CREATIVE STRATEGIES

"Manufacturing Ideas" by David Ben

Stewart James was the most prolific inventor of magic in the twentieth century. Where most magicians invent a handful of magic routines during the course of their life, Stewart James created over one thousand. His prodigious output has been recorded in two mammoth publications totaling over 3,000 pages. His life and work provide insight not only into what it means to be creative but also how one can become a proficient problem solver.

Stewart James was born on May 14, 1908 in the small village of Courtright, Ontario near what would eventually become the large petroleum-refining center of Sarnia, Ontario. The youngest child of three - and only son - of eccentric yet strict Presbyterian parents, his formative years involved great hardship but sowed the seeds for his creative output. Enrolled in the local country school at seven and removed from school when he was fifteen years old to work in his father’s tinsmith shop, Stewart was rarely allowed outside to play. In fact, as playing with other children was forbidden, Stewart improvised. He would place, for example, a barrel of rocks on the end of a plank as his counterweight on the seesaw. As other children would laugh at him, Stewart moved indoors and escaped to the world of his imagination. It was here – in his imagination – that Stewart sought refuge.

As he grew, three other factors pushed him further into this sanctuary. First, in 1915 or 1916 he discovered Boy’s World - a magazine for youth published in America and distributed through Church groups across North America. This magazine contained a series of magic tricks under the byline of Howard Thurston – North America’s reigning Master Magician. One trick in particular – a simple rope trick entitled “Knot of Enchantment” – inspired Stewart to search for principles inherent in the world that if repeated would create apparently impossible results each and every single time. It is a fact of nature. Once Stewart realized that such principles exist, like unknown stars in a galaxy waiting to be discovered, he became not just a child pretending to be on a great adventure, but a real explorer on a real adventure.

The second catalyst towards creative problem solving was that magic secrets were expensive and Stewart was poor. When he did manage to save the nickels and dimes that were advanced to him as pin money for his labors, Stewart sent away for a catalogue of magical wares distributed by a magic shop which advertised on the back of a magazine. Page after page of the catalogue described the most fantastic miracles for sale. As is still the practice, the advertisement described only the effect. The reader would have to send away for the secret and the secrets cost money. With little economic resources available Stewart used his imagination to devise methods for achieving the effects described in the catalogue. Stewart developed an early aptitude for this sort of creative problem solving.

Third, Stewart also wanted to outwit his father who, afraid that his son would be able to do something that he himself could not explain, would open all the magic tricks Stewart was able to purchase in order to learn the secret to the effects prior to passing them on to Stewart. So, in order to dumbfound his father Stewart would either develop new magical effects for existing apparatus or alternatively, new methods for achieving the same advertised effect. As a result, Stewart became devoted to magic, not just inventing it but also analyzing how it could be created. When Stewart was successful in thwarting his father, he gained some self-respect that made his unfriendly world more bearable. He followed this path, exploring the fertile world of the imagination for over seventy-five years.

Although he rarely spoke to others - even his closest correspondents - about his modes of invention, the aforementioned books and his personal papers culled over the course of seven decades reveal many of his thoughts about creativity and his systematic approach to problem solving. The comments that follow are my attempt to communicate the essence of this man’s sophisticated mode of thinking.

Stewart regarded the creative process as a journey to a destination undertaken in partnership with the mind. Both the journey and the final destination were real to Stewart even though the exercise was conducted purely in the imagination. The journey always started on an avenue of thought grounded in the real world because Stewart believed that every new or underutilized idea could be traced to a nucleus of familiar knowledge. It is the task of the creative person to explore on this journey the untapped potential or principles inherent in the knowledge. The final destination he called The Other Place. As you will discover, Stewart had a way with words and, in particular, names. The Other Place was a state of mind in which solutions exist – not just for one particular problem but for all problems. In a sense The Other Place was a repository of principles inherent in nature that, once discovered and applied, could make any problem disappear. For Stewart, this was the place to be. “Some magicians have never seen over the rim or they wouldn’t write as they do. Just once, and a person can never again get it out of his system and must keep trying to reach it again as though it were a type of Shangri La.” Stewart developed various techniques to reach this Shangri La.

As a creative journey is undertaken in partnership with the mind, Stewart regarded his mind as a separate entity, making the journey with him. He did this not only to track how he was thinking but also what he was thinking. The mind is your partner in the creative process, a partner who can take and make suggestions. It is a dialogue between consciousness and unconsciousness. Only by regarding the mind as your partner could you come up with combinations or innovations that you might never conceive in consciousness. Stewart did not want to force ideas into the brain. He wanted a dialogue. Forced ideas, he said, only come back as memories.

Now, this dialogue can take place at any time. Stewart rejected the notion that creativity only strikes at certain periods of the day. A minister of the Church, one of the few people with whom Stewart discussed his concept of creativity, used to track the times of his creative output in his diary. The minister tried to predict from that that data in which periods he was more likely to generate a creative idea. People do this today. Many state, for example, that they are a morning person or that they work better at night. Stewart regarded this as a negative approach to creativity. He did not want to be a passive receptacle waiting for something to drop in from mental space. Stewart wanted to be able to manufacture the creative mindset; he wanted to tap his creativity on demand.

To manufacture the creative mindset, Stewart used techniques both to stimulate his imagination and to generate specific solutions for a particular problem. Stewart first began using such structured methods when he was thirteen. He discovered that with a system it was not necessary to wait for an idea to appear in one’s head. A system leads the mind to stations of enlightenment, which it would never locate without it. Let us start exploring Stewart’s notion of the journey with the initial point of departure.

Most people consider a journey as the road taken towards the final destination. They rarely consider the place from where they start as part of that journey. Most people assume they are familiar with the place they are leaving. Stewart rarely made this assumption. For Stewart, the point of departure was an integral part of the journey because it could reveal much about the final destination and the path to it. As every avenue of thought is based on a nucleus of familiar knowledge and the advantage player will explore the untapped potential or principles inherent in this knowledge, he or she must know everything about the place he or she is leaving before embarking on the journey.

Stewart used a variety of metaphors to describe this process. He compared, for example, the point of departure with the foundation of a house. It is important to note before one makes changes, when the house was built, what its current condition is and where you will want to make changes. He argued that just as you must check the foundation and correct or replace any deficiency before adding on to the house, you must know the past, the present and the future of the idea you wish to discover. The straw for the advantage player’s bricks is the quality and quantity of knowledge one can discover about what has been done and is being done before one sets out to make the dream a reality.

Building on the foundation of others saves time and experimentation. This requires ability, ability and ability - the ability one acquires from previous knowledge of the subject, the ability to concentrate on the subject and the ability to analyze or thoroughly understand the thoughts that others wished to convey. Stewart maintained that from research comes knowledge, and from knowledge comes invention. Innovators seek truth through science. This is why Stewart said that he always looked back before trying to move forward. “If you stand at a hurdle you may not be able to jump over it. Go back a way, run, and you will probably make it. It is sometimes easier to advance by going back. By researching and exploring the less-frequented paths, the odds are much higher that hidden treasures will be found.”

To do this, you must draw on a creative infrastructure. The creative infrastructure is an organized repository of personal and professional resources that create an inventory of experience. It is not enough to just advocate research, reading and study so that the necessary information is stored in your head, you must be able to call up this information from your stockpile of knowledge – this creative infrastructure - when you require it.

You must also put this information into some sort of order in order to profit from it. In 1921 Stewart starting using one particular technique more than any other to organize information. He called it The Family Tree. In essence, Stewart mapped out branches of thought like the trunk and branches of a tree on the basis that one idea or development led to another. So, where does one start to construct branches of The Family Tree? Obviously it is possible to extend the branches indefinitely. The time consumed would be enormous, and it would shrink, rather than expand, the imagination. Knowing more and more about less and less would not be of great utility. Stewart pruned the tree as he was constructing it to give it shape.

Stewart started his creative meandering with an analysis of the effect. Whereas most people assume that they know what the objective is that they are trying to achieve, Stewart would conduct a thorough investigation of all aspects of the nature of the effect. This would provide the foundation for exploring the many options available to him. Stewart would seek out at least three aspects or different ways of looking at each effect. He would start the branching out from here. From three basic divisions, the number of branches would be limited only by time, knowledge and research.

The trinity is an important concept in Stewart’s creative endeavors. He believed in the power of the triangle. By viewing each problem in terms of a triangle instead of a straight line, the trinities or triangles forced Stewart off the linear page as ideas might be sparked from either of the other two points of the triangle. Always fond of wordplay, Stewart suggested that one must “TRY-ANGLE”, that is be prepared to approach a problem from any angle. He added, “The appellation ‘Approach’ is so appropriate to the innovator. Remove the Roach and App – A Practical Procedure - is left.” Each element of the trinity, of course, would be broken down further into other triads. An abundance of trinities exist for every problem. Past, Present, and Future or Effect, Plot, Method are but two. Plotting information in The Family Tree not only saves time - it is really one of the few techniques that allow you to grasp all the thoughts fast enough when they come tumbling in. The Family Tree lends itself, as you will discover soon, to other forms of idea generation.

More often than not, Stewart conducted this entire mapping procedure in his mind. He was afraid that if he always put his thoughts down on paper, over time he might need paper and pencil to ‘think’. He was not opposed, however, to putting the ideas down on paper while one learned the mapping procedure. He regarded this like a child who used training wheels while learning to ride a bicycle. The training wheels are a stopgap measure until the child’s mind adapts to the new form of activity and performs that activity without conscious effort, that is produce the required balance without the mechanical assistance. I find it helpful, however, to commit ideas to paper, particularly if you are going to share your ideas with others.

If the creative person embarks on his or her journey like a tourist going along a main avenue, the creative person does not forget where he is bound but, at the same time, does not overlook the side streets, which may hold greater interest. Every new idea encountered on this journey increases the capacity of the mind to take in new ideas so that the horizon of the mind is ever enlarging. Stewart developed a variety of techniques to encourage him to look down these side roads. He called these techniques ‘idea kindlers’. These ‘idea kindlers’ had two roles. First, he used idea kindlers to warm up the imagination and place him in the right frame of mind. Second, idea kindlers were used to kick start specific ideas. Regardless of whether the idea kindlers were used to warm his imagination or jump start specific ideas, his most successful idea kindlers were based on the personal relationships he created with imaginary people rather than inanimate or arbitrary exercises devoid of personality.

Stewart had 21 different idea generation techniques or function thought-starters. Collectively he called them The Twenty-One Card Trick, a play on words related to a famous card trick. In essence, Stewart wrote the name of each one of these function thought-starters on a file card – each card suggesting a different and specific type of approach. The cards were not placed in any particular order because they had no lasting relationship to each other. In many cases each technique could be used singly. Stewart would shuffle the cards and then turn one face up. He would try to apply the approach suggested on that card to the problem at hand. If unsuccessful, he would reshuffle the cards and turn up a different card to see what that particular technique could motivate. The titles he gave to these thought kindlers are as colorful as they are thought provoking.

The Witenagamote of Myriad Ghosts
The Grafter And The Tree Of Knowledge
The Wandering Jeu In The Land of Not
Mooning Over Ebb Tide
There Once Was Pickpocket From Witcraft
False Pregnancy
12 Keys To All From The Pyramids
A Second Fiddle For Mnemosyne
Strange Partners and Unrecorded Deeds
Homogenized Brain Waves
The ‘Wet Back’ And The Border
The Vision of Ezekiel
Too Many Cooks And Saving The Broth
The Eremite With Umpteen Heads
An Unhurried Look At New Worlds
Pirate Charts and Buried Treasures
Three Companions Who Never Were
The Mental Space Probe
At The Talking Table
Bouncing Thoughts Off A Turning Glass
Big Round-Up In The Sky
Dr. Magic Makes A Tricky Transfusion

We will examine now the four idea kindlers listed above in boldface in greater detail to give you a sense of the technique and the application.

Grafter And The Tree Of Knowledge
Stewart classified Grafter And The Tree Of Knowledge as the first cousin of The Family Tree. Stewart, of course, developed numerous family trees for journeys he took throughout his lifetime. Collectively these family trees stood in what he called an orchard in the land of The Waiting Place For Unborn Thoughts. The concept of Grafter And The Tree Of Knowledge is quite simple. When there was no suitable branch on The Family Tree that could kindle an idea, Stewart would examine his orchard, select an appropriate branch from another tree and graft it onto the other. He would look for what developed, always aware that new strains would have to be nursed to become bigger and stronger. He would not dismiss the process because it did not immediately bear fruit. The strain contained information that eventually would permeate its trunk and root. For Stewart, a thought was a living thing that had ability to grow from the moment it is born.

Twelve Keys To All From The Pyramids
Inspired by a marking said to be in one of the pyramids which suggested that it takes twelve men to make one perfect man, in Twelve Keys To All From The Pyramids Stewart made a list of twelve people including himself and then viewed the problem as it might be worked out by each person in turn. Stewart maintained that the breakthrough comes when you decide not to limit yourself to one field but use the broad canvas of all worlds. Each person could be either known or unknown, unknown in the sense that he or she could be a literary character. Stewart, for example, was fond of science fiction and would occasionally appoint a character from such fiction to bring his, her or its knowledge to the table. Stewart also kept a biographical dictionary close at hand to help him nominate others for this task. He would flip through the pages and decide to invite one of the entries to join his working group. He tried to insure, however, that each of the eleven – he was the twelfth – had a different occupation or skill from the others.

Many proficient problem solvers unconsciously adopt this technique. It is not uncommon, for example, for someone to use his or her imagination to visualize how an admired colleague or friend will react to a piece of work. The aim is always to profit from the advice – real or imaginary. I found this technique particularly useful when practicing law. I admired many different lawyers for different reasons. One lawyer had great powers of persuasion, another a superb technical understanding of the law while others had the ability to express complex written opinions with great clarity. I discovered that I could predict with a great deal of accuracy what each one of them would say about my own work when it can time to be reviewed. I was able then to consult with them in my imagination and profit from their experience at times when it was physically or technologically impossible for me to actually canvas their thoughts. It was like having a Board of Directors available 24/7 without incurring the cost of directors’ fees or the cost of holding the meeting.

The Vision of Ezekiel
The Vision of Ezekiel is perhaps Stewart’s most sophisticated imaginary device. Inspired by a passage of the Bible – Ezekiel 1:16 – which reads: “The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of the beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.” This passage inspired Stewart to consider the act of creation as a wheel – an invention many believe to be humankind’s greatest discovery. Stewart created three wheels – originally each with twelve spokes but then in later years with just seven. He called them Ezekiel Wheels. Each wheel represented a category of a trinity. He called them Assumptive Trinities. He would also assign a different name or label to all but one spoke of each wheel. Each spoke would represent a point of departure related to the category the wheel represented in the trinity. Stewart would use The Family Tree to help locate names for the spokes. He would then visualize the three wheels floating in the air in front of him. He visualized the wheels spinning back and forth – projected in the air outside of his body. He believed it was important to visualize the wheels floating and rotating in space outside the body as it forced him to think in terms of space rather than one particular dimension. Further, Stewart believed that if thoughts were projected outside the body the imagination had greater freedom to flower. The imagination was no longer imprisoned in the human shell. And as the wheels were projected outside his body, he could turn the wheels back and forth with his mind like a master safecracker turning the tumblers in an old-fashioned safe. When the rims met, there would be a collision of ideas. This collision more often than not would create the necessary spark or insight worth further exploration. As Stewart would label both sides of the hub, spokes that touched connected the names linked to both sides of each hub as well as the other spokes that emanated from it. Although he would control the movement of the wheels with his mind, Stewart usually recorded the names of wheels and the spokes on paper in the form of three disks, which he would lay flat on the table before him. The spokes were merely lines that came all the way to the edge of the discs, not stopping as they would if it were a wheel with a rim.

At one time Stewart used cardboard strips that could be moved independently - like a slide ruler - to create various combinations of the words written on them. For another variation, Stewart used twenty-one cards instead of disks with spokes. He wrote the names of six objects, one object to a card, on six of the cards. On another six cards he wrote the names of six Effects or Objectives, again one to a card. The next six cards bore the names of six methods - one to a card. The three remaining cards were left blank. He then placed a single dot on the back of each Object card, two dots on the back of each Effect card and three dots on the back of each Method card. One, two and three dots were placed on the backs of the three blank cards respectively.

Stewart would gather the cards, shuffle them and then deal them face down in three piles, placing all the single-dotted cards in the first pile, all double-dotted cards in the second pile and all triple-dotted cards in the third pile. He would then turn the top card of each pile face up to reveal the name of an Object, and Effect and a Method. He considered this his starting point for the problem at hand. He would discard these three cards if the combination did not suggest an avenue for exploration and then turn up the next three top cards, repeating this process until he was able to produce a combination that had potential. Other times Stewart used the cards to arbitrarily assign himself a project to work on. He said that if you just sat and tried to think of what to work at, you might never have thought of the combination that was in the cards.

Stewart would often extend The Vision of Ezekiel by adding aspects from Twelve Keys To All From The Pyramids. He would prepare seven more cards each bearing the name of a famous person or occupation other than ‘magician’. After turning the three cards representing the wheels face up, he would turn over a card from this last group and try to imagine how the person or occupation would influence the thinking. These techniques have historical precedent. Unbeknownst to Stewart, the thirteenth century Spanish theologian and visionary Ramon Lull developed early logic machines that were also based on the power of the wheel. Stewart called his approach a Systematic Progression that saved time by eliminating repetition. It explored all imaginable possibilities simultaneously.

At The Talking Table
As stated earlier, Stewart played with dozens of different idea kindlers throughout the course of his long creative life. His most prolific technique – and the one with which he was most reluctant to discuss – bore several names including At The Talking Table, The Three Companions Who Never Were, and The Deepsters. The technique, like the names, evolved over time. It started when Stewart conjured up an imaginary playmate as a young boy – a feat not uncommon for one of tender years. This imaginary person – named Originally but which was shortened later to Rigonally- became his best friend and companion. Many years passed with only Rigonally visiting him. The two others - Khardova and Faxton – joined them later and together the four explored The Other Side.

Now for reasons that Stewart could not comprehend, he could only interact with his three companions if the four of them, in his visualization, sat around a square of some description. The size of the square did not matter because all of this was occurring in his mind. The square could be a handkerchief or a table. It had to be a square, however, and not a rectangle. This table became known as The Talking Table. The four of them always sat in the same position with Rigonally directly across from Stewart, Khardova on his left and Faxton on his right. Although Stewart did not have a clear vision of their looks - no sense of their height or weight, or color of their hair or eyes, Stewart was sure that they dressed identically, possibly wore cowls, somewhat like a monk’s attire.

When they would meet, Stewart would remain silent. He never spoke aloud during those sessions and it did not matter in the least if his eyes were open or closed. Stewart had to be prepared, however, because sometimes ideas came so quickly that he had to chalk them right on the tabletop. He knew that their suggestions would never be repeated and that if he did not get them down the first time it would be a long and painful process to reconstruct the details. Sometimes the Companions could be quite uncommunicative, sitting as a group around the table with long periods of time passing without a response. Stewart maintained that they would put up a wall if they didn’t like something. Once Stewart asked if they could work on something of greater utility than a card trick. He was chastised. “No,” they said, “we just like card tricks.” They could also be extremely jealous. When Stewart was pressed by the editors of his collected works to devote more time commenting on past creations than working on new ones, the Companions voiced their disapproval. “It is us or them.” It was a painful decision.

Like Twelve Keys To All From The Pyramids, each of the Three Companions Who Never Were had his own special skill. Khardova provided expertise with cards, Rigonally supplied the imagination, and Faxton was responsible for various facts. Unlike Twelve Keys, however, Stewart had little control over the direction or nature of the problems they would discuss. The only thing he could do was to terminate the meeting.

It was many years before Stewart disclosed the existence of his imaginary friends. Not only did he fear public ridicule but he also thought that he might lose contact with them if they were ever the subject of a published article. Further, he secretly feared that if he did disclose how he could visit The Other Place, others too would be able to find their way and he would no longer be there alone – the only person on Earth to know this Shangri-La.

At this point you might be asking how does Stewart’s relationship with The Deepsters help the advantage player. Dr. Edward de Bono – the man who coined the term lateral thinking – advocated in one of his seminal texts, Six Thinking Hats, the concept that it is possible to enhance productivity by imagining the donning and doffing of a half-dozen imaginary hats. In theory, when you “wore” your green hat, you were creative and fertile, when you “put on” your blue had you were cool and in control, and so on. If you sit in a particular chair and don a particular hat, you will do a certain kind of thinking. This was certainly true for Stewart. The Three Companions Who Never Were represented, however, more than just a series of hats. They were friends, friends whose relationship evolved over time as their expertise grew, and friends who found strength in the concept of the relationship. It became very personal and it is this personal nature which made it a much more effective technique in my opinion than the donning of hats. P. Howard Lyons who, along with Allan Slaight, was a pivotal liaison between Stewart, his imagination and a wider public, believed that Stewart used The Deepsters as the technique to freely enter and exit his own subconscious. Stewart was much more modest. He believed that he somehow had happened on a system that worked for him as a stimulus to creativity, one that he was lucky enough to use for many years with great success. It is interesting to note that Stewart was using these techniques regularly by 1938 - years before de Bono was even born. Stewart wrote,

“I would use ANY ‘gimmick’ – no matter how fantastic – as long as it engenders a sensation of a partnership with the source of all knowledge. It becomes more than seeking the solution to a problem. It is the ecstatic feeling of being granted the privilege of a distant view of a perfect world where only absolutes exist…that is so magnetic in its attraction that one only dare look at it from afar or one would lose the ability of desire to retreat to our drab and, in comparison, infinitesimal outland.”

Rest assured, Stewart was well aware that this technique bordered on madness. Although his greatest thrill was to cloud-walk away from this mundane world into the land of imagination, he was aware that if he spent too much time in this land he risked never finding his way back.
So Stewart would often ask, “What limits the imagination?” One can project the mind only so far, and then one must use individual judgment as to when to turn back. There is a temptation to go just a little farther each time, but there may be a force at work to keep the thought-cloud from becoming accessible to all but a few. He knew he had to return to that land of imagination before he was away too long and not able to find the way back. Creative people need to frequent the source as often as possible least they lose touch with their muse. Writing up or implementing strategies was drudgery. A balance, however, was required so that one could both visit The Other Place but also find the way home. Stewart thought that the perfect being for exploring the creative was a cross between a grasshopper and a homing pigeon. He christened it a homing hopper. He wanted the human machine to permit a train of thought to dart about with the freedom of a grasshopper but with the knowledge that it will always be able return to the base of operation with the instinct of a homing pigeon.

The secrets of Stewart’s creativity can help the advantage player in many ways. Mapping The Family Tree, for example, not only forces you to articulate a crystal clear definition of your objective – you have to understand the objective in order to map it - but it also provides a succinct summary of prior knowledge that provides a benchmark for evaluating the practicality of the new ideas you might add to your multiple option universe. You will generate a greater quantity of ideas if you use idea kindlers. As techniques, grafting branches of trees, consulting a virtual board of directors, and visualizing three wheels spewing out new combinations as they hover and spin outside of your body do seem somewhat idiosyncratic. That is, however, the reason they are successful. The advantage player must discover and explore techniques that work for him or her. The most important thing is not to ridicule the use of such techniques. It is hard enough to consistently find one’s way to and from this Shangri La; one does not need any other pressure placed on the task. Even Stewart was forced to face one of his greatest fears; eventually even he lost touch with his three imaginary friends.

During the period he was assisting the editors of the first volume of his collected works, Stewart James In Print: The First Fifty Years, he lost contact with Faxton and Khardova. Apparently he was not taking enough time to pursue the ideas that interested them. Once gone, they never returned. Stewart’s oldest friend, Rigonally – whom he first met when he was seven years old, also became more aloof until he too stopped communicating with Stewart. Stewart died two years later at the age of 86. In the final moments of his life, when he was being counseled by the Minister of the local church he had frequented since his youth, the Minister said not to fear death for he would find companionship on the other side. Stewart nodded affirmatively. The Minister continued, “God will be with you.” Stewart nodded once again and said, “Yes, Him too.”

The world-renowned author Margaret Atwood has her own insights into Stewart James. She refers to a passage in Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property:

“The task of setting free one’s gifts was a recognized labor in the ancient world. The Romans called a person’s tutelar spirit his genius. In Greece it was called a daemon. Ancient authors tell us that Socrates, for example, had a daemon who would speak up when he was about to do something that did not accord with his true nature. It was believed each man had his idios daemon, his personal spirit which could be cultivated and developed.”

Ever an advantage player, Stewart had three.

This excerpt is taken from Advantage Play, by David Ben, and reproduced with the permission of the publisher, Key Porter Books, © Copyright 2001 David Ben.