Announcement: Questions about Creativity

"The man who has many answers

is often found

in the theaters of information

where he offers, graciously,

his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,

to comfort himself, makes music."

The Man Who Has Many Answers by Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings.

Come and make conversational-music with me!

To launch my new resource The Right Question I am hosting a facilitated discussion called, funnily enough, The Right Question.

Art work by Rebecca Stewart

Over a lifetime of not only creating stuff myself, but supporting, witnessing, and experiencing other creators at work, I have come to understand that asking the right question, a question that gets people to reflect or imagine or push past preconceived assumptions, is worth a thousand pat answers.

When I come to mentor people on developing creative process I have found that my secret superpowers are the ability to listen deeply and then to ask the right questions. I have found that my mentees have all the wisdom, common sense, guts, and imagination that they actually need; what they require is the ability to unpack their experiences of being creative, or being creatively blocked, with the support of a deeply interested and empathetic sense-maker (i.e. me). As they find the answer that is right for them at that moment in time, my job is to come up with the right questions to help the dialogue flow, and flow in the direction of insight.

Over the years I have built up a repertoire of questions that I can call on to get a conversation started or to keep it moving past a block. I decided to right them down and compile them into a resource.

So, I am inviting you to join me in the launch of this resource to celebrate asking the right question.

I love the last two lines of Oliver’s wry poem:

“While the man who has only questions,

to comfort himself, makes music."

I find them pleasingly ambivalent:

Does the person who only has questions need to make ‘music’ (or turn to some other creative activity) to comfort themselves?

Or does the music-making arise out of deriving comfort from having questions rather than answers?

What do you think? And which person are you?

Regardless, both types of people are welcome at my event:

Date: 4 April at 10am AEST and 7pm AEST (to accommodate different time zones).

Tickets cost $20 or $12 (for those on low incomes). Each ticket includes a free copy of the resource.

Bookings and information can be found HERE.

See you there!