Bringing the Abstract into Concrete
By Ray Brimble, posted on Jan 5, 2018
I wish.
I wish to bring the abstract into the concrete, the concept into the tangible.
Otherwise known as "to get shit done."
Ideas are great, but if they remain only wishes, at best, they will lay dormant until someone else seeks to nurture them.
Isn't it better to grow your own wishes? To introduce them into this realm?
Create something from nothing. Turn what was once just a glimmer in your eye into something of this world and for this world. All things of man that exist in the "real" world, all THINGS that ever were and ever will be, were first conceived in the mind of someone and somehow they "became."
What is the mechanism for this "becoming" of things? Is it enough to simply imagine something for it to become?
I think not.
Here are four archetypes I think of to represent the various pathways you can take. Depending on the situation, you can decide which creative role works best in your process of bringing your idea into reality.
The first: The Dancer.
The dance is the marriage of the parties of "concept" (the music you hear in your head) and your ability to accompany it in corporeal form (the steps).
This is not an old-fashioned dance where one party leads and the other follows. Rather, each partner takes turns. At first you lead, and then the other takes the lead. Part of the fun is knowing which is which. Is concept leading corporeal, or corporeal leading concept?
The next: The Firestarter.
Bringing things from abstract to the concrete is sometimes about creating the spark, being the spark. In this mode, one is the inspiration, the charismatic teller of the tale, the force of nature jettisoning that thing on a string of electrons through the veil which delicately hangs between concept and reality. This method is no dance. It is a melding. You are it, and it is you. The spark is the force, almost visible to others, between you and it. This work has a name: excitement.
The third: The Midwife.
Surprisingly, some concepts arrive almost fully formed... but not quite. Nurturing and inducing birth can be a difficult task, because it involves patience, timing, and delicate balance. Imagine you are the midwife of an idea. It is not of you. You are just delivering it to the real world.
As challenging as any of these others might appear, the fourth is by far the most challenging: The Witness.
This role require letting go. As someone who prefers active participation, I have never quite understood how some things have come to manifest themselves in my life despite myself. Have you ever seen a delicate flower growing out of a crack in a concrete sidewalk? You did not plant it, you have not nurtured it, you don't even know where or how it came to be. Yet, it lives, it grows, it seeks the sun in all of its beauty. Call this luck, nature, God; in my world, all of these explanations are appropriate. What is OUR role in this? Simply to be the observer, the receiver, a witness to intense truth that we are not the center of the universe, and that things happen irrespective of hopes, ideas, pitches, connections, and indeed, even our wishes.
Wishing. Such a bittersweet activity. We never know which role we will play or even if a wish will be fulfilled. Yet, we should never stop wishing.