work.” Its good advice. But sometimes you can make better progress if you “listen while you work.” Even on the simplest project, I have learned the benefits of listening. For instance…

With my level and ruler in one hand and my painter’s tape and a pencil in the other, I scrambled up the ladder to begin taping off the walls in preparation for rendering a striped finish on the walls of this home library. About halfway down the first wall, something seemed to tap on my shoulder. So I stopped, stepped down off the ladder, and stepped back to survey my work. To my dismay, I saw that the stripes were too thin and too evenly spaced for the size of the room. Rather than making the space expansive, they would create an atmosphere of confinement as if it were wrapped with prison bars!

So I dragged my ladder back to my starting place and began re-measuring and re-taping, altering the width of my stripes from 4 to 6 inches. After a few stripes, I stepped down off the ladder to evaluate—much better. I kept going. But as I approached the same area at which I had been stopped the first time, I stalled again.

While the 6-inch wide stripe was less confining and more relaxed than the 4-inch stripe, it was no less monotonous (and monotone). Of course, the tone of the room, being a rather formal space dedicated to reading and writing, is quiet. I didn’t want the finish to jump and shout. But I did want it to evoke a form of liveliness that would articulate a contemplative intention.

That’s when the image of the 4-inch stripe reverberated in my mind. It suggested a new possibility, the possibility of establishing an alternating rhythm back and forth between a 4-and a 6-inch stripe. Whereas the singular width of alternating color would have created a monotonic rhythm, I could see—or did I “hear” it?—that the slight alteration in the width of the stripes would create a more complex, two “note” rhythm that would shift the tone of the room from boredom to contemplation. A little difference can sometimes make all the difference. So I dragged my ladder back to my starting place a third time and began remeasuring and re-taping—this time in alternating 4- and 6-inch stripes.

Sounds like a lot of monkey-business for a simple adjustment that I might have been expected to know already or, at the very least, might more easily have resolved in the design stage? Be that as it may, the instructive part of this exercise was the heightened awareness I achieved about the possibilities of my perceptual awareness in the act of creating. Each time I was jarred out of my task by a sudden realization, it wasn’t my vision that informed me. I didn’t see that the stripes were wrong. Each time I was stopped in my tracks, it was because of something I…well, heard! 

There’s no other way to describe it—I experienced something like an imaginary auditory reverberation of the differing rhythms established by variations in the width of the stripes. While it may seem like a lot of fuss to go through over such a simple finish as broad-band striping, the very simplicity of the finish makes this experience an excellent demonstration of a valuable perceptual “tool” for use in the act of designing decorative finishes.

Rhythm—Not Just Visual

Notice, first, that rhythm is not just visual. The rhythm of a drumbeat, for instance, is auditory. But rhythm can also be experienced kinesthetically; for instance, the rhythm of dance. Are we to imagine, then, that there is no interaction between these divergent perceptual realms of rhythm? If so, then why does a particularly rhythmic piece of music make us want to get up and dance?

The technical term for what I am describing is “synesthesia.” Synesthesia is the simultaneous experience in an alternate sensory mode of stimulation that accompanies a stronger stimulation in a primary sensory mode— seeing what you hear, smelling what you taste, and so on. If, at first, this sounds bizarre, consider some commonplace examples of synesthesia; for instance, the musical genre we call the “blues.” The melancholia we associate with some tones and intensities of the color blue reverberates throughout “blues” music. Or consider taste; for instance, “sharp cheddar cheese” has an edginess that tastes the way sharpness feels on the palate. Finally, when we turn to a phenomenon that is closer to the decorative finishes—color— synesthetic associations abound.

Color can be loud (as in primary colors) or muted (as in pastels or grayed down colors). Chromatic intensity can blast like a boom-box.  And colors with chromatic intensity have a sharpness that is contrasted by the dullness of grayed down colors. We also readily experience a tactile sensation of color—some colors are soft (again, pas-tels), others have a brilliance that feels bold and hard (primary colors). Colors have also been known to be associated with specific tastes and smells. While the color rose has a floral scent, green is frequently associated with mint, and red-brown or golden-yellow have a musty odor. Yellow is a sour color, while red or pink is sweet; olive green sometimes takes on a bitter taste.

Besides color, many design terms are suggestive of the usefulness of  synesthetic perception in architectural and interior design. The concept of “echo,” whereby a desirable motif is repeated throughout a room and/or building to accentuate its impact, is borrowed by sight from the auditory realm; so, also, is the term “accent.” And we recognize, in turn, that accent fits into the larger concern that a room have a desirable pace or rhythm.

As I suggested at the beginning of this article, rhythm is a particularly in-tense synesthetically oriented design consideration that, when attended to in this multi-sensory fashion, enables us to enhance the overall “liveliness” of a design project. Harmony, including contrast, is another such concern that cuts across several sensory realms; so, also does texture, which can be both visual and tactile. And what about taste? A tastefully decorated room may very well be the penultimate goal of design…but when’s the last time you tasted a room? Clearly, the term is being used figuratively…synaesthetically.

This reference to the imaginal use of synesthesia is instructive. Some persons are capable of an actual, neurologically based experience of synesthesia. For instance, a neurologist reports this discussion with such a synesthete who is commenting on a dish he is preparing for dinner: “Fla-vors have shape…I wanted the taste of this chicken to be a pointed shape, but it came out all round.” But synesthesia is also an imaginal experience which poets and artists have relied upon to delve into the most subtle ex-periences of life. It is this imaginal ex-perience of synesthesia which is most useful for the decorative artist.

Wassily Kandinsky is undoubtedly the foremost artist who concerned himself with this imaginal form of perception—nearly every one of his paintings contains some visual representation of sound. His preference for sight-sound synesthetic associations is based on his assumption that spirit manifests itself by means of sound, which he believed to be the essential structure of the universe. Whether or not one goes this far with Kandinsky, his association of synesthesia with inspiration is instructive.

Synaesthesia, Kandinsky argues, taps into neither the sensory realm of perception nor the realm of abstraction (the realm of ideas or, in the lan-guage of design, the realm of the “concept”). Rather, synaesthetic per-ception taps into the realm of intuition. It enables us to develop a feel-ing for the space. This capacity which synesthetic perception has to aid in developing a feeling for the room assists us in discerning and articulating the peculiar form of liveliness that is distinctive to any given space.

Kandinsky’s description of how synaesthesia operates reveals another way in which this intuitive mode of perception can contribute to the achievement of liveliness in design. Kandinsky uses the case of sympa-thetic vibrations in music to demon-strate how synesthesia functions. Just as a stringed instrument vibrates with an echo when another instrument is played without being touched or one part of an instrument vibrates when the other parts are set in motion, so synesthetic sensation reverberates in sympathy to a primary sensation. Attentiveness to and skillful amplification of these sympathetic vibrations can enhance the liveliness of any de-sign because the primary experience is harmonized with and amplified by sympathetic vibrations in other sen-sory modes. For instance, a motif that is suggestive of movement which is shaped in such a way as to suggest a similarly graceful auditory resonance will have a more pleasing effect than if the motif is suggestive of movement but is auditorially flat. My own experience of recognizing a weakness in the design of a striped finish by attending to its synesthetic resonance in the auditory realm sug-gests another way in which this mode of perception is useful in the act of designing finishes. We are sometimes not able to recognize weaknesses in our designs by approaching them directly—for instance, this happens because we are simply too involved in the process to achieve the distanced per-spective that would allow for a more balanced critique. By shifting attention to the more distant resonance in ac-company sensory modes, we are able to discern weaknesses in our design.

Finally, adopting the principle that a decorative finish should articulate the implicit form of liveliness that is distinctive to a space suggests yet an-other reason to attend to synesthetic perception. A well-designed room comes alive not just visually but experientially. This is consistent with our experience of space which is not merely visual but multi-sensory. Even pri-marily visual features can be enhanced by attentiveness to reverberations in other modes of perception. Especially in a world of multi-media interactivity, we need to cultivate a multi-sensory approach to architectural and interior design. Developing one’s synthetic capacities is a great place to start.

How to Begin?

But where does one turn to begin to develop syaesthetic attentiveness? My own experience is suggestive of one practical possibility. Before I began working as a decorative artist, I was teaching communication. With previous experience as a mental health counselor, it was natural for me to gravitate toward the study of listening. It is no surprise, now, that I revert to listening in my approach toward the design of decorative finishes. The principle, then, is that synaesthetic perception in design can be facilitated by following a principle of economy whereby past life experiences which enabled the artist to develop skills in a different mode of perception. Do you have experience in sculpting? Draw upon it to discern the tactile qualities of a design. Do you have experience in dance? Draw upon the heightened kinesthetic awareness you developed there to help you design finishes which establish a desirable pace for a space.

Since I started this discussion with commentary on a striped finish, I might as well end there too. I once painted a “shadow-stripe” finish–stripes created by alterations in sheen of the same color–in a 40-foot long, 20-foot wide space (two separate parlors with large double pocket doors joining them. I can’t take credit for the finish—the client had chosen it. But she had chosen well—it complemented the vast dimensions and formality of the space beautifully.  It made the space “sing” with a soft, satiny tone.  That’s the first time I can remember talking about making a room sing.  Now it is something I strive for in every room. I want to make the room sing. I don’t always succeed. But developing my capacities for synaesthetic perception and training them so that they contribute to the design process is certainly adding voices to the choir.

Synaesthesia (Part 3): The Sound of the Focal Point

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The client calls it her “story wall.” From a distance, it looks like an organic stone wall. Closer inspection reveals the surface is etched with petroglyphs and fossilized forms. With a wall that reaches 27 foot high and 15 feet across, there is plenty of space in which to etch the requested forms— close to 40!

As the “before” picture shows, my partner and I began with a cinder block and wallboard surface that was framed-in by a fieldstone fireplace base and semi-circular overmantle frame. Our task was to create an organic stone finish that would blend with the fieldstone while remaining a distinctive rock formation. From a distance and to the casual glance, it was to read as unblemished. Only upon closer inspection should the observer begin to identify the symbols etched into the surface. A full discovery of all the images requires a person to sit on the couch placed facing the wall and spend a good bit of time inspecting the surface.

The reason the client called it her “story wall” is because each of the symbols etched into the surface tells a story about an event in the lives of her family—symbols expressive of each child and grandchild, iconic representations of spiritual significance, images from places they had lived or visited and loved, emblems representing vocational commitments, and so on. As the close-up picture on the next page reveals, even the footprints of the home-owners’ beloved, recently deceased dogs were included. (Before their demise, their prints had been embedded in cement blocks. We hung these slabs, then blended them into the surface of the rock formation as we built up the wall surrounding the blocks.)

The wall sits in a log cabin style home in a forested, rural setting. The complete picture, of which the story wall is the focal point, tells the story of a lifetime of love for and ded-ication to the preservation of national forests and natural settings. The daughter, the owner of an art gallery who oversaw the purchase of the picture hanging on the wall, joked that, if her parents ever moved, they would be faced with a difficult task—removing this very personal wall and packing it up to take with them.

AUDITIONING COLOR:  “Okay, Mr. Blue…what have you got to say for yourself?”

In the process of rendering this finish, what aroused my curiosity was the distinctive nature and purpose of the wall; that is, it was to be a focal point, a pivot, a statement that articulates explicitly the meaning that is more subtlety suggested through other aspects of the architectural and interior design of the space.

The project prompted me to begin wondering about the nature of focal points in general. What is distinctive about the focal points of a room? Is this an important distinction for decorative artists to keep in mind as they design finishes?

In The Interior Dimension, Malnar and Vodvarka describe the focal points of a space as a “centralized controlling factor” in the ordering of a designed space (p.46).” Given this role, the focal point of a room is worthy of reflection. Could such reflection inform the design of finishes that might resonate with and amplify the significance of this architectural feature?

To speak of “resonating” and “amplifying” indicates that my thoughts have focused not so much on visual focal points but,  rather, on auditory percep-tion. What might a synaesthetic analysis of the auditory equivalent to the visual focal point reveal about the nature of this important design element? And how might this new insight into these “points” be useful for the design of decorative finishes that either become focal points in their own right—most murals, for instance—or enhance existing focal points—such as a faux marble finish achieves when applied to a slate fireplace?

This article is the third in a series of reflections on the benefits of attending to “synaesthesia” in the design and appreciation of the decorative finishes. Synaesthesia is a form of perception whereby a person is able to have cross-sensory experiences—that is, the ability to see what you hear, smell what you taste, etc. The particular form of synaesthesia which is most commonly invoked, and the one which interests me the most, is that of sight-hearing synaesthesia. As Wassily Kandinsky has demonstrated, both through his “compositions” and his theoretical writings, sight-hearing synaesthesia is particularly compelling in our experience of color.

Whether we realize it or not, most decorative artists make intuitive use of synaesthesia even if they didn’t know the 50-cent word used to define it! Do any of us, for instance, ever make a color recommendation without subjecting the various options to an “audition”? Standing back to look at a sample board taped against a wall of the space for which it is being con-sidered, we listen to hear if the color is too “loud,” too “muted,” too “bril-liant,” and even if it is too “sharp” or too “flat.” But the color of an architectural finish is rarely considered for a solo part. Even when it does play a solo role, we listen to hear whether it “harmonizes” with other colors and design choices in the space. If it screams at us, calling too much attention to itself, we reject it out of hand. If it feels lifeless, we know we’re dealing with a tone-deaf color and politely dismiss it. But if the color and finish are right for the space, its sonorous reverberations can be nearly as intoxicating as the song of the Sirens!

Even the simplest, well-chosen solid color finish can make a room sing (though sometimes one wants a color to hum or even, as is sometimes the case in a children’s room, to laugh out loud. I suspect there are rooms one might even want to yodel! But no, I do not have a picture of a wall finish I’ve created that makes a room yo-del—not yet, anyway!)

The first article in this series (“Imagine the Room”) introduced the context in which synaesthesia has significance. Accentuating the synaesthetic qualities of a finish, I argued, contributes to the over-arching goal of creating finishes which inspire rooms with liveliness. The second article in this series (“The Sound of One Room Clapping”) describes the nature of synaesthesia itself. In this third article, I will demonstrate how this mode of imaginal perception can be employed to perceive what I will describe as the “still point” of a room. Along the way, I will make suggestions for how the decorative artist might incorporate this understanding in the development of finishes which create or enhance focal-still points in interior spaces.

THE STILL POINT

It is no accident of architecture that the fireplace is the most commonly chosen focal point of a room. When lit, it encourages one to pull up a rock-ing chair or settle into an easy chair and dream. The still points of a room, which ideally correspond to the visual focal points, are just such pools of quietude as emanate from a well-lit fireplace on a cold night. Still points invite respite, contemplation, reverie. They anchor the soul that wants to fill the room. According to Gaston Bachelard’s equation of reverie with dwelling, they encourage the deepest dwelling within a dwelling place.

This capacity of the still point to become the perceptual anchor for dwelling can be explained through an analysis of Wassily Kandinsky’s discussion of the point and its relationship to the line. Because Kandinsky’s analysis is grounded in sight-hearing synaesthesia, it is also ideally suited for my particular concern.

Kandinsky begins his analysis of the point by noting its significance for writing. The period at the end of a sentence is a pause between thoughts. It is no empty silence, though. It is, as we say, a “pregnant pause,” the very birthplace of new thought. This use of the point to function as the period at the end of a sentence reveals something fundamental that is retained when taken out of the context of the written language. The point is a silence that speaks, a stillness that resonates with internal dynamism. It is a pool of quietude that encourages a different kind of sound, a sound that goes inward. This is the voice of reverie and contemplation. This quality of the point as a space of inward dynamism derives from its origin in nature as the seed. “In nature,” writes Kandinsky, “the point is an introverted entity pregnant with possibilities.” (554) This inwardly turned dynamism of the point causes it to become “a tiny world—more or less equally cut off from all sides and almost divorced from its surroundings.” The point stands out, separating itself from its surroundings as distinct.

THE STRONG SILENT TYPE

What does this analysis of the point suggest about the focal points of a room? First, that what we call a focal point is also, from a synaesthetic per-spective, a point of contemplative stillness and silence. As stated, the dynamism of the point is inwardly turned. This is in contrast to the line, which Kandinsky defines as the antithesis of the point. Whereas the line is an outward dynamism of movement, the outer aspect of the point is still.

There is, then, a correspondence between the visually determined focal point of a room and its auditorially determined still point. Just as the focal point arrests visual attention, so also, still points are characterized by, at least outwardly, auditory stillness—that is, silence. At the same time, the still point is inwardly dynamic. Both visually and auditorially, the synaesthetically complex focal-still points of room are united in their desire to invoke auditorial reveries and visual contemplation.

The first implication this has for the decorative artisan is that decorative finishes are ideally suited for facilitating this arresting of attention that the focal-still point of a room is meant to achieve. A slate fireplace, for instance, may be favorably positioned in a room so as to become a focal-still point to which one might draw attention. But slate itself doesn’t draw attention! That’s why homeowners who can afford marble prefer it as a material for fireplaces. And, according to a long tradition, those who cannot afford marble prefer slate—much cheaper than marble, the surface and density of slate resembles marble. A faux marble finish is all that is needed to lift the humble slate fireplace to the status of a focal-still point capable of arresting attention. The quiet depth of marble which accounts for its reverie-invoking capacity is embodied in the contrast between the smooth, solid surface and the swirling, water-like movement that is visible in the inwardly intensifying layers of vein structures and drifts.

Other finishes can accomplish the same task, which is to arrest both the auditory and visual attentiveness of the occupant. But this is not accomplished by a loud voice. Rather, it is accomplished by an intensity that speaks softly—a sacred quality that invokes a hushed tone of voice. To achieve this reverential, reverie-invoking stillness, the focal-still points need to be characterized by richness and grandeur. The decorative finishes are well-suited to creating or enhancing this richness.

But notice, also, that stillness is associated with stability. Why is the mar-ble fireplace such a likely candidate for the focal point of a room? Because it is both aesthetically arresting and expressive of stability. The focal-still point of any room tends to be the most stable element in the room—a grand piano, a substantial piece of furniture, a window with a spectacular view—these all communicate stability.

Decorative finishes that are applied to focal-still points of rooms should reverberate this same quality of stability. Leave the airy color-washes and faint stipple finishes for the creation of atmospheric ambiance. The focal-still point of a room demands something more substantial. Think of “the strong, silent type”—that’s the quality one wants to infuse in a focal-still point. What does “the strong silent type” communicate? Stability. That is why materials such as stone and hardwoods are so often incorporated into the creation of focal-still points.

My client’s fireplace wall with its fieldstone-framed “story wall” em-bedded inside it is a perfect example of both stillness and stability. The wall is arresting. It dominates the room. But it is also a stillness that is substantial. This wall is not going any place! It is staying right where it is. (To enhance this feature, we applied an additional layer of structolite in the building-up of our surface. Its sole purpose was to add bulk so the organic stone formation would equal to is fieldstone surround in bulk and heft.) It would have been ridiculous to fill the center space inside the fieldstone frame with anything less substantive than another kind of rock formation. Anything else would have caved in on itself.

THE SILENCE THAT SPEAKS

We dwell deepest when we dwell in silence. That’s what the experience of sitting by the fireplace, engaged in deep reverie, teaches us. We learn a similar truth through the kind of dwelling we achieve in intimate rela-tionships. Two people who can enter into a deep silence together achieve a kind of communion-in-silence that is a source of deep nourishment. Such silence is not emptiness. It is not the silence of people who have nothing to say to one another; rather, it is a silence in which there is an inwardly turned communion, a deepening fullness. The focal-still points of a room should be characterized by this quality. Rather than being loud, they should communicate depth. As a guideline for designing decorative fin-ishes to become or to enhance focal-still points, this means the finishes should have complexity and depth. Multi-layered coloring that is silent on the surface, but which is translucent enough to reveal inward layering of coloration can achieve this effect. This is why, for instance, grand pianos are finished in black lacquer. The depth of the blackness is suggestive of depth of mystery. And one rarely looks at a grand piano and imaginatively “hears” chopsticks being played. What one imagines, when seeing a grand piano in the corner of a room, is something of greater depth and significance. Any quality that suggests contemplative depth is a quality which is enhanced by a decorative finish.

My client’s fireplace wall is a good example of this kind of silence. On the surface, the wall is silent—in fact, it is “stone deaf.” But closer inspection reveals etchings. Deeper in-spection reveals personal signifi-cance in the etchings. Story upon story reverberates within the space of this seemingly stone-deaf wall. And if one digs deeper to contemplate the symbolic significance of the wall in relation to the entire architectural space and its setting for the lives of its occupants, yet another layer of symbolic contemplation is unveiled.

SOLITARY STILLNESS

The silence of the focal-still points of a room bespeaks a solitude that is not so much isolating as self-sufficient. As Kandinsky describes it, “The point burrows into the surface and establishes itself for all time. Thus, it is inwardly the most concise con-stant assertion, which is made briefly, firmly, and quickly.” (547) The implication is that the focal-still points of a room should be concise, “to the point” and self-contained. Focal-still points need to be set apart from the rest of the room. Even if space does not allow for this, it can be achieved by design choices which set it apart in other respects. From an auditory perspective, they are solo voices.

A decorative finish that is applied solely to the focal point can achieve this separation. Especially if it is a complex finish suggestive of con-templative depth, such a finish caus- es the stillness to be unified, integrated and solitary.

My client’s fireplace wall achieves this solo-voice quality in several ways. First, the inwardly directed energy of the frame itself has the effect of caus-ing the wall to draw inward rather than to make an appeal to the rest of the room to confirm its identity. This inward directedness is similarly communicated by the containment of the wall’s dynamism within the fieldstone frame. The coloring of the rock formation so as to harmonize with the fieldstone base and frame communicate an integration of the solid rock formation and the fieldstone surround. Finally, the compactness of the design, which is both ordered and random, are suggestive of an integrated whole that is set apart from the rest of the room while simultaneously informing the room with its symbolic reverberations of the style and meaning of the articulated space. This wall functions well as a focal-still point with its silent, inwardly turned solo voice that “speaks volumes” through its silence. We do not merely look at rooms; we dwell in them. So why is so much of our interior design terminology oriented solely toward visual perception? Interior design of architectural space must be as full-bodied as our experience of it is. Synaesthetic perception, as I have demonstrated in redefining focal points as focal-still points, can achieve this complexity. The decorative artist who develops this capacity for synaesthetic perception will achieve greater complexity and dynamism in the finishes he or she develops. Pretty soon, one begins to hear the walls sing…and maybe, someday, one might coax one into yodeling.

Oops@#$! Huh??? Ahah!!! Part One

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Copyright © Jeffrey Ediger 2012

Thank God for malaria.. .or at least for the attempts to prevent it.

William Perkin, an assistant to an English chemist was attempting to synthesize the organic compound qui-nine, which was being used as a pre-ventative medicine for malaria. By accident, some drops of this mixture dripped down onto his rag. Perkin took one look at the deep and per-manent purple stain the drops had created and quit his research position. With the help of his father, he opened a factory where he produced and marketed his discovery, the first synthetic color in the form of analine dyes (the precursors to modern-day wood stains). Perkin’s accidental discovery had unlocked and opened a door no one even knew had existed. But once that door was opened, others soon followed. The result was the synthetic replication of organic colors.

We call it “the happy accident.” Its the Oops@#! that, for some mysterious reason, prompts us to take a second look–Huh???–which reveals something we may not have been consciously searching for but which seems like an answer nonetheless…to which we appropriately respond with an Ahaah!!! (or, as one notable inventer once cried, “Eureka!,” meaning ‘I’ve found it!’) What we thought was an accident has turned into discovery.

This flip-flop from accident to discovery has happened to so many artists and inventors that one is tempted to make mistakes on purpose! But not all accidents are happy ones.  Many are just plain failure leading to lost revenue and discouragement. What, then, is the difference between mere failure and the “happy accident”? Is there a discernible pattern to the latter which we could learn from and incorporate into our work without having to wait for an accident to happen? This would be particularly helpful for the decorative artisan, who is already inclined to embrace accidental events–for instance, the accidental brush stroke that captures a spontaneity of veining while rendering faux marble. The most lively and convincing faux marble results when we don’t overwork it but, instead, we let the paint flow in a spontaneous, accidental way. The aesthetic skill lies in then selectively manipulating the most interesting flows to create real-istic looking veins and drifts.

The task we face, then, is how to expand and develop this availability to spontaneity so as to incorporate it into the design-stage of inventing new finishes. If the decorative artisan can develop this creative edge, all of his or her finishes will achieve that same liveliness we prize in the best faux marble. In an increasingly competitive business where the novelty of a sponged wall has long worn off, maintaining this creative edge is hardly a luxury. It is a necessary part of sustaining a successful decorative painting business.

The title of my article gives us our first clue about how to develop the necessary skills. The “happy accident,” it turns out, is not as arbitrary as one might first expect. It follows an ordered path from mistake, through wonderment, to discovery. But if we look more closely at a number of the discoveries that have emerged from accidents, we find other similarities from which we might derive principles which will help us become available to discovery. In Part One of this article, I will consider two characteristics of the person who is the recipient of the accidental discovery. In Part Two of this article, I will discuss some hidden reasons why accidents contain the potential for discovery.

Consider, then, the person himself. Taking Perkin’s experience as exem-plary, we note that the accident which turned into a discovery did not hap-pen in an arbitrary, out-of-the-blue sort of way. It was related to what he was doing at the time. While he was not trying to synthesize color, he was trying to synthesize something. All the accident did was to shift his focus of attention from one experiment to another. Notice, also, that it did not happen while he was in a production mode of operation, intent simply on getting the job done (see my article, “What Kind of Time is Money?”). Rather, Perkin’s discovery happened while he was busy about the task of experimentation. And so, the first thing to note is that the happy accident, more often than not, happens to persons who are busy about the task of exploring. Its as if the person were concentrating so deeply on discovery that even his mistakes fail to throw him off track but, instead, reveal something worth finding.

How might the decorative artisan translate this principle into his or her work?  First, by setting aside time for experimentation.  The artisan who becomes obsessed with making money, accepting one job after another with never a pause for education or experimentation or even the slightest variation from his or her portfolio samples soon finds him or herslef dominated by the production-mode mentality.  Eventually, this artisan’s work will become stale.

On the other hand, one doesn’t have to quite everything, clear the books for a week, and lock oneself in the studio.  While concentrated times of experimentation provide an important and distinctive opportunity for growth, there’s a less demanding way to incorporate experimentation into one’s work.  A slow, steady growth in creativity is least likely to produce artificiality and affords deeper integrations than the sudden bursting forth of a life-changing epiphany.  Like most of life’s achievements, maturity in creative design comes gradually. For myself, the best way to break up my experimentation into small units that can be routinized is by incorporating it into the process of making sample boards. When I prepare sample boards for a particular project, I set aside more time than I think I need. I begin by rendering the explicit finishes the client and/or designer and I have agreed upon. But then I expand my focus. I open myself up to other possibilities. I ask myself “what if” questions and see where it leads me. In the process of this questioning, I focus more upon the effect the client and/or designer said they were intending to achieve than I do upon the particular finish that had been chosen to express this effect. I call this “creative listening.”

In creative listening, we listen not just to what is said, but to what the speaker would like to say if he or she could find the words. Creative Usten-ing attends to unspoken desire—in the case of the designer and/or client, it is listening to the design that is imagined which is not clearly visualized enough to put into words.) I also recollect other details that reveal the client’s taste— things they have said about themselves, past design decisions that have been made in and around the space, even books I see lying around. All of this material is fodder for my sample-board research-mill. It was in the context of just such an experimentation mode that a happy accident recently happened to me which resulted in the finish on a fireplace surround pictured at left. The designer had skillfully selected two colors for the wall treatments which harmonized with the coloring of the furniture in the room. But she had not specified a particular finish, nor had she specified that they be combined together. She just said she wanted some kind of “textural finish” on top of a neutral background.

When the client and I sat down to look at my portfolio, she chose the feather-finish which is on the walls adjacent to the fireplace. She then asked if I would do the same finish on the fireplace surround, but using the deeper of the two colors the designer had specified. I dutifully complied with this request, but I had a feeling neither of us were going to like the effect. And so, in addition to the specified finishes, I experimented with other possibilities. I focused, in particular, upon the designer’s choice to match the coloring of the furniture. Noticing that the cushions on the couch were made of suede, I asked myself if perhaps the designer’s intention to echo the furniture in the wall finish might be carried one step further—that is, by rendering the coloring she had chosen in a suede-finish on the wall surface.

After many frustrating attempts to render a monochromatic suede finish, none of which I liked, I became a bit more careless. This freeing up of the self from constraints may very well be a factor in the prompting of discovery from accidents. Spontaneity in experimentation is as elusive of a rhythm as the “happening” of jazz in its most improvisational mode. I think we do well to consider the many ways in which the decorative finishes rely heavily upon a performative mode of aesthetic activity not just in the rendering of them, but also in the design-phase. In fact, there may only be two important modes of our craft—preparation and perfor-mance.

When I let myself go in this improvisational way, that’s when it happened. In a random, almost desperate gesture, I ragged on a second color over one of my first sample boards that had already dried. But the glaze went on too heavy. So I tried to lighten it up by stippling it. But I had forgotten that I had just washed out my stipple brush but had not shaken out the excess water. The washed out, stippled glaze that resulted from this mistake created an effect which caused me to cry “Ahaah!” Surprisingly, I had created an effect which not only was perfect for the space but which, oddly enough, reminded me of a finish I had tried, but failed to create about a year ago. (I’ll say more about this observation in the second part of this article) Of course, it took me 20 more sample boards to reproduce the effect! But the end result was worth it.

And so, the “happy accident” more often than not happens to the person who is doing to work of experimentation. One almost comes to recognize the failures of work done in this mode as just another way of going about the creative task.

But besides the Oops#@!, we need the Huh ? ? ? if the Ahaah!!! is going to happen. If the happy accident is dependent upon diligence in experimentation, to what do we attribute the discovery of something worthy of attention when an accident happens?

Let’s consider Perkin’s experience again. We have to remember that Perkin wasn’t trying to synthesize colors when he discovered analine dyes; he was working on a preventative medicine for malaria. What quality of mind accounts for this leap? A second example will make it more apparent.

Consider the accidental path which led toward the invention of Post-it Notes. A man named Spencer Silver was working in a 3M research lab, trying to produce a super-strong adhesive. But it was an absolute, unde-niable failure. Ironically, his adhesive was not super-strong, but super-weak. The failed mixture sat on the shelf in despair for four years until another research scientist named Arthur Fry happened to become frustrated while singing in his church choir. When the markers he used to keep his place in the hymnal kept falling out, Fry remembered Silver’s adhesive. He coated these markers with the mixture and discovered what he had hoped to find—they stayed in place when he wanted them to but, when lifted, they did no damage to the page.

Happy accidents remain mere accidents if they are swept up off the floor and tossed in the waste bin. But Spencer didn’t do this. Even though he could think of no immediate use for his failure, he valued it enough to save it. Along comes Arthur Fry, then, and he not only has the proverbial “necessity is the mother of invention” working in his favor—I’m referring to the necessity of keeping track of his place in his hymnal—but he also has the capacity for inquisitiveness. Sitting there in his choir seat in the basement of his church, Fry slipped into reverie. He wondered. He dreamed. He was curious. AND, he remembered…

Perkin had this same capacity. He wasn’t trying to synthesize color, but he was trying to synthesize something. But when he failed to synthesize what he had intended, he didn’t stop looking. Instead, he noticed the unexpected thing that had happened along the way…which is what led him to Ahaah!!! Curiosity may kill the cat, but it can sometimes yield gold for the explorer. Diligence in experimentation is what causes even a person’s mistakes to become just another part of the process. But the mistake doesn’t go any further unless diligence is combined with the genius of curiosity.

But we don’t have to wait for accidents to incorporate curiosity. It can become a habitual way of going about our business. More important than the individual acts of attending to curiosity, we benefit most from developing a habit of wonderment. The decorative artisan who is working on a design project, for instance, might be walking down a city street when he notices a stain on the side-walk or a pattern of cracks in the cement that inspires discovery.

Nature is another well-known source of discovery for design ideas. But one has to be prepared to find something. Agility of intuition and perception is an essential quality of the explorer. By means of this acrobatic mind, the explorer is able to bend and stretch understanding in ways that allow the mind to leap from one place to a seemingly unrelated place and, in so doing, to discover the bridge that integrates them in a lively way. The discipline of attentiveness in experimentation, then, combined with the agility of mind that is receptive to unexpected, but lively connections are two qualities of the person which enable the Oops@#! to prompt the Huh??? which then erupts into the Ahaah!!! of life’s “happy accidents”! In the second half of this article, I will consider qualities of the accident itself which contribute to this flip-flop from accident to discovery.

Copyright © Jeffrey Ediger 2012

 

Works Cited:

Hope, Augustine and Margaret Walch.  The Color Compendium.  New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.

Jones, Charlotte Foltz.  Mistakes that Worked.  New York: Delacorte Press, 1991.