I Shut My Eyes In Order To See – Imagination #4
Open Eyes
There is a funny thing that happens on Periscope, the live video broadcast app I used daily (@thenapkindad). It’s international and because of that men from all over the world, especially from Turkey and the Middle East, will come on the broadcasts of women and say ‘Open Bobs’. What they actually mean is ‘open boobs’ or ‘show me your boobs’. This usually results in the woman broadcasting and many of her viewers blocking the man. It never results in the woman showing her boobs. Periscope is actually really pretty good about not allowing nudity and sexually explicit broadcasts to stay on.
Open Eyes
When I am watching broadcasts I don’t say ‘open boobs’. It’s not that I would mind seeing boobs, some of my best friends on Periscope have very nice ones I am sure, but I am not there to see them. But sometimes when I watch scopes I do want to say ‘Open Eyes’. This most often happens when I am randomly browsing scopes. I will come across someone who is bored and has nothing to say. They expect those watching their broadcast to entertain them instead of the other way around. They tell you they don’t know what to scope about but will still be scoping, and usually boring their audience into oblivion while doing so. Then there is the type who basks in their horrible situation. They seem to brag about their dysfunction, making it into popular entertainment instead of fixing it.
Shut Eyes
What I sometimes feel these people need is to open their eyes. But how are they going to do that? I think for them to open their eyes they need to shut them. What they all seem to lack is creativity. The bored ones aren’t seeing a creative direction for their attention. The dysfunctional ones aren’t seeing a creative solution to their dysfunction. Their eyes have been open the entire time and it obviously hasn’t led to them finding solutions. So I say they need to Shut their eyes and imagine.
Uniform
What will shutting their eyes do? Hopefully they can strip off the constraints of ‘standard’ and ‘tradition’ and ‘expectations’ and allow creative and imaginative ideas and solutions to come up from their subconscious.
Making connections between disparate and incongruous things is at the heart of creativity and that usually can’t happen if there is a lot of ‘NO’ going on in one’s head. You would think that having your eyes open would allow you to see creative connections but often we see what has been designed by others who are looking for standardization and uniformity, not individual uniqueness. A quick look at the main commercial centers in the US will tell you that – big box franchise after big box franchise looking like you are in Anywhere, USA.
Unique
But shutting your eyes? Shutting your eyes allows you to dream. You can see the connections between things that don’t seem to belong together. You can allow your own unique mind to take precedence over the corporate mind that wants you to fit in to their box.
In order to imagine “I shut my eyes in order to see.”
Drawing and Commentary © Marty Coleman | Napkindad.com
Quote by Paul Gauguin, 1848-1903, French artist
I bought this painting by Gauguin on a postcard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City when I was a young teenager. I had it up on my wall wherever I lived or in my studio for close to 30 years. I probably still have it tucked away in a drawer or portfolio somewhere. I always loved the golden color of the main figure and the perfect tilt of the head of the woman at the side. The genius of Gauguin in having the women both look off in the way the do led me to wonder often what it was they were thinking about and looking at.
Paul Gauguin, Les Seins aux Fleurs Rouges, 1899, oil on canvas