Episode #14: From grope to rote, the inelegant art of synaptic pruning and the hobgoblin of little minds

In this episode I talk about the importance of breaking routines whilst breaking my own routine, reflect on how the biological process of synaptic pruning might be a useful metaphor for creative practice and consider whether the accidental pursuit of consistency could ruin my relationship with this podcast.

TL;DL
0:18 Breaking the routine of making this podcast
06:39 From “grope” to “rote”
13:58 The importance of the body in spontaneous self-expression
18:58 My fears of breaking this routine
22:13 Synaptic pruning
28:46 Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
31:12 My paradoxical fear of being misunderstood and totally understood
35:06 Form is emptiness and emptiness is form
37:00 The importance of meeting the stranger

Links to things I mentioned
“Orbiting the giant hairball” by Gordon MacKenzie
James Traeger’s tennis talk at Inexpert 2018
Norman the sunken boat
Juvenile wood duck joins me on the kayak

The written substack version of this episode can be read on my Substack.

If you're wondering why this is an accidental podcast then listen to the first 5 minutes of episode one.
 
Comments, questions, requests and stuff to stevexoh@gmail.com

(Total listening time 40' 41") 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello and welcome to episode 14 of Creative Adventures, an accidental podcast. And no doubt the first thing that you'll notice about this episode is that it sounds different. And that's because I'm not in my flat with my studio equipment, but I'm in a kayak on the River Thames. And before you switch off thinking I don't want to listen to a podcast more about the River Thames and kayaking, I'm not really going to talk about that at all. And I have no idea what the audio would be like. This is this whole thing is an experiment. And it's an experiment because I noticed that my relationship with the podcast was changing. I mean I still love it. But after 13 episodes, I noticed that. I don't know. Something had changed. And I think it's because I got into a bit of a routine with it. And I mean the whole thing was an accident. I mentioned this on episode one, that I never intended to start a podcast, but I started writing a Substack, and the reason I started writing a Substack was because MailChimp became too expensive and useless, basically. And so I moved to Substack, and then I thought people use Substack for long form writing. So I thought I'd do some long-form writing. And accessibility is really important to me. And I thought, well, long-form writing's great, but I probably won't read this. There's too many words on it. I've just realised that other boat users are going to think I'm insane because I'm just coyaking down a peaceful river talking to myself. But um I want yeah, so I wanted the Substack to be accessible, so I thought, oh, I'll record like an audiobook version of it. And I didn't just want to read a script because that would be really boring, and I'd find it boring as well. So I thought oh well maybe I'll just talk around the subject matter I talk about in the podcast and use like the podcast platforms to broadcast it so people could download it. And then I thought, oh, that's the podcast. And so that was an accident, and naturally a structure of writing and recording the podcasts emerged, and the structure for 13 episodes up to a bush up to this one have been that I will just notice stuff that I become fascinated by during the month and I will write about it and I'll write the substack and research it where I need to and fact-check it when I need to. And then when the substack's written, there's normally like three big themes, and I like that, I like the rule of threes. And once that's done, I will then record it. But I will read the substack and then the podcast is sort of improvising around the subject matter, and then record it, and I record it in really like I've I've spent quite a bit of money on audio equipment to make because I'm obsessed with sound, as I mentioned on the last episode, and I really notice deficiencies in sound, which is one of the reasons that I'll get to why this experiment is a challenge for me. And so I'll record it in my flat and then put it out with a little bit of editing. And that has just become a routine, that has become what I do. But I noticed that the last few episodes there's a boat coming along, so I don't know whether to stop talking when a boat comes along, like a motor boat. I'm gonna run into a goose as well. Sorry, goose, do you want to be on the podcast? Hey, you gonna say something? No? Sorry if I disturbed your day. Oh, there's some dragonflies as well. That's amazing. Maybe I won't talk when a boat goes past. Um this is gonna be the most rambly one yet, I've just realized. Because I can already think of so much I want to talk about. So one of the things that I noticed was that I was recorded, writing the Substack and recording it later and later each month. And the last couple I wrote and I finished writing them and recorded them like a day beforehand, I think. And it just ever so slightly started to feel a bit like work, like it was something I had to do. And the whole intention was never for it to be like that. And so I realized I just needed to break my own process, to break everything about that process, to change it in some way, not to ruin it or anything, but the whole thing maybe lost a bit of its experimental edge for me. And that doesn't mean every episode will be like this from now on. So this is an experiment, and it's already been interesting because one of the weird phenomena when I kayak is no matter how soon before I get in the water, I I use the loo. Within five minutes of being out in the water, I need a Wii. And that happened again today, just before I started recording. And I'm I'm doing a little stretch from Cookham to Datchet today, which the start of it's quite remote. So I tied up the kayak and jumped out to do a Wii, and I forgot I was attached to the TASCAM recorder, the thing I'm recording this on, and it fell in the water. Luckily, it was in a dry bag, and what was surprising is the dry bag just slid off and sunk to the bottom of the river. I thought it would float, but because I was attached to the TASCAM, I managed to keep hold of it, and I had to stop for a while and dry it out. But now the screen doesn't work, so I think this is recording because my headphones uh got wet as well, and I don't work. So I think this is recording. Ah jeez, how am I going to keep my chain of thought during this? Let's just carry on talking about the experiment. One of the things this reminds me of, one of my favourite books, and one of the only books that I've read, I don't know, maybe five or six times. I very rarely read a book more than once, is a book called Orbiting the Giant Hairball by a guy called Gordon Mackenzie, who sadly died just after I read the book, which was back in I don't know, 2010, something like that. And yeah, Orbiting a Giant Hairball is a brilliant book about creativity that doesn't really say much about creativity. There are just lots of little I mean it doesn't overtly say this is how you do things, it's just lots of anecdotes and stories and Gordon's thoughts, and the whole book is presented like a wonderful masterpiece, like just even the feel of the book and the shape of the book, and it's brilliantly illustrated. I realize I need to concentrate because there's a motorboat coming up behind me there that I didn't see because I'm so immersed in talking to you. And I feel really self-conscious talking when people go by. But maybe that's part of the experiment for me to be uncomfortable. Um I'm approaching a dad and a child that's rowing, so I'm feeling even more self-conscious. Um but the whole book is like a masterpiece, and one of the chapters in the book is called From Grope to Rote, and it tells the story of how so Gordon Mackenzie worked for Hallmark cards as I think he sort of started as a card designer, but then he just became Gordon Mackenzie, and in the end they created roles for him, and one of the roles that he had was not called the creative guru, but something like that, and basically his job spec just involved him sitting on a throne in a room that people could walk in and tell him their ideas, and he'd tell everyone that their ideas were brilliant. But in the chapter from Grope to Road, it tells the story of how Gordon was invited to create a course like for people at Hallmark to do. I think it was for people at Hallmark to do. And he wanted to create the weirdest course, like the weirdest workshop he could do, and he wanted it to feel like there was nothing to really grip onto. And he said he wanted it to feel like when someone like jumps out a plane or bungee jumps, their arms and legs like flail, like because they're trying to grab onto something, even though they know there's nothing to grab onto. And that's why he called his course, his workshop. I don't know why I keep calling it a course, um, I never used that word. That's why he called his workshop Grope, which is an apt name for it, but it's also a bit of a weird name. I don't know if I'd want to go on a workshop called Grope, but he did Grope and it was amazing, and people loved it, and people were baffled by it. And I love the sound of it because it's the type of thing that I love running and inviting people into my world. And then he was asked to run it again, and he ran it again, and it wasn't quite the same. And I think he ran it a third time, and it was just a bit nah, like it didn't have that edge to it. And he said he realized that grope had become rote, like rote as in learning something by rote, becoming a repeated formula. And I was thinking of that when I decided to record this episode in this different way, like again, not that I've fallen out of love for the podcast, but there's something really important about not knowing in my creative practice. I think that's maybe that's what it was. Maybe that's what I've started to notice after 13 episodes that the levels of not knowing had diminished, and it was maybe becoming a bit roped, and I wanted to get back to being a bit more grope in Gordon's sense of the word. And there's a few things that appealed to me about this. I mean, there's been some accidental stuff like dropping the TASCAM in the river and not knowing if any of this is recording. I I mean I don't like that, but I'm sure that will be an interesting learning for me. Um, and also I wasn't gonna record this today, so it's a Sunday today, and it's quite hot, and I was gonna record it tomorrow because it'd give me a bit more chance to plan my route. Also, the river will be less busy on a Monday, um, and I was gonna do something else today. I was gonna cycle up to a swimming spot that I go to and just have a swim and hang out there. But my bike got a flat tire and I couldn't go. So I thought maybe that's a sign that I should be doing this today. So it's a Sunday and it's not I feel unprepared for it, really unprepared for it, which maybe is also a good thing. A couple of things appealed to me about it because oh yeah, I'm under Heathrow flight path, so you probably hear planes as well. So there's some accidental stuff that I'm getting from doing this, like I mentioned. It's it's really slowing down my kayaking for example because I'd normally I'd be doing this and I think it's a bit splashy. So it's done that. But there's some intentional stuff that I've wanted to disrupt. Not only the recording in the studio versus recording here, but flipping the order of writing the podcast. I mean not I mean I'm not even writing it. That's that's one of the biggest things, is I'm not writing it. I'm I decided I wanted to start when I got in the river. There's two cormorants. They make a noise, cormorants. It's like a brrrrrrrrr, something, something like that, but uh they very rarely make a noise. There's a dark black one and sort of grey one. Oh shit, what was I talking about? So not only not recording in my studio, um but also yeah, not writing the podcast. Just starting by talking about what I wanted to change and seeing where it went. And then I'm gonna take this and write the substack in response to it so it flips that. But also it breaks another thing of sitting down and writing, because I'm doing a repetitive motion as I talk, so I've got the paddle that's keeping me going along because I also don't just want to sit in the middle of the river and record. I've got 25 kilometers to do and I want to get there. But the thing about doing the paddling, this repetitive, gentle-ish action, is my body's more of a part of it. And there was a brilliant exercise that Keith Johnson had mentioned before, who's a big influence and a sort of unofficial mentor to me, uh, the theatre director that was regarded as one of the grandfathers of improvisational theatre. And one of the brilliant exercises that Keith did with us was you'd go on stage and do a repetitive action that you'd mime. So two people go on stage, and you might say, We're uh Keith might say, right, the two of you are washing up, and so you'd be miming washing up. And Keith would point out that if you're washing up, you wouldn't just be standing there going, Oh, I'm cleaning this dish, and the next person's going, Yes, you are. Look, I'm scrubbing off some lasagna. You'd talk about anything other than washing up. I mean, you might say, Pass me a tea towel, but you're not going to be talking about that activity. So the exercise would be to do this repetitive task and just have a normal conversation. And what was brilliant about that is the repetitive task would just free up the spontaneous self-expression. You'd have a much more natural sounding and free-flowing flow of speech. And it also gave people access to more uncensored chains of thought. And I experimented with this when I did the Inexpert conference, which was the conference designed to be the opposite of Ted. And there was a guy I know called James Traeger, and I put a link to his talk in the podcast notes. And James wanted to talk about tennis. The idea of Inexpert was people gave talks on subjects they had little or no expertise in. And James said he's not very good at tennis, he doesn't particularly like tennis. Could he do a talk on tennis? And I said that. Sorry, I'm distracted by some tiny little ducklings. Let's go over and see if I said this wouldn't be about kayaking, didn't I? But I don't know if you can hear their little duckling noises. I don't know how sensitive this mic is. How many are there? Um and I said to James, yeah, that sounds like a really good talk, it's exactly what I'm after. But I'd like you to be playing tennis while you do the talk. And that's what we did. So James was on stage in front of an audience of 100 people talking about how he doesn't really know much about tennis and he isn't very good at tennis, and I was bouncing tennis balls to him that he was serving back to me. And it did such a brilliant thing to James because it interrupted the habitual chains of thought. It meant that he kept told, I mean, like a bit like I am now, that you'd be following a chain of thought and then all of a sudden it would disappear. And I think the talk is amazing anyway, but the talk is extra special for that because it just gave him access to a greater level of spontaneous self-expression. I'm probably talking quiet, so because there's people on the bank and hiya. This is such a weird experience for me. The scenery here is amazing though. It feels like being back in Canada, but the rivers, not the river Niagara, which I wouldn't kayak on. But James's talk on tennis just became this uncensored flow and he'd lose where he was and the pauses and the cadence changed like in unpredictable ways, and I think it just made it fascinating and very human and just intriguing. And I'm curious about what that experience will be like for me and recording it. And I noticed that any fears or anxieties I have about doing this are all to do whether you listening to it will like it or enjoy it or judge me for doing this in well I guess in any way, but maybe in a negative way. Because I don't want this podcast to be a novelty either. That's why I didn't want to do anything for episode 10. And then also I've put a lot of work into this podcast and it's got a good listenership and I get lovely messages and reviews and things like that. That was my watch beeping, just saying that I'm three kilometres into the 25 or whatever it is today. Um it's gonna take me a long while because I'm going a lot slower. But yeah, I want I want to impress you if I'm being really, really honest. I want you to love this podcast and share it. And part of my fear is by doing this, maybe you've listened to it because the way it sounds and flows is what you love about it, and maybe you've already switched off, which is a bit weird thing to say because you wouldn't have heard me say that, but maybe you're thinking, ah, this podcast of jumped the shark, and I'm not gonna listen to that anymore. But that's not a reason for me not to try it. I mean if this ends up being a catastrophic failure, then I'm wondering, and I don't know what failure would be. Like, no one listens. I lose all of my subscribers. I mean I wouldn't like that, but I'd rather that than slowly notice that it was becoming just a rote piece of work that I gradually got bored with and killed off. And I think I've spoken about the art of the intentional ending. I think it was the one before last episode. I don't know, 12, something like that. And I do like ending projects intentionally, but I'm wondering if I end up ending them because I don't pay attention to this need to break a routine. And this feels like the time to experiment with this, whatever the consequences may be. And then that also makes me realize that I genuinely do record this podcast for myself, the same as I make art. I make art to help make sense of the world, I make art to give non verbal expression to meaning that I'm trying to make. But the fact that I'm slightly bothered that doing an experiment and changing the formula that's worked very well for me makes me realise maybe it has. become more about you the listener and numbers and maintaining an audience than I'd like to admit. The timing feels right for it. The last episode was episode 13 and I said at the start the podcast became a teenager and there's a thing that I read about this is the other thing that's broken in this episode is I can't fact check anything. Normally I'll come up with something like I've just realized oh I want to talk about synaptic pruning and normally I'd be writing this for the Substack and then I'd do a bit of research make sure that my understanding of synaptic pruning was correct but I mean I could go over to the bank and get my phone out but let's see what happens if I don't. So the caveat for this episode is fact check everything. Don't take anything I say as universally true. Well don't do that anyway but certainly not in this this episode. But the timing for the experiment feels relevant like I was saying like the podcast Become a teenager and I read this article sometime last year I think it was about synaptic pruning and my understanding of what the article said was that synaptic pruning is something that happens round about the time that we become teenagers. And synaptic pruning is a necessary part of maturing or growing up. I don't know why I'm using that word. And the way that it works is so we're born with billions and billions of synaptic connections like connections between neurons and there's that brilliant neuroscience phrase which is neurons that fire together wire together. So when neurons regularly fire at the same time like walking down the street or walking anywhere then it forms strong connections like a strong connection between the the two neurons and that means that we don't have to consciously think about how to walk down the street every time we do it. It becomes automatic and we are born with billions and billions of these neural connections or these neurons but we don't use them all. So there's a massive shedding I think of neurons or neural connections like when we're babies because we've got all this stuff these connections that we don't necessarily need again fact check all of this. But the bit that I remember reading about synaptic pruning is this happens again when we become teenagers because it's another part of our growth and by that point we've learned a bit more about ourselves. There'll be some neural connections that we used as a child but we no longer need and this pruning takes place where those connections either get broken I'm not sure I don't know how it works. Of my mic cover hopefully you can still hear me and the wind just makes this harder because it's an inflatable kayak so oh it's a sunken boat that's amazing I was tempted to get my oh no I am gonna I'm gonna get my phone out and I'm gonna do a little video of this sunken boat and maybe I'll put a link to it in the podcast notes. Or maybe this could be the artwork for the podcast it's quite sad. Oh there's a boat coming no I don't want to drop my phone in the water alright I'm gonna have to go backwards the boat's called Norman poor Norman I often wonder if a good name for a boat is seemed like a good idea at the time and Norman's just underwater with the top of Norman sticking out I can't help but look at boats like this and think of Jaws the film poor Norman maybe Norman's a metaphor for synaptic pruning you can work that out. I haven't got the brain power to do that right now. So it teen uh the women become teenagers synaptic pruning happens and we shed these neural connections and I guess that maybe the reason again I'm guessing this or maybe I read it and half remembering it is we're creating space for important connections as we get older because there's a lot of changes going on in our bodies and our brains at that point. And the article said that synaptic pruning is one of the reasons why teenagers can become monosyllabic and not really talk as much or be as eloquent and I hate it when people point that out. I remember with my nephews they they always used to get accused of being teenagers and I people take the piss out of them and I've heard it with other teenagers but surely the people that are saying that the adults are saying that remember that happened to them. But this article said that synaptic pruning is one of the reasons for that because there's so much going on their brains and bodies at that time. Anyway I don't know how long this bit about synaptic pruning has been because I got distracted by Norman the sunken boat and I'm just coming up to a lock which hopefully I can go through behind another boat rather than have to portage and take it out. But synaptic pruning is maybe what I need to do with my relationship with this podcast. Break some habitual connections and allow new ones to form. The other thing that I notice that I have an interesting relationship is consistency and being understood. I don't know if they're the same things let's let's see there's a brilliant quote I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson said consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds there's a lot of boats going past here because we're coming up to the lock so I'm going to stop describing all the sounds I think you know there's planes and boats and ducks and geese and water and all of that. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and what he meant by that I think was that striving for consistency is like a little hobgoblin in our brain that tortures us that can make us feel deficient in some way can make us feel shame or unworthy because we are inconsistent but human beings are by their very definition inconsistent we change all the time our moods change all the time so what I think Ralph Waterwell's Emerson was saying is striving for consistency is a trap and I guess I've been striving for consistency with this podcast as well. Consistency not only in how it sounds and the formula of it but also consistency in how you listen to it how you consume it and knowing that there's lots of people that listen and like it so moving just a little dash of inconsistency today feels really really important hey how you doing yeah what's that yeah I'm going a long way I'll see you at the lock probably I said to the little girl I'll see you at the lock probably and she laughed as if it was the funniest joke ever. Maybe you did too maybe it was the funniest joke ever. Maybe that's the type of random stuff that I should be doing. I think she's a bit too young to listen to podcasts. I don't know if the consistency bit means is anything to do with this wanting to be known and not known because one of my biggest triggers and things I find difficult is being misunderstood or feeling that I'm misunderstood and I hate it. Being misunderstood I think it's something to do with the way my brain's wired um just feels painful to me yet if someone seems to totally get me and describe me with a label or something I absolutely hate that too so I don't know what that is I might make a bit more sense of that after this lock I think it's because I feel unique I guess like everyone does but I also don't want to be categorized or labelled. I want to be appreciated for my unlabeledness maybe because I don't fully understand myself maybe my frustration with others is when I'm gonna speed up I'm gonna try and get in this lock because I don't want to be portaging around it because then I might drop the recorder into the river again. Hopefully the lock keeper has seen me gripping viewing I'm sure will Steve make it into the lock or not I think I'm gonna make it maybe very self-conscious recording in here. Yeah I think I'm gonna stop recording in here because I also need to be concentrating on safety thank you so I'm through the lock and it's first time I mean twice today I've been through a lock on the kayak because locks use a hell of a lot of water and just for me to go through on a tiny little kayak isn't the best use of it but because it's busy today which probably wouldn't have happened if I'd actually gone out on Monday there's loads of boats out so I can just hop on the back of them not literally just in the back of the lock. And two things happened in that lock which were exciting one thing was a little duckling jumped out of the water onto my boat and sat on my leg for a little bit and I took a little video of it maybe I'll do some videos to accompany this podcast. It's not going to become a video podcast ever because you know my thoughts on that. And the other thing I learnt in that lock is my rope isn't long enough because that was a deep lock and the water just kept going and my rope wasn't long enough so I just had to cling on to the a chain on the side. I've no idea what I was talking about before the lock. Synaptic pruning I think and consistency. I don't know maybe that's all I want to talk about. I've no idea absolutely no idea how long this is or how long it's been but I guess they're the main things like this idea of from grope to rote as Gordon Mackenzie put it and noticing where an accidental structure has arisen and even if I go back to that structure for episode 15 the next one it at least it's a conscious thing and also that balance between form and emptiness that's a uh it's a Buddhist sutra I think I think it's called the Heart Sutra where form is emptiness and emptiness is form the idea that emptiness needs form to be emptiness and form needs emptiness to be form I think that's what it means anyway. And maybe I'm experimenting with that too and knowing the form in order to break the form maybe I'm just having a mid-podcast crisis at age 13 episode 13 but I also love the embodied nature of recording like this doing that repetitive action my only concern is that the repetitive splashing will become annoying they're towing me that was some very fancy people in boats pointed out that the geese in front of me were going faster than me and another kayak wisecrack I said no they're towing me to which they went which you might have heard which I think was polite laughter rather than they actually found it the funniest thing ever. But knowing the form in order to break the form and I guess linking it back to the whole theme of this podcast is I'm just fascinated by what would happen if I didn't have a hypothesis for this. I very rarely have an objective all my projects start with a curious question but it would be I wonder what would happen if I just did this and I think it's incredibly important to keep track of the things that were once spontaneous become less I mean everything's spontaneous. Literally everything is spontaneous but more familiar and there's a degree of unfamiliarity that is important when it comes to human creativity I think at least for me there's a brilliant book that's called On Not Knowing How Artists Make and it's a very strange book and it's out of print and normally about £200 but I managed to get one for 30 quid seven or eight years ago. And there's a quote in that which again I can't remember off the top of my head but it's talk about the importance of not avoiding the stranger not avoiding the stranger because you don't know who they are or if they're dangerous and making everything familiar is really just to avoid the stranger because who knows what would happen I mean what's the worst that's going to happen here no one will listen I dropped my TASCAM in the water. I checked at the lock and I think it's recording. So maybe I'll call it a day there as I'm approaching Taplow Bridge. Um if you've made it this far thanks for sticking with me I'm not sure what this one was about but I think there's some relevance there. You just have to do the work to work it out. And a couple of things before I go I don't have my list of stuff that's coming up I can't even remember when this is going out but I'll put a link to workshops and stuff in the podcast notes. There's a how many geese are here? There's about 30 Canadian geese surrounding my kayak and one lone seagull I haven't got any food I'm afraid geese. Yeah I can't remember when this comes out July 10th maybe I don't know but I'll put a link to workshops in the podcast notes. There also might be a talk that I did that was a very special talk to me that might have come out by then and if it has I'll put a link to it in the podcast notes so if you would like to have a look at that it's me telling a story about something that's very important to me and yeah I'll see you in a month speak to you in a month probably back in my nice dry studio oh I like that audio I went under a bridge and now everyone's looking at me because I just shouted audio um I'm gonna go otherwise this will go on forever thanks for sticking with me I'll speak to you soon bye