It's our third collab session, and Jon has let me wave my hands and talk poetically at him for about 60 minutes. Then he says THE WORDS.
"Exploration leads to adventure." —Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way
👨: "It's time to build it."
My body goes rigid. My brain shuts down. But he's not wrong.
After all, we both know how this works. We've got years and YEARS of professional expertise in moving ideas from idea to launch. We've helped others across all kinds of industries get things out of their heads and into the real world.
We both know the frameworks and tools that get it all done.
Build → Measure → Learn
Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test
Discover → Validate → Build → Launch → Evaluate → Iterate
Ideate → Prototype → Align → Implement → Validate
Etc & etc.
👩: Okay.
But Jon doesn't start prototyping. Instead, he reads my body language. And then, he says something that no human being has ever said to me in my entire life.
👨: Do you want to do some erasure, instead?
BACK UP! ⏮️🌪️🕰️
The 🤖 says: Erasure is a literary form in which a writer creates a new text by selectively removing, blacking out, or obscuring words from existing work. What remains transforms the source material, revealing unexpected meanings through absence and silence as much as through invisible words.
On Instagram, my poetry teacher had been posting really fun ones.
release feathered
lyre birds
unclothed
fearless
hours
And after a recent trip, I posted a few to my creative writing blog.
a human on fire.
So the first time
it shocked her.
Eventually she got used to it."
In the comments, Jon thought it was a neat idea.
👨: That could be fun to do with some old useless tech book.
👩: Let's do some on Wednesday!
And then I promptly forgot about it.
FAST FORWARD ⚡⏭️🌟
Jon pulls out his engineering books, and we set a timer for 10 minutes.
What we share makes us laugh. We marvel over the fun way we've both created new meaning in the javascript. We're both intrigued by how we erased things so differently.
👨: We never did anything like that in school!
👩: That's what we English majors were learning!
👨: You're like a completely different person now. You're so excited.
👩: This is how I feel when I do poetry!
👨: Then go do whatever you would do to do Virgil. Right now. I'll wait.
My brain goes blank as I stare at Jon. How do I do Virgil for product development?
So I stand up and walk out of the room. Then the building.
For awhile, I balance around the edge of the lawn while looking at purple flowery things. Then I turn around, walk back inside and wave my arms at Jon for a minute. I return outside, walk up and down the sidewalk. Then I come back inside and start writing:
Jon needs Virgil.
I need Virgil.
We all need Virgil.
Some people just don't know it because it means being in a place where you make all the rules.
Where you can play.
Explore.
But it's not just about the creative process. My creative process.
I mean it IS about it.
But rather how I use the process to open the door for others.
The art piece/product is just the artifact that facilitates that journey.
The process changes you. The artifact changes others.
Therefore, I am user Zero.
And Jon is user One.
Who is next?
When I share that with Jon, he says something else that no one has ever said to me in my entire life.
👨: Sarah, you just need to play. Play MORE!