Mental Collages

Everything we consume (re: listen to, read, see, etc.) hits our brain for at least a second. 

It’s fun when we make an amusing connection. 

Did you know Joy Division was listening exclusively to Sparks’ No. 1 in Heaven and a Frank Sinatra Greatest Hits album when they wrote “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – ???

2 seemingly random things can make a new 1 thing. 

So why not deliberately consume in a way, that for those overlapping seconds or hours or days, where we might make a greater number of amusing connections? Can we even do that? Can you even Joy Divide bro?

Austin Kleon says he’s thinking about reading art books and physics books at the same time (amongst some other examples, including the Joy Division story above). 

This idea – of “input as collage” is already how my brain works. It’s also how my ADHD gets me into disparate things back to back (and probably why 100 gecs is so entertaining to me). 

But what about getting more deliberate about what ingredients you’re mixing? 

Austin says, 

There’s a balance here between feeding your brain intentionally and then backing off and letting your brain do the subconscious work of mixing your inputs together. 

He goes on to tell a story from a writer/surgeon who would read physics books until he was falling asleep and then pick up an art book to leaf through pages until he was out. A day or days later he’d randomly think of connections between pictures he saw and ideas from physics. 

Like I said, my ADHD does a version of this for me, but what if I want to be more deliberate with this mental collage – how do you do it? 

Send an email and let me know.