The Gateless Gate

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Further to last night's post re. my take on Eno's Oblique Strategies methodology. Like the twisted, self-authored version I use of the Zettelkasten - "The Twenty" - it is simply a way of extending the range of one's thought processes. In the case of the The Twenty, just like any form of physical note-taking, cataloguing and ordering of information, it helps to fix thoughts and ideas a little bit more firmly in the mind: attending lectures without taking notes is not really attending, after all. But Oblique Strategies is simply a way of chucking in a bit of noise, anarchy and pseudo-randomness into the thinking pot: it is not a recipe nor an instruction manual nor a self-help cult: it's just grit for the oyster of creativity.

The functional point is that it gets in the way of and interrupts a stagnant thought process and branches the consciousness out to somewhere else for just long enough for better stuff to emerge from the subconscious mind to the front of house. It simply doesn't matter what method you light upon: it could be the I Ching, it could be Tarot cards, it could be ketamine: it could be simply banging your head against the wall; it doesn't matter. The point is that it takes your mind out of the stuckist rut it's currently in and gives your deep brain some space to bring the always-there background processing of ideas and problem-solving to the fore. Whatever it is that works for you is whatever it is that works for you. Zen; not dogma.

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