June Prompts from Other People's Ideas

On ecologies of talent, better naiveté, and iterative ick

Brian Eno made up a word (I think?) called “scenius.” Referencing a collective “ecology of talent,” he posits that at any moment the cultural zeitgeist is driven by a central group of people who are supporting, copying, and iterating on one another’s work.

I like this idea when it’s not literal; a “scenius” isn’t siloed to a single group or a prescribed kind of attention. It’s individual, able to be curated by any assemblage of ideas that feel most relevant to you at the moment. Generative thinking inevitably prompts connections of all kinds and between disciplines, regardless of timeline or original intention. Forge your own ecologies!

Thus, a list of prompts for the month forged by voices that are connected through my own forms of reasoning. May they inspire coming to your own conclusions.

Prompts from Other People’s Ideas:

1. MIND MELD

Olafur Eliasson wrote, “I always try to make work that activates the viewer to be a co-producer of our shared reality.” Be it a meaningless exchange or poignant experience, recall an instance of sharing your reality with someone else.

2. UNJUST INERTIA

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “To me the important thing is not to offer any specific hope of betterment but, by offering an imagined but persuasive alternative reality, to dislodge my mind, and so the reader’s mind, from the lazy, timorous habit of thinking that the way we live now is the only way people can live. It is that inertia that allows the institutions of injustice to continue unquestioned.” Identify something in your life that’s degrading by being stagnant, ignored, or left unchallenged.

3. PRODUCTIVE NAIVETÉ

Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” When did you benefit from what you didn’t know?

4. DAY IN, DAY OUT

May Sarton: “To go with, not against the elements, an inexhaustible vitality summoned back each day to do the same tasks, to feed the animals, clean out barns and pens, keep that complex world alive.” What parts of a daily routine are slowly tallying up to something larger? Identify something you’re doing repeatedly, incrementally, that is serving the long view.

Below, 4 more prompts for the month for the eyes and minds of our subscribers…