Simple space

You know how it is… you have an idea, then try and find a way to put it into practice. What at first seems obvious suddenly throws up all kinds of complications and what had appeared so simple becomes a real headache. You wish you’d never thought of it, but it is too late to change your mind and go back… but going forwards feels as if you will be wading through treacle for the foreseeable future. You start worrying or fretting and that sets up a vicious circle that clouds vision even further.

We had been feeling a little like that with some of the details planned for the upcoming workshop in April. It all worked beautifully on paper, but between the vision and creating a concrete form for those details lay a gulf the imagination struggled to cross.

So, you step back and take another look. Instead of thinking literally and in linear fashion, your mind kind of squints out of the corner of its eye, takes a tangential view and realises the complexity was not in the idea but your concept of how to make it happen. Instead of the literal, the symbolic seems to work much better… convey the idea in a far cleaner manner…. and is simplicity itself to bring into being.

That shift in perspective starts a whole chain of action, a domino effect where moving just one piece seems to align the rest; the complex chain of events that would have, could have been, has the space to settle to where it should be and everything falls into place.

We have found this so often when working on the ideas for the workshops. What seems to be a spectacular idea proves to be a nightmare…until you take the ‘spectacle’ out and move towards the simplicity of a symbolic portrayal.  The spectacle would, in fact, be detrimental… those observing see only the ‘show’, and seeing an idea so graphically portrayed, find it dictates understanding… whereas a symbolic depiction leaves space for both understanding and imagination. Those looking on may learn more from the ’empty’ spaces of symbolism than one could ever teach through a didactic and literal imposition of ideas.

The odd thing is, that once you start down that particular path, forgoing the visual feast of spectacle in favour of simplicity, other things too begin to fall into their proper places and decisions that have been put off because none have felt quite ‘right’, seem to present themselves, their potential problems already solved… or else solutions seem to manifest from nowhere.

All it takes is a slight change of perspective… and in keeping it simple you find that you are allowing space for the possible to happen.