Creative Thinking

a chronicle, a conversation, an exploration

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Time to Register for Creative Thinking!

It’s time to register for Fall 2018 semester! In Creative Thinking, you will learn with students from diverse majors across all of Montclair State’s colleges and with faculty whose work finds focus in the humanities, sciences, and the performing arts. This fall, the lead instructors will integrate their own interdisciplinary work in a range of subjects including classics, theater, writing, activism, social work, and environmental studies in their classes.

       Christopher Parker is an award-winning poet, playwright, scholar, whose career has also included stints as a marketing director for PricewaterhouseCoopers and HBO. In addition to Creative Thinking, Chris teaches mythology, general humanities, and writing at Montclair State.

       Phoebe Farber is a psychotherapist and playwright. “Because of my dual interests in psychology and writing, the section of the Creative Thinking course I teach will include psychology-oriented themes…My hope is that students will come away from this class with a clear sense of the components of creative thinking, and a deeper curiosity about delving into their own creative minds.”    

      Doug Chapman is a musician, actor, and theater educator trained at the the Interlochen Arts Academy, Oberlin College, American Repertory Theatre Institute at Harvard, and the Moscow Art Theatre. He is also a LEED accredited professional with the US Green Building Council and a sustainable design consultant contributing to projects in Europe, North America and the Caribbean. He is a passionate supporter of interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly at the intersection of art and ecology.

Creative Thinking (CRTH-151) is a 3-credit interdisciplinary elective open to all undergraduates. 

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Interdisciplinary Teaching in CRTH-151: Spring 2018

        It’s time to register for the Spring 2018 semester at Montclair State University! A valuable aspect of Creative Thinking at MSU over the years has been the academic diversity of the students – who represent majors in all colleges of the university – and the faculty, whose research backgrounds span the humanities, sciences, and the performing arts. This spring, Lead Instructors offer fresh perspectives to the course (CRTH-151) from their own interdisciplinary work integrating expertise in psychology, writing, and activism.

        Shelagh Patterson is a poet, scholar, and activist who teaches First-Year Writing at Montclair State University. In Shelagh’s words:

“We will be developing our own creative practices in conversation with the practices of a diverse array of thinkers, writers, artists, and activists. Central to the class will be the question: how is our individual creativity shaped while also shaping our local (and global!) communities? I am particularly excited to be teaching a class open to all majors and students with a variety of interests as we explore how creativity is an essential part of developing our projects.”

        Phoebe Farber is a psychotherapist and playwright and has taught Psychology courses in MSU’s Department of Health Sciences. Phoebe describes her section of the course:

“Because of my dual interests in psychology and writing, the Creative Thinking course will include psychology-oriented themes…My hope is that students will come away from this class with a clear sense of the components of creative thinking, and a deeper curiosity about delving into their own creative minds.

        Creative Thinking (CRTH-151) is a 3-credit interdisciplinary elective open to all undergraduates. You can still register for Shelagh’s and Phoebe’s sections offered on the following days:

Lead Instructor: Shelagh Patterson (Writing Studies)
Wednesdays, 11:30pm - 2:00pm
CRTH-151-03, CRN# 27757

Lead Instructor:  Phoebe Farber (Psychology)
Tuesdays, 11:30am - 2:00pm
CRTH-151-02, CRN# 27775

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Lessons in Creativity

By David Galef, lead instructor, Fall 2017

         What does it take to be creative? A mind open to possibility, a willingness to take risks and embark on new paths … but also an understanding of what’s already been done, and the technical skill to turn abstract ideas into concrete results.

         As the head of the creative writing program here at Montclair State, as well as the author of over a dozen books, I’m in the business of creativity—not just producing creative work, but also spurring others to create.

        My approach to teaching the Creative Thinking course (CRTH-151) starts with an analysis of the creative process by Freud and other commentators. We focus on what distinguishes so-called creative types from others. In the process, we look at a gallery of people distinguished for their creative work, from painters and writers to mathematicians and scientists. One main angle is on creativity in writing, looking at essays by writers on the joys and frustrations of the writing process. We’ll examine beliefs about writing (like “write about what you know”) that are part truth, part myth. There’s even a section on intention: does it matter what the writer had in mind, or should audiences judge simply by what’s in front of them?

        In between are prompts and responses to get you writing, a creative performance at Kasser to attend, and visits from practicing artists to shift you in unexpected ways. We even tackle some creativity tests—not graded—to show you how creativity is measured.

        The course culminates in the students’ personal projects: developing a presentation on some creative aspect of your life that you can share with others.

        It’s a fun, at times challenging, genuinely useful course. Students leave the class with heightened creativity and a greater appreciation of others’ creative work.


David Galef has published over a dozen books, including the novels Flesh, Turning Japanese, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress, the short-story collections Laugh Track and My Date with Neanderthal Woman, two children’s books, The Little Red Bicycle and Tracks, and a co-edited anthology of fiction called 20 over 40. His latest volume is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook. He is a professor of English and the creative writing program director at Montclair State University.

MSU undergraduates can register for David Galef’s Fall 2017 section of Creative Thinking:

Tuesdays, 2:30pm-5:00pm
CRTH-151-03, CRN# 49577

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Ask the Right Questions: Learning Through Inquiry

By Christopher Parker, lead instructor

Dr. Christopher Parker wrote several posts to chronicle course progression during his first semester teaching Creative Thinking; this is his final post in the series. Dr. Parker will again teach Creative Thinking, CRTH-151-02, in Fall 2017.

          An important way to collect material for/on creative contemplation is to ask questions of creative thinkers.  In addition to speaking directly with visiting artists from HOWL, we returned to the “sacred space” of the Kasser Theater for a new sojourn— to see American choreographer Deborah Hay’s Figure a Sea performed by the remarkable Cullberg Ballet with a score composed by Laurie Anderson. In Figure a Sea, movement on the proscenium precipitated an imaginary body of water floating to the shores of new connections. We acquired contextual information about this abstract dance piece through a pre-show conversation between dance scholar Nancy Dalva and Deborah Hay.  The conversation presented the opportunity to hear a dance writer interview an artist about her creative process.  Similarly, subsequent pedagogy in Creative Thinking was designed to include a) student inquiry towards thinkers about their work and, b) methods of inquiry about art as modeled by professional critics.

            Visiting Opera Critic Richard Sasanow demonstrated to us how to inquire directly with his sources by giving a live example of an interview in class.  Mr. Sasanow’s example was followed up with students interviewing each other on their most meaningful creative thinking achievement so far. This workshop fully engaged the class.

             In yet another class, we conducted a live internet conversation with Hollywood motion picture director Brad Parker on the concept of sound in film, particularly his own horror film, Chernobyl Diaries.  Prior to our conversation, we listened to music by the film’s composer Diego Stocco: which students used to prepare questions for Mr. Parker.   How does one move a question from “when did you start directing?”  or “was it hard to make a film?” to a deeper question which may lead us to discoveries in the creative process.  We worked in communities of inquiry to evolve some of our questionings.  Here are a few examples:

In the movie [Chernobyl Diaries] I can easily find the cliché of the horror or thriller movie: characters go to a weird, forbidden, scary place with friends and getting stuck in there. Then something happens, and finally, the only one who survives is the main actor. Sometimes a cliché helps to get to creative thinking, but it may prevent us from reaching creative ideas. Why did you use it, and how to does this cliché make the movie special or different than others which have the same cliché?

Assuming that all artists face the challenge of getting stuck when creating ideas, what are some tools that you use to overcome any mental roadblocks you experienced when creating this film?

With the assumption that all artists put “themselves” into their own artwork, what specific experiences in your life made you want to make this film in the thriller/horror genre?  For instance, much of the visual imagery of the frightening moments within the film is left to the audience’s imagination- what is it about this ambiguity or element of mystery that appeals to, or even frightens you?

              Visiting Professor Marissa Silverman explored with us how we define music. Like Brad Parker, Prof. Silverman referenced the music of Diego Stocco. Mr. Stocco benefitted the class as a model for his unique composing techniques; he deconstructs traditional instruments and rebuilds the parts to create unusual instruments which create unique sounds. Professor Silverman also lead us through an interactive exercise using objects in the classroom to compose a musical/sonic piece inspired by a condition of weather, such as rain. And, perhaps facilitated by our practice with inquiry, students were clearly ready to question Silverman about the meaning of music and how it is conceived in the creative process. 


Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University.  A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools.  A playwright, his work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey. 

Christopher Parker’s Fall 2017 section of Creative Thinking, CRTH-151-02, is open to all undergraduates at Montclair State University:

CRTH-151-02, CRN# 49576

Tuesdays, 10:00am-12:30pm

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Thinking From Inside the Box

By Christopher Parker, lead instructor

Dr. Christopher Parker wrote a series of posts to chronicle the Fall 2016 semester. Dr. Parker will again teach a section of Creative Thinking, CRTH-151-02, in Fall 2017.

 I have included in my previous posts a sidebar that uses the metaphor of encountering the world from inside a used refrigerator box. We are always inside this metaphorical box. The expression “thinking outside the box” may mean that something you choose is not in the norm.  We cannot really be “outside the box” because we wear this box wherever we go. The box includes archetypal concepts and images and stories that are part of a collective unconscious in all of us.  The box also includes social paradigms that somehow found its way into our being.

But we can learn to work well being in this box.  We can organize, categorize, imagine, and create within the box using “the stuff” acquired from outside its walls. The “stuff” acquired from outside includes experiences and perceptions that may be new to us or that we may look at in new ways.   These experiences are “archived” inside our box, making it a “sacred place.” The archive then becomes our own “stuff,” and we can make something new and useful from it.

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Concrete manifestations of “the box” metaphor, made by Creative Thinking students. A mini-fridge full of themes from the semester, and a guitar made from recycled materials.


The metaphor of the refrigerator box includes a young friend who journeys with you inside the box. That young friend is really a younger you, maybe when there was less inhibiting your creative thinking.  You never leave your friend because he is a part of you.  You may need to return to that part of yourself from time to time.  

In the Creative Thinking class, one exercise involved recalling a time when students felt that they had done something creative.  That creative moment could be as a very young child, or more recently.  I asked students to review the narrative of that moment in their mind’s eye and then to actually manifest the physiology of that creative success.  Students were then interviewed by their peers on this creative moment.  This workshop generated a lot of positive energy in the class and engaged every single student and even the class guests.

To summarize the discoveries made through the refrigerator box metaphor:

  • Remember your creative thinking successes from youth.
  • Improve sensual perceptions by cutting holes in the cardboard interior and look, listen, smell, feel and taste things outside the box.
  • Increase and archive your percipience by having symbols, such as language, to name experiences.
  • Categorize your perceptual artifacts and symbols as you organize files or tools so that “the stuff” you need to create something new is accessible.
  • Learn from other creative thinkers and observe their creations to stimulate your own creative thinking.
  • Enrich creative thinking even further by employing direct inquiry with creative thinkers, to learn creative methods and techniques.

None of these techniques may be natural for many people.  By listing them here, we may develop creative thinking practices by using these steps to walk our refrigerator box to a new place.


Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University.  A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools.  A playwright, his work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey. 

Dr. Parker’s section of Creative Thinking, CRTH-151-02, is open to all undergraduates at Montclair State University:

Instructor:  Christopher Parker (Classics and General Humanities)

CRTH-151-02, CRN# 49576

Tuesday, 10:00am-12:30pm

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Exploring the Creative Mind: Summer Session Preview

By Phoebe Farber, lead instructor, Summer 17

        As a writer, I think about the creative process all the time—what defines it, what enhances it, and how can we harness it?   I often think that being creative is about risking being bad.  Striving for perfection or brilliance gets in the way of taking a risk because everything matters—and that constant evaluation extinguishes the creative spark.  If I sit down to write a piece of dialogue and think, “this better be great,” I’m frozen. The most powerful thing I can tell myself is, “It’s ok if this is terrible.”

        I’m excited to be teaching the summer session of Creative Thinking for 2017.  I am a psychotherapist by training (MSW 1993; Ph.D 2002) and have a private practice in Montclair where I specialize in working with adolescents and young adults.  I teach a psychology class at Montclair State as an adjunct professor, in the department of Health Sciences. I am also a playwright.  I have had plays read and produced in a number of theaters around New York and New Jersey, and just finished a fellowship with the Emerging Women Playwrights Group of Writer’s Theater of New Jersey.  

        Because of my dual interests in psychology and writing, the Creative Thinking course will include psychology-oriented themes, such as the unconscious.  We will look at Freud’s concept of the unconscious and explore ways one can access the world that resides below our awareness.  One aspect of our unconscious, according to Freud, is the life of dreams.  Our dreams reflect our unconscious desires and fears.  We will look at the information our dreams may give us, and learn tools for interpreting the meaning of our dreams.

        The class will explore the world of creativity from both a theoretical and a practical perspective.  We will use a textbook called Wired To Create (Kaufman & Gregoire, 2016) and explore the themes of Imaginative Play, mindfulness, and introspection.  Students will be encouraged to delve into their own creative process, and each will be asked to identify a project they would like to work on for the class.  A number of guest artists will come to share their work with the students.  We will engage in classroom exercises that illustrate ideas about creativity. My hope is that students will come away from this class with a clear sense of the components of creative thinking, and a deeper curiosity about delving into their own creative minds.


Register for Creative Thinking Summer session:

May 15 – June 8, 2017

Monday – Thursday, 10:10 a.m. – 12:55 p.m.

CRTH 151-11, CRN# 30956

Non-matriculating students welcome! Visit montclair.edu/summer for guidelines and to register.

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How We Remember “The Forgotten”

By Christopher Parker, lead instructor, Fall 2016

This is the fourth post by Dr. Christopher Parker in a series which chronicles the progress of the Creative Thinking course in the Fall 2016 semester. 

You and your young friend are trotting along in your refrigerator box and reach an impasse.  There is a crossing guard at the corner.  You ask, “Where exactly are we now, and what can we expect if we turn right?”  You make a few notes with the Sharpie on the interior.  By obtaining some knowledge through inquiry, your box-blocked perception is improved.


       The first performance we experienced as a group was The Forgotten/L’Oublié(e) at the Alexander Kasser Theater, our next “sacred space.”  Prior to the show, students were given “curator” information to facilitate their percipience during the performance.  Arts and Cultural Programming provided the class with contextual information on The Forgotten creator and cirque nouveau performing artist Raphaëlle Boitel.  Boitel has been described as “one of the most remarkable performers on the European visual and physical theater scene.” She dives, glides, and flies throughout the production, employing an amazing athletic potency.  She and her company of five performers generated an alternate universe of striking meaning and beauty within the stage’s proscenium.


          While it may be challenging to describe the narrative portrayed in The Forgotten, there was no doubt a narrative.  The students, while silent, were jaw-dropped, metaphorically suggesting there was something they wanted to say but could not.  Some students did not know exactly how to “archive” their experience using their perception.  So, in the next class, we explored symbolic metaphoric language to name the experiences of the senses.  Furthermore, to discuss the ideas evoked by The Forgotten, we considered form, another tool common to creative projects in almost all genres.

          To provide another experience in a “sacred space,” we visited the George Segal Gallery.  The exhibit Between Here and Then: Photography from the Collections of Montclair State University, curated by Mimi Weinberg, features photographs from the University’s permanent collections. While this exhibit includes a few color Polaroids by Andy Warhol, the exhibit mostly displays black-and-white photographs sorted into four sections: Snapshots, which serve as visual diary entries; Sketches, photos displaying the process of creating something; Documents, featuring ritual practices and objects; and Pictures, pieces that highlight the subjects, considered by the curator as the final results of a creative process.

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Photo: Part of the exhibit Between Here and Then: Photography from the Collections of Montclair State University at the George Segal Gallery.

         The perceptual task here was to perceive the black-and-white photographs and to use language to make metaphorical connections that are not present in the two-dimensional images, but that may be suggested.  Students learned to look more closely to find connections to sensory imagery such as movement, emotion, aroma, color, and, in keeping with our class theme, sound or music.

        George Segal Gallery Education Coordinator Adam Swart worked with us to find new ways to garner multiple sensory experiences from black-and-white photographs and to express them in new written responses.  Mr. Swart’s insight into the exhibit’s themes and variations in photographic media added to our percipience.


Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University.  A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools.  A playwright, Chris’s work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.

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Sacred Space:  Yogi Berra Museum

By Christopher Parker, lead instructor, Fall 2016

This is the third post by Dr. Christopher Parker in a series which chronicles the progress of the Creative Thinking course in the Fall 2016 semester. 

As you walk around with your friend in the corrugated cardboard refrigerator box, you have a growing collection of artifacts from the sidewalk, as well as notes and drawings written in Sharpie on the inner walls  The box, in this case, is becoming your own sacred space.

            We continue to start each class with an exercise in Creative Thinking.
One example is inspired by a Pablo Picasso sculpture called Bull’s Head, assembled out of nothing more than the seat of an old bicycle and the handlebars.  Students are shown drawings of various bicycle parts and then must reimagine or redesign something new. Students present the “sketches” of their new reassembled ideas to the class; these can be comedic, metaphoric, and/or aesthetic. It was clear in this exercise that some students were evolving in their abilities to make new and unexpected connections between parts of life’s “stuff.” Still, this exercise provided students with the “stuff”—i.e., bike parts—with clear instructions.  The greater challenge for students is to collect, perceive, and archive sensory stimuli on their own. I wanted them to demonstrate finding “stuff” through their improved perception and make something new from those perceptions.  

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Photo: Wikipedia, Pablo Picasso’s Bull’s Head, Musée Picasso, Paris.

        Perceptions come to us through the senses; they may also include knowledge of an item or experience assembled with a little research, such as a curator card next to an artifact or artwork in a museum.  What’s more, museums stimulate perception because they are often perceived as “sacred spaces”.  The environment tends to put the perceiver in a different mind frame to think of things in a different way.

          Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center was chosen as a challenge to perception, because it is not an art museum nor a museum of natural history but rather a venue hosting a particular theme.  In addition to the artifacts and media that have a visual presence, Yogi Berra conveys cultural history through docents and curator cards, and the venue can be experienced as a “sacred space.”  All this takes the five senses to conceive richly of the thematic concepts at Yogi Berra Museum.  To further develop students’ skills of archiving their perceptions, we visited two more “sacred spaces” on campus, the Alexander Kasser Theater and the George Segal Gallery.


Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University.  A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools.  A playwright, Chris’s work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.

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HOWL Live

By Christopher Parker, lead instructor, Fall 2016

Dr. Christopher Parker will write a series of posts to chronicle the progress of the Creative Thinking course this semester.  This is the second in the series; read his first post “Cutting a Window in “the Box.”


Picture if you will, you and your young friend in the corrugated refrigerator box. You have found a way to tear holes in the bottom of the box, so that you can “walk” the box along the sidewalk by putting your legs out through the holes and hoisting up the inside of the box with your arms.  As you inch along the pathway, you find occasional artifacts of nature like a pine cone, an acorn, or golden and red autumn leaves.  You put some of those items into your box to save.

      In the second class we attended a live, work-in-progress rehearsal of QUIXOTE with composer and librettist Amy Beth Kirsten, director Mark DeChiazza, the HOWL ensemble, and the production staff of the Alexander Kasser Theater. Prior to arriving at the theater, we watched three short rehearsal videos of QUIXOTE at earlier stages of its development.  These videos and subsequent conversations with Mark and Amy gave us the opportunity to see their creative process unfold. We observed a creative thinking strategy in use, on which Mark elaborated during a subsequent in-class workshop: “Start with any idea and then move to the next step to see how it develops.”  We could see for ourselves the process of ideas developing in the QUIXOTE rehearsal.

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Image: Creative Thinking students observe HOWL in rehearsal. Director Mark DeChiazza (center, left) and Production Manager Ryan Graves (center) explain the collaborative effort to present QUIXOTE on the Kasser stage.

          Following the rehearsal, students wrote 200-word statements about the creative process involved in the QUIXOTE experience.  I evaluated the level of perception students evidenced in their writing assignment and decided many needed to lift their percipience level.  For one, perception is improved by thinking through symbols.  One of the most familiar symbol systems we have is language. But still, as a class we need to build the ability of our language to create deeper meaning through metaphor. 

           We now also start every session with creative thinking exercises.  We use many pragmatic exercises for practicing steps towards coming out of “the box”.  One method suggests that, by making new connections that we don’t usually make, we are exercising our creative thinking.  Still, to make connections we need “stuff” to connect.  The exercises we employ in class include the “stuff.”  Some exercises let us forage for our own collection of “stuff”— the material, or palette, for creative thinking. Watching the working rehearsal for QUIXOTE at Kasser added to our palette, and gave us the experience of being in a professional venue, or sacred place for creative thinking.


Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University.  A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools.  A playwright, Chris’s work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.

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Cutting a Window in “the Box”

By Christopher Parker, lead instructor, Fall 2016

Dr. Christopher Parker will write a series of posts to chronicle the progress of the Creative Thinking course this semester.  


Imagine you are playing with a young child.  On recycling day, you come across a big, corrugated refrigerator box.  You both go into it, and stay there for a while.


      In the first class we asked, what is creative thinking?  Conversations led us to generate a metaphor for what isn’t creative thinking.  These were the paradigms, memes, cultural norms, family and peer pressures that tended to keep us away from thinking creatively. For example:

      “Mom and dad, I really want to take a class in actually writing poetry.”

      In unison parents respond, “Oh my goodness!  Make sure you adhere to your major.  Write poetry on your free time, if you have any…free time that is.”

      So, the box represents the limitations we impose on our creative thinking. Insecurity in moving beyond the norm also defines “the box.”  Fear of failure. Being trained by cultural paradigms as to what it is good to do and what is not. We decided there was “in the box” and “out of the box.”

       We still couldn’t define exactly what creative thinking is, but we agreed that the box sets limits on creative thinking.  Some students thought that there may be ways out of the box.  Or, at least we could cut windows in the box so we can peer outside of it.  One student suggested listening to great music.  It was generally agreed that this method may help one to begin to think creatively, and this may separate us a bit from the trapping paradigm.  But how does that work? How does listening to music allow us to separate from paradigms and our typical patterns?  It seemed we needed something like music to actually open a window out of the box. 

Now imagine that you are back in the refrigerator box with your young friend. You hear an interesting noise, almost music outside.  You don’t want to disrupt the comfortable environment and come out of the box, but you do rip a small window in the corrugated cardboard to peer outside.

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