Organic Thinking
is always in progress, changing a bit
It's about Learning about Human Nature through Making with Natural Materials
It's also called
Mindful Making, Nature-Thinking, Plant-Thinking
Stirring The Creative Unconscious. Tree Thinking,
Alchemy, Surrealism
It is predominantly Image- and Object-based.
It does have its own language/words which are different from Logical Thinking or Technical Thinking. As thin as words are, they can help shape the way we think and re-think about this. So here's a starter collection of words, descriptions and categories to help develop this Organic, Mindful Way. Some already have Practices and Actions attached, so you can start RIGHT NOW:
It's Nomadic: No Studio, Workshop, Sanctuary needed.
Just simple, self-directed, anywhere, anytime
Encounters with Chance & Accident & Play done while waiting
somewhere, sitting on a train, plane, bus, car. This is the start of
Mindful Making... Being MORE Where you Are.
It's sharing the control of the moment with what's around.
It Loves DISTRACTIONS: Allow yourself to moodle, to wander,
to be amused, distracted Have you seen Deadfly art? or these?
It's about ACTIVE IMAGINATION: an inner dialogue with
someone unseen. Be a fly on a window in an attic in December on a grey day
Carry/USE simple pocket tools: gluestick/cards,a small knife
First Make Cards that Remember and Record Your Life Markers events, people, recurring themes, symptoms, body indicators: chills,
times of tears, feelings of certainty; sympathies, your dreams.
Biographical Deck of Homemade Cards. There will be Suits, and Trumps and, yes, Wild Cards and Jokers.This is not an execrcise
in self-absorption or narcissism. It is your attempt to get in touch
with your Ground, what you arrived here with and what Life Markers
have shaped who who are. On those modest little Cards, start to
record something from these areas of your life. See what "suits"
develop.
Haiku Feeds It. Finding the universal in the specific; a tilted frame
use the expected in unexpected ways; Read Basho, Buson, Issa
It plays with Surrealists: Try those Techniques they developed: use smoke, dust, accident, chance
It presents in Four Needs or Four Appetites.
Do they seem familiar? Again, on the Cards, jot down just words
or markings of your memories or times of Awe and Wonder;
When have you been Feral, Risk-Taking,
What Skills/Strengths do you have? What have you done to
make one thing into another? What are you good at? Noted for?
Are there Big Stories in your life that you still find yourself
remembering and telling. and living out again?
It's Chthonic: (THO-NIK) There's always something churning down there. It's earthy, Imaginative, out of sight, powerful, amoral. life-engaging, enraging? Look Here
It's Ecological/Interactive/Inclusive: branching/changing Trust the Hunt and the Found to hold/generate their meaning Need to adjust the Story, make room for unexpected events, REVELATIONS, Discoveries; remains open to whatever emerges from ongoing exchanges; not self-certain monological deduction or formal proof, but discovering truth through active listening and dialogue with parts of your s'elf
Inclusive.The Organic is just there, always there. Lots of people, just by being alive, now have a hand in what gets done; how it gets done; how it changes in the middle .It's collaborating with like-minded adventurers into the Creative Unconscious. It is not essentially hierarchial.I do not or should not need go to the Mountain and bring back those Tablets.
It's Fruiting. There is a time of revelation, when the attention, the weathers come to fruition. a revelatory event, revealing elusive trends in the life of head, hands and Heart. It’s the quiet, thoughtful making of objects to allow spirit to manifest in matter. not unchanged!
It's Transformative: TRANSPERSONAL/SPIRITUAL (intuitive) The product of creative expression arising out of the pure joy of creating, grounded in a contemplative connection .
It's Personal/Rooted in You- YOU practice -- expressing from experience, from whatr you know, not about experience;
It's about Vertical Movement from common to uncommon, The Search for the Magical Other (our deferred s’elves) Creative Unconscious
It's Seasonal: never finished, an infinite task, an ongoing play with others, the ancestors, the others of our time.
It's Action-Oriented: patterning, re-patterning on the materials of life: the relationships, the feeling, the tasks and delights. Emerson? Peckham?
It's Multi-Level Activity: Alawys happening on several levels at once: Like the Alchemists Visual-poetic-narrative Intellectual,-pragmatic-intuitive
Buddha helped us out:" "Things are not what they seem, Nor are they Otherwise." Thank you. There are always Hidden Others
List More Threes we know about:
It Needs time for Digesting as an honored activity:
Rest/Reflection/Feedback/burping/Farting on what patterns,
what common materials tasted good
It Widens, deepens, broadens the context, quality of discovery --beyond “information” to include alternative modes of knowing feeling, sensing, and intuiting ; use of contemplation, dreams, intuition, synchronicities, dialogue with inner figure /muse; chance, accident The Uncanny; Mistakes, Working with Disorder
STORY MAKING: emphasis on the use, value, and power of stories;
COMMUNITY MAKING Emphasis on similarities shared realities with others, not differences; We Hunt and Gather in a Band. We are not always isolated “artists”, but colleagues, confederates, of the CreativeUnconscious. letting go of egoic control and preset structures; create of a group story of seasons, harvest, cooking digesting
Words Involved in this are ORGANIC/BODY-based
List Keep a list on those CARDS
"Wellness/Sickness" cancer, gout, lyme, death, dying,
“Bodily functions/fluids” shedding, expelling, exfoliating, scabbing, oozing,
"Growing" ripening, gathering, weeding,
Have the INTENTION to go on this Hunt. Agree that this is something you are interested in doing.
LOOK at a few decades of pictures of yourself. What do you see about yourself? What stays more or less the same?