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| The first set of the "Platonic" Cyclohedra cast in 1988. (Photo: 2016, DS) (click on photos to enlarge) |
"Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. The term was coined in 1967 by Edward de Bono."
- Via the Wiki entry for lateral thinking.
"They were most famously used by Eno during the recording of David Bowie's Berlin triptych of albums (Low, "Heroes", Lodger). Stories suggest they were used during the recording of instrumentals on "Heroes" such as "Sense of Doubt" and were used more extensively on Lodger ("Fantastic Voyage", "Boys Keep Swinging", "Red Money"). They were used again on Bowie's 1995 album Outside, which Eno was involved with as a writer, producer and musician. Carlos Alomar, who worked with Eno and Bowie on all these albums, was a fan on using the cards, later saying "at the Center for Performing Arts at the Stevens Institute of Technology, where I teach, on the wall are Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards. And when my students get a mental block, I immediately direct them to that wall."
- From the Wiki entry for Oblique Strategies, a card game created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt and first published in 1975. David Bowie's personal deck (pictured above, inset, right) was found here.
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| Les stratégies obliques (and here) |
"Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)"
- The "oblique strategy" presented to moi when I clicked the link for the online version of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies. (English only, but there is a French version on the web somewhere... at least there was... as well as a Japanese version.)
"As it happened, the subject of maps came up that day, during a game of Triakis, a game which was fairly new to the Prince, and one for which his uncle insisted he needed training. As it was, he'd just made, what he thought, was a strategic move, but when his uncle's turn came, the boy lost another avatar.
"You will never understand this game, Nathaniel," his uncle grinned, flipping the tetrahedron in the air and then catching it, "until you look at the board as if it were a map."
But, all the Prince really saw when he looked at the diamond- shaped board was a mosaic of triangles, and he said so.
"Well, yes, the board is composed of triangles, but, look closely: those triangles are really portions of hexagons, and it's by the hexagons one calculates the most advantageous moves to make," explained his uncle."Well, no," laughed his Uncle, "not like those I own, but precisely like the ancient maps that were made by the Avians."
"Avians? Do you mean, actual birds?" his nephew asked incredulously. "Birds made maps?!"
"The Avians weren't exactly birds, Nathaniel", explained his uncle, "but, like birds, they could fly. Ultimately, it was they who discovered Elidon Wold, and gave it its name. But that was in a different circle of time..."
"Do you mean, when you were a boy, Uncle?"
"Oh no," said his uncle, "I was never a boy. I was as you see me now... as I always have and always will be seen. I merely meant a circle of time in which boys like yourself were not physically located."
***
As you might've noticed, my usual modus operandi these days is to start a post and then leave it hanging there, unfinished... for days. I'm trying hard to break this habit, but, as of late, there seems to be a large disconnect between my impulses and ideas and my ability to translate them into hard copy. Moreover, by the time I've found the words, I've forgotten the point. The reality is, while "lateral thinking" - the sort of thinking that Brian Eno hoped to induce with his Oblique Strategy cards - might be useful for spontaneous, creative leaps of the imagination and breaking though mental blocks, etc., in the end, it doesn't, in itself, produce anything tangible. It takes a certain amount of logic - that is, linear thinking - to bring any "project," large or small, to fruition. In other words, to truly successfully hatch anything into the world, one has to effortlessly glide between the two modes of thought, the two modes of activity, utilizing each at the proper moment. And it takes a certain amount of faith in yourself to pull this off. The minute your faith falters... well, it's like with any other skill - riding a bicycle, perhaps, or ice-skating - you fail... you fall. Or, worse still, you flounder...
