“There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.” Edward de Bono
The death of my father, Robert Stringall, in December 2011 gave me the opportunity to reflect on his mentorship at an important developmental stage in my life. Dad and I were closest when I was in my teens; it was here that he was at his most vibrant and dynamic, when he taught creative thinking and problem solving to numerous students at UC Davis and to children in inner city schools. He was one of the first white professors to research the lack of Afro-American students in the UC system in the late 60’s by visiting Birmingham, Alabama which was in the midst of civil rights protests. As a result of his experience there, he developed the M.A.T. program at UC Davis. I was lucky, because he also instructed and included me in his classes. See Robert Stringall
The 70’s were dynamic years to be young; we painted, danced, and read everything and anything, debating and discussing, playing music, ripping apart (and rebuilding) houses, cars, and electronic equipment and clothes. I learned to drive at fifteen and worked on all my cars until they became too electronic to manage. My father filled his house with instruments, art tools and regular tools. We had guitars, hand drums, his father’s 1957 Ludwig drum kit (which I still have in storage), percussion instruments; bells, cowbells, claves,
and shakers. The living room was also home to an electric organ, harmonicas, various ethnic wind instruments, and a killer sound system topped off by huge AR9 speakers. Later I bought a silver flute and piccolo set as well as some beautiful congas. All this was surrounded by over 1700 albums (including 1000 of my late grandfather’s albums – I eventually catalogued them all).
Musically, at that time, like most of my peers, I was into a variety, spanning from Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, The Moody Blues – ‘In Search of the Lost Chord’ to Frank Zappa, Beatles, Stones, Bob Dylan, Donovan, Lou Reed, Pig Bag, Steppenwolf, Cream, Traffic, Led Zepplin, Santana, John Mayall, John Lee Hooker, The Who, Yes, The Talking Heads, and Neil Young. There were no real genres then, just music everyone explored. Musical diversity encouraged, I learned and sang folk songs by Dylan, Neil Young, and Leonard Cohen and played various blues standards on my guitar, playing percussion to the rest. My step-mother was a dancer so I learned bellydancing, Tahitian and African dancing, performing for High School for P.E. classes as I had been allowed to quit normal P.E. to run a bellydancing class.
The house was full of art tools; acrylics, inks, brushes, pens, canvases, coloured pencils, charcoal, drawing paper, macrame, yarn, fabric and wood working kits. We bought used furniture and cars as money was spent on creativity. To keep our mental skills honed, we worked on math equations for the 4th dimension, and at thirteen a friend and I became the guinea pigs for a new algebra book written by her father, Sherman Stein, a colleague of dads, working through calculations, noting inconstancies. Life was one great creative, joyful endeavour, with problems to solve, questions to ask, and theories to prove. My first real job was at fourteen as I had to earn pocket money. We were going to change the world, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
Creativity was entertainment as TV was largely banned in Dad’s house at this time; although, we were taken to many major, as well as counter-culture films, even those above our age rating. As a result, from age thirteen on, I saw films very few of my peers did. Dad did not believe in censorship of any type. My first concerts were those he took us to as children; Big Mama Thornton, Taj Mahal, Buddy Miles, and more. Political causes were important and I and three friends staged the first large protest walkout at our Junior High School, leading some 300+ students. It was a dynamic time, a huge ‘Crack in the Cosmic Egg’ (Joseph Chilton Pearce). At a later age, I moved onto a commune for a brief period. Life was experimentation and sometimes risky. Friends of mine died at Jonestown and serial killers like the Zodiac stalked the areas I travelled through.
Life is “trying things to see if they work”. Ray Bradbury
Pondering my ancestry, I come across the fact that I come from a creative, non-conformist, lineage; from
artist aunts, to an inventor grandfather, who played drums and DJ’d at night, working at technical engineering labs during the day, to seamstresses, diet conscious grandmothers (gluten and dairy free cooking), DIY farmers, horticulturalists, mechanics and builders, to electronic engineers and University educators, psychologists, social workers, housewives, and doctors; we are multi-talented. My paternal great-grandfather graduated from Amherst College as a doctor and chemist, and in the 
early 1900’s lived in the California redwoods at Guerneville (Stumptown at the time) assisting the Native Tribes of Sonoma County as my grandmother played nearby in Armstrong Grove under the giant trees named after family friends. On my mother’s side, my great-grandmother and her mother and father were an Ohio paddle boat music and dancing touring group. My grandfather was an Irish-American mountain man with a photographic memory who later, with my grandmother, also moved to Sonoma County and built and ran a beautiful organic plant nursery. And as one journalist, when reviewing family history for a magazine article on my father stated, our ‘diversity is hard to pigeonhole’.
“The man with a new idea is a crank – until the idea succeeds.” Mark Twain
But enough about me … there is a method to this madness. They all taught me something about life and survival; middle class, poor, normal, unusual, hard working, creatives … family. Most of us have the experience of learning from our family, good and bad. The 70’s was a unique time period impacting my life and goals as a youth, just as many of our ancestors had their own formative events at different times and centuries. Fortunately I was able to hear stories of those times from some of them.
A creative engagement with life is ongoing, and thus many of us have tackled, worked in and moved through a variety of organisations and jobs. This is because each job is a learning opportunity, a way to expand our brains and a way to live life dynamically and survive. We become problem solvers and creative thinkers in our communications with others. Creativity is the air we breathe, living an intuitively creative life is our soul’s key note. We endeavour to figure out how things work, or why they don’t. From website coding to the infinitely variable workings of human mind, body and spirit, we solve problems and ask questions. For us, creativity is the most valuable inner drive.
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Isaac Newton
At that time many of us read voraciously, watched and analysed film, created and listened to music, painted and drew,
researched, experimented, tried theatre, studied and worked, with the understanding that some information cannot be transmitted solely through media but has to be taught, or learned. This is what apprenticeship is about. Certain ways of thinking or ‘being’ are developed solely by personal communication between a teacher and student. This is widely understood for many areas of study and as a result many of us have involved ourselves with creative and interesting individuals, mentors and teachers who personally impart their wisdom. We did not learn a series of ‘facts’ but a way, a path, a type of internal action which our mentors imparted through transference. Many teachers understand this and realise fundamentally that although a child or adult may read or gain information through media, there is a required amount of personal guidance necessary to open up certain paths of development. It is a co-creative transmission of a very hard to define quality; an openness by the teacher to questioning on part of the student and subsequent guidance and transference of information.
“The human mind once stretched by a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.” Oliver Wendell Holmes
The creative channels must be opened and nurtured, and a lack of this type of activity becomes a demoralising problem with people and in organisations. Many times, these channels are not fostered or supported, and as a result a stratified manner of thinking is employed, causing blocks when pursing solutions. It is hard to see out of one’s own box, especially if we are not given the necessary tools or freedom to do so.
Creative thinking and questioning is an art form as well as a highly developed ability which takes experience.
“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.” W. Somerset Maugham
Unfortunately as the older DIY inventors from the past generations, creators, farmers and self-made men and women disappear, they carry with them the understanding of the need to think creatively for survival. We may increasingly come upon a growing class of people who have to be ‘thought for’ or fed information, who can’t solve problems because they are unable to, at the outset, even figure out how to view situations from a variety of vantage points, or, as dad used to say, ‘formulate the right questions’. To whom creative thinking is a downloaded game or application where a finite number of choices drive the player to a set of predetermined but seemingly ‘creative’ goals, a clever channelling into a reward system of carefully chosen Pavlovian, responses. In our world of manufactured ‘creative products and personas’ uniquely developed imagination and problem solving abilities may become highly sought after, or maybe not. I am not even going to discuss the overuse of AI to problem solve, or create art and music.
“The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.” Linus Pauling
The world is dynamic, not static, making creative thinking and questioning one of the most valuable inner drives we can engender in our youth, and ourselves.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” Albert Einstein.
“There is a mystical fool in me that proved to be stronger than all my science.” Carl Jung