AN IDEAS WOMAN
The word ‘idea‘ is defining the overall theme of my first week this semester. In virtually all my subjects I am being asked for ideas immediately.
In Advcanced Print Journalism, I’m supposed to pitch the idea for my Walkley-Award-winning, thousand word, investigative piece of cut throat journalism (that is sure to employ me immediately), yesterday. How, teacher???
In Film-TV2 I gotta get me some rad access to a documentary subject that will fascinate / cause people to emote deeply / remember, and blog it for all my peers to see (and judge). Just ‘have’ an idea.
In Networked Media, aside from designing my own learning and yeaaaahhhh doing a bit more work, I’ve got to make associations and imaginatively create responses to reading stimuli – constantly.
I like the ‘idea’ of having frequent, constant, creative ideas for sure. Soooooo where they at??? On Sunday (July 28th) a well-timed article landed in my lap. Writer Phillip Adams in his regular column for The Australian Magazine, wrote a piece on generating column ideas. Brilliant man! After admitting he found inspiration in his mothers kitchen draw for an article once, he said:
Where do you get the ideas for columns? … You can get a column out of anything, or everything. From a Lan-Choo coupon to Lenin.
What I like about Adams’ article is that he discounts the aimless and impersonal act of Googling to give your own brain a go: fire up your synapses by imagining those thunks a pinball machine might make as it rebounds a metal ball (read ideas) across the field.
Not only ready to help the columnist but capable of remembering just about everything anyone has ever seen, thought or done. All you need is the right stimulus.
This is definitely comforting. Adams goes on to say that everything is for writing about, just as in painting. Rembrandt thumbed his nose at his posh patrons and did a portrait of a carcass of beef:
It’s not the subject, he was saying. It’s how I paint.
Beginning with a mundane object may just be a starting point, so with silly self-consciousness out of the way:
Spoon? Nah. Ladle > soup > pumpkin > farm > gleaner > Agnes Varda…