Photo by Jeff Pang.
Each morning before dawn, novelist Nicholson Baker would slip out of bed without waking his wife, creep downstairs without stirring his kids, make a pot of coffee, light a fire in his wood-burning stove, flip on his laptop – the only other light besides the flames – and write.
In that dark twilight space between wake and dream, Baker created a quirky novella that celebrates the extraordinary of the ordinary: A Box of Matches. His naïve narrator, a medical textbook editor who lives in Maine with wife, kids, and duck Greta, riffs on everything from the pleasure of how a dishwasher’s top rack rolls out to the exhilaration of scrubbing first thing in the morning a dish left out overnight (“smiling with the clenched-teeth smile of the joyful scrubber”).
What Baker and his narrator embody are what novelist Jonathan Rosen says every great writer possesses: wonder.
And wonder is the vital blood-stuff of Google, of the SyFy TV channel, of fashion designers, of Lady Gaga.
If you really want to be indispensible in your work, if you truly hunger to taste reality, if you honestly want to create and innovate from a mind-carousel space of delight and centeredness, then bring on more wonder. But be careful. It can give you more than you bargained for.
“Life is a spell so exquisite,” Emily Dickinson wrote, “that everything conspires to break it.” Wonder holds us spellbound. It does so in part by calling everything we think we know into question. For a moment, we cease to know. What we deem real is a dream. What we dream is real.
Here are four ways to cultivate creative wonder by exploring the twilight zone at the intersection of night and day, reality and dreams, conscious and unconscious.
Each can be the starting point for a specific piece of work – or just a way of cultivating your sense of wonder and capacity for imagination.
Ask ‘What If?’
Jorge Luis Borges, like a curious boy, poses ‘What if?’ questions and then lets his stories work them out to their logical or absurd conclusion. Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez wonders “What if an angel appeared in our own village?”
Pablo Neruda filled a volume with such thought problems, titled The Book of Questions. Alan Lightman’s novella Einstein’s Dreams is structured as if each chapter were one of the physicist’s dreams about time. Each chapter then plays out the dream, fueled by one of Lightman’s time questions: “What if time were at the center of town?” “What if in a village time ran backward?” Writers never stop asking questions (which is one reason we’re so dangerous to people with unchecked power and so annoying to our friends).
Throughout a typical day, ask yourself, “What is real?” and “What if?” Get in the habit of listing playful questions about reality. What if deer attacked people? (Horror story.) What if the older woman down the street fell in love with your husband? (Fiction, you hope.) What if we ate with our ears? What if mud made us cleaner than water? How do rose petals swim? (Lyrical poetry.)
Get up in the Middle of the Night
Great cinema, music, design, and much true art – awakens that deep interior space most of us access only at night in REM romps.
Walk through your house in the dark. Walk down your street at 3:00 a.m. You might feel as if you’re walking through someone else’s dream.
Log an Entire Day and Night
Keep a list of observations from the moment you arise, recalling brief dream images from the night before; then, note incidents from your morning routine, from work, from dinner, and finally from dreams again. Wonder in your note-taking like Nicholson Baker’s Emmett about the miracle of such small stuff.
If at day’s end you have fewer than twelve entries, don’t flagellate yourself for not heeding everything; congratulate yourself for altering your awareness even slightly. Be persistent. Try more the next day.
Tap Your Creative Unconscious with Bodywork
Twilight time—that state we usually experience either just as we’re falling asleep or as we’re waking up—is a rich time to draw upon dream images. Where wake and dream overlap, this twilight time can also be induced through meditative yoga movements and breathwork.
Apparently, for us to recall unconscious imagery or memories, our brains must contain some alpha brain waves mixed with theta. Neuropsychologist Erik Hoffman, who led a study on eleven experienced yoga teachers in Scandinavia, used an EEG and follow-up psychological measurements to measure the yogis’ brain-wave activity after two hours of a form of yoga called Kriya Yoga. The study showed significant theta-wave activity in both hemispheres, especially in the less dominant right hemisphere, often associated with more intuitive functions.
Choose a form of bodywork that appeals to you – such as yoga, tai chi, reiki, qi gong or simply focusing on your breath – and make it a regular daily practice. Be prepared to be surprised at the results!
What About You?
How do you enter a waking dream state to shake up your old ways of viewing a project or ‘reality’?
Do you have any stories about how you or someone you know keeps alive that native genius of wonder?
About the Author: Jeffrey Davis is a writer and creativity consultant who leads programs, trainings, and retreats around the world for creatives, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and colleges. He also writes the Tracking Wonder blog at Psychology Today and the Hut of Questions blog at trackingwonder.com.
Love this post. Love it. Let the light of your wonder go out and poof, no fire for you… in any of your work. 🙂
Really interesting stuff about the brain waves there. I had no idea there was a known basis for that phenomenon, which means it can be improved through practice. That’s like getting the Keys to the Kingdom right there. I’m sure all of us can’t even begin to count all the ideas or insights we’ve woken with or fallen asleep to, only to have them sink back into the murky depths of our subconscious and dissolve, never to reform again.
Michael: You write, “which means it can be improved through practice.” Precisely. It can. It’s art of the seeming paradox of ‘tracking wonder.’ I do know too well the way those ideas slip away like mercury.
Hi Jeffrey,
Thank you for a very insightful piece.
I like the idea of logging the day and night, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary or as Patrick Kavanagh eloquently put it: “the newness that was in every stale thing”.
I woke last night at 5.30pm, troubled and tired from an adventurous dream, but my eyelids fell back closed like metal shutters. Next time, with the aid of toothpicks if necessary, I’m getting up to write!
Conor
Conor: Thanks for Kavanagh’s quotation. Yes, here’s to keeping on the nightstand a notebook, pen, and a few toothpicks.
A shift in perspective is such a great (and easy) way to spark new ideas and recharge the creative batteries.
I also think simple curiosity is highly underrated in our tech-savvy world. Simple observation and that powerful “What if?” can open up a whole new world.
Wonderful post, Jeffrey. Pun intended.
I was so tempted to shoehorn the word ‘wonderful’ into the title… 😉
It makes me feel quite clever knowing you and I share a brain wave on occasion. 🙂
Stacey: I agree with you about curiosity being under-rated. I’m a fan of living with more questions than answers. Wonder might be curiosity’s quieter cousin. She’s also a little older than curiosity as she comes first.
I have been studying the metaphysical, dream states and visions for 35 years. The point between dreaming and waking is a vital channel of communication to expand the awareness of your self in the awake world. I could write so much about this, but there is a book that tells all, “The Nature of Personal Reality” by Jane Roberts. Being a ‘sensitive’ has lead me into this dream world which is really alternate realities. It is up to each of us depending upon our belief systems what we choose to become real and what stays a dream.
Esther: Interesting. In a client meeting this morning, we discussed important pre-sleep rituals, and the client mentioned Roberts’ book. I’ll take that double-referral in a day as a sign to get a copy. Thanks.
Dream is a rich reality. Reality, a rich dream.
I wonder this is something to do with Hypnagogia??
Hypnagogia. The ‘twilight’ state between wakefulness and the first stage of sleep, or between dream and reality, or
‘the alluring creative space that exists at the intersection of the conscious and the unconscious, and how, as creative entities we can capitalize on this state of mind’, according to http://ikapur.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/the-edge-of-consciousness/
Apparently Salvador Dali knew about this. Before taking a nap, he held a key in his hand and placed a plate on the floor right under his hand and as he drifted off and ‘entered’ that twilight zone, he was woken up because he dropped the key which hit the plate and he got (possibly very surreal?!) imagery as a result and utilised it for his work.
The key? They key to his creativity?
Well, certainly one key… I’m guessing Dali had several keys – and several doors. 😉
Chieko: Yes, what I’m describing has everything to do with that state psychologists call hypnagogia. It’s precisely what Dali, Breton, and other Surrealists sought. It’s not unlike the state Mary Shelley entered for a moment when – at 19 years old – she saw what she described as a dream-like apparition of a dead man revived by electricity (and we know the rest of the story).
Thanks for the Salvador Dali technique – and the perfect pun!
Great post. It has always stumped me a little when you ask: What question are you living today? It is a unique way of starting a day, especially most of us ask: What answers are we going to offer today? We too often focus on the results rather than the process. More time in the process may produce different, more creative results.
In reading this post, the simple act of asking “what if” is missed yet powerful. That simple question can start a spark inside which can inspire so many actions.
I may still struggle with coming up with the question that I am living each day, or I am just not listening to it or being honest about it. Many of the points you make in this post will help in listening and then doing.
Thank you!
Jon: I agree: That question about the day’s question requires careful attention. Just stay with the question about the question. It’s bound to give your work more meaning – and at least stoke more curiosity.
Although I haven’t particularly been through any of these suggested steps before, I think I will try out the first one. Seems very doable at the moment, asking such questions really do create wonder. Merely reading them made me just wonder, what will such a reality be like?
I also think these questions of “what if?” can be very useful in the world of strategic planning in business too. It can help us anticipate the unimaginable moves of our competition or even wonder what could be the not so obvious outcomes of our business decisions. Somehow, in the end better plans would be created.
This is one of the ways I will be putting this tip to use, apart from just writing. For now, I do not think walking on my street by 3am is such a swell idea, my guess is, I might end up on the other side of the dream, 🙂
Thanks for the great Post.
Tito: Thanks for the precise insight into how asking the big “what if?” questions can crack open our old ways of approaching business problems and projects. There’s something emotionally about asking wondrous questions that helps me approach business challenges with more openness and less tension – a disposition which usually yields greater benefits.
Yeah, be careful with the 3 am tip. That tip, though, did prompt many a good novel.
Cheers.
As a visual artist, I am always tuning into my ability to wonder. There is so much in this world for that, if people would only take the time to focus in on it! I love the “What if” idea. New ideas, here I come!
Jeffrey, your post sparked intrigue. Late night thoughts, dreams, waking memories…all predominantly driven by unconscious forces – a whole new world of creativity to tap into.
Specifically I’ve noticed my idea generation when I’m exercising and when I’m in the shower. I’ve wondered why ideas flow so naturally at these seemingly random times. But then I realized these are two points of the day where my mind can just be free.
There is no pressure to think, no drive for results, just authentic thoughts floating by like ripples in the water.
I love the idea of letting your ideas flow during the sleeping hours of twilight. Stuck in the structure and routine of sleeping, waking, working, I have been missing out on a means of imagination. It’s time I become more mindful of my sleeping thoughts, and perhaps go out for a 3am run..see what happens.
Inspiring Jeffrey.
Cheers!
To Chris (and everyone at LA): I’m glad the post prompted greater awareness. Really, most cognitive scientists agree that rational conscious awareness accounts for about 5% of the mind’s operations. The rest? Emotional, intuitive, imaginative, physiological unconscious rumblings that shape and influence the piddly 5%.
Writer Stanley Plumley has written an essay about how he does just what you’re wanting to do – laying in bed and humming in that twilight space.
Interacting with everyone here at Lateral Action yesterday must have primed my imagination last night: I sat with about 20 people in a parking lot talking with and listening to Keith Richards and Mick Jagger talk about their creative process & interact with a prodigy boy guitarist. That was followed by a long complex dream in which I was simultaneously dreaming and writing my book. I awoke with some good leads and ideas for my book.
So, thank YOU.
Thank you Jeffrey for a great post and discussion. And glad to hear Lateral Action is having the desired psychoactive effect. 😉
Such a wonderfully exciting dream you have! Must be the reflection of your waking self.
I sometimes get a terrible nightmare —- like, in a dream I meet up with friends in a pub, and I go to the loo (restroom) and quickly glance at the mirror while washing my hands, and discover the face on the mirror was NOT mine!
And I wake up screaming. In this case, one part of me (somewhere subconscious?) ‘creates’ a dream behind my back and shocks me.
So in dreams, one is the creator and audience simultaneously, and the creator part (somewhere subconscious?) is, at least in my case, far more imaginative or ahead, than the audience part.
The creator part can even plays a practical joke on the audience part; for instance, in a dream I’m convinced that I’ve already woken up, out of bed, dressed and ready for going to work, only to discover that I’m still in the bed struggling to get up, having to do all the tedious process once again!
… anyway, thank you so much for your great post, which made me feel that I ought to have a chat with the dream-maker inside me!
Yes, Keith and Mick must be alter-egos (that, and my 20-mo-old daughter flips through Keith’s memoir with family photos every morning!).
Chieko, you’re hitting on something existentially powerful here that I could barely unravel to some creatives at a retreat in Taos last week and that I surely cannot do in this space. But part of the creative mind is involved in action and part of the creative mind witnesses the creative action. That witness can be a sort of delighted and admiring spectator. That’s all I can say without babbling.
That, and thanks for the perspective on that dream of waking up – one I’ve had many times.
Have a great chat with the inner dream-maker tonight! Cheers.
Chris Barba — My mind works most clearly — and, more importantly, my spirit soars more freely — when I’m either doing nothing at all, or doing something that’s more or less automatic. Your references to showering and running are such activities.
They’re also activities where it’s pretty easy to clear your mind of any second thoughts that maybe you should be doing something else. I think this is why I’ve felt so creative, so centered after an endurance event like a ski marathon. I’d just given my all and realized that this freed me from any further expectation from others or myself.
I have been thinking about that great idea of holding a key in your hand, and when it drops onto the plate, wakes you up. Unfortunately that won’t work for me since there is a sleeping spouse beside me at night, who doesn’t share the desire to be awakened at 1 AM!
Can anyone help me think of an idea to solve this? Something silent maybe, but that you might feel? I have read about sewing a tennis ball into the back of a T-shirt to cure snoring. The idea is that when one rolls onto ones back the uncomfortableness of feeling the ball, prevents the sleeper from staying in that position. Seems like a lot of trouble,…! Anyone have an idea?
I’m pretty sure Dali did the ‘spoon trick’ during the daytime. I find the mid-afternoon ‘nap zone’ a good time for hypnogogic experiments. 🙂
Jeanne: This is a great question – one with which I’m sure many of us can identify.
One tip: Can you fall asleep with one hand propping up a book on your body (if you sleep on your back) or near your other arm (if you sleep on your side)? When you fall asleep, the book’s weight should wake you but not your partner.
I’ve also experimented with some success with lucid dreaming (ways to become aware that you’re dreaming while dreaming) for creative insight and empowerment.
One tip is to prime your dream mind before going to sleep with a cue – something such as, “I will become aware that I’m dreaming when I see a clock or when I look up at the sky.” Lucid dreaming takes a few days of practice (and can make you feel a little groggy), but the results can be worth it.
Hope this helps or leads you to another idea. Let us know what you come up with.
I have for sometime now programed in my head what I want to dream about. I have fantastic dreams. Right now I have a project that I am working on. I have large wood pieces cut in various sizes of triangles they were cut from planks of wood 6 inches thick up 12 feet in length. I dream of moving them around as if I was putting a puzzle together. I set up my dream by thinking about my art project, I tell myself I can change the shape, colors and size of my art piece. I move shapes around. I see myself touching the wood, hammering and connecting the pieces together. I set out picking colors I want to have. I am free to change colors and the shape of my project. When I wake up, I I write down what I have seen in my dreams. I draw the completed project and the colors. I have a sketch book on my at my night table. One of my favorite dreams is about the egg tree. This is coming soon to my website as a painting. The wooden project, that will be added to my website when completed as well. I have a daily goal, it is to create something every day.
Peace to you
Kathleen
Kathleen: This is a great example of creating in the twilight. Your method says a lot about “the other 95%” of the mind, which is largely unconscious, emotional, intuitive, and physiologically influenced.
During the past few nights, I’ve been reading Andre Dubus III’s memoir Townie about his uprearing with an absent, famous writer father and how eventually discovered he could not not write. I’ve woken each morning composing and narrating dream fragments into story lines and premises. My notebook has some new ideas.
Can’t wait to see the egg tree!
Jeffrey