John Cleese, Graham Wallas, and preparation for insight
Monty Python's John Cleese has given a number of talks over the years about creativity. Today runner and academic Peter Francis tweeted out a link to a talk Cleese gave that
“mildly enjoying and completely forgetting an infinite series of disconnected ideas”
In 1926, in his classic yet often-forgotten The Art of Thought, Graham Wallas warned against engaging distractions like reading the newspaper. Newspaper reading is for most of us a
Winston Churchill on “painting as a pastime”
I’m just back from a trip to England, where I was doing interviews and archival work for Rest. While most of my time was spent in the British
Erno Rubik, Graham Wallas, and the invention of the Rubik’s Cube
Just over forty years ago, Erno Rubik invented what is now one of the most famous puzzles ever: the Rubik’s Cube. Recently I saw an interview with Rubik
“the stage of incubation should include a large amount of actual mental relaxation”
From Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought: Voluntary abstention from conscious thought on any particular problem may, itself, take two forms: the period of abstention may be spent
“A walk of twenty or thirty miles a day is one of his favorite amusements”
One of the things that constantly amazes me about our ancestors is how much more exercise they got in the course of a day, and especially how much
Is there an art of thought?
Recently I've been reading Graham Wallas's 1926 book The Art of Thought and his other works, and am now in the process of working it into Rest. Wallas is one