Adam Blatner

Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner

Table of Contents:

Play and Spontaneity

How Action Expl0rations Work

I see action explorations as being a synthesis of all of the following: 1. The general principle of “Creativity” as a general goal—which contrasts with the 20th century goal of hoping to “get it right” (as if some authority knew what the right answer was). There’s a whole world-view here that shifts from the world […]

I Get to Help

I am blessed because I have some sense of what I can do to help, what might be my own contribution: I have discovered ways to amplify our creative potential. Others have preceded me, it must be acknowledged (such as J. L. Moreno), and others as saying something like this, but no others that I […]

I’m Not a Cheese

Kids learn weird songs such as “The Farmer in the Dell.” Unless the birthday boy or gets it, and nowadays he might not, it’s not funny. It’s a bit of name-calling. But the other kids are innocent and well-disposed, so there’s a disconnect here. I suspect that as time goes on many seemingly innocent bits […]

Idiosyncratic Mind

Idiosyncrasy is the quality of being one-of-a-kind. In spite of many institutions in the 20th century—school, business, church—treating us as if we were interchangeable units in a big machine, in fact we are quite unique. In this present century we’re only beginning to catch up to the awareness that, first, everything is far more complex […]

Imagination Development

So there’s the name: Imagination Development. Imagination can and should be developed! It’s a theme that helps rationalize some hobbies, or it could be a hobby in itself. It’s a kind of mental yoga. Stretching and bending the imagination, playing, pretending, consciously daydreaming. It relates to Jung’s suggestion that we actively imagine. Most people don’t […]

Importuning the Great Mystery

To importune means to ask (someone) pressingly and persistently for or to do something. Other becomings (a better word than beings as all is in flux) elsewhere in the multi-verse do this too. However we are, there are riddles. Huston Smith, the scholar of comparative religions, defines the words tellingly: A puzzle requires a knack, […]

Improv (-isational Drama)

​Some people from the world of theatre got into improv comedy about 50 years ago, and from thence. gradually, into improv in everyday work and life. This has been a little like those horse races where the lesser-well-known horse comes up from behind and wins the race. Moreno’s venture into psychiatry and improv theater combined […]

Insti-toot 4 Certificate-ology

International Institute of Certificatology is announcing its grand opening! You can create, grant, authorize, bestow, honor, recognize, authenticate, issue diplomas and (of course) certify as well as the best of ‘em! Deans, Boards of Examiners, Dipploma Mills, so-called “recognized” universities, and other establishment types and their pseudo-minions have no authority , other than what the […]

It’s Complicated

Inner Whiner to God: Why does it have to be so complicated? God (aka The Becoming Everything, among other sobriquets):    “It’s not complicated from my perspective.” Actually, credit where credit is due: This gem was said to me offhanded by my son, David. He didn’t realize how great it was at first! Other things […]

Junior Prophet?

Well, what should I call this status role? It’s significantly less than a full-blown prophet, but it points out or explains what a real prophet might have been alluding to. Prophet-ette? Maybe. There is the phenomenon of people tending to say they’re true followers while in fact deviating in certain ways from the prophet’s intended […]

Keep Believing, Keep Pretending

There is a little verse is at the end of the 1980s Muppet Movie in which the melody of the Rainbow Connection is once again sung as a reprise: “Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We’ve done just what we set out to do, Just like the lovers, the […]

Leaping Beyond Our Positive Thinking Base

I am honored to have Marilyn Schoeman as a friend. She is known as an author, international speaker, thought leader, creativity catalyst and game developer in Seattle, Washington:  gogreenlightway.com. Her book, GO! How to Think, Speak and ACT to Make Good Things Happen, introduces the Green Light® language, mind set. The Green Light®.  Goal: Create […]

Leprechaun Power

Here’s a little thought for St. Patrick’s Day: Please take it as seriously or as playfully as you like. At this point in history, most reputable people don’t yet believe in elves. (And by elves I mean anthropomorphic representations of semi-cosmic resonant energy fields.) It’s interesting, because belief in cosmic resonant energy fields such as […]

Letter-Forms as Art

By no means am I the only one who plays with the root forms of alphabets and the like as potential forms of art. I’ve been seriously interested in what I call “scriptology,” and also playfully interested, insofar as the making of writing is an art form in several cultures. It has become more so […]

Levels of Mind

I don’t know how to prove this, but mind that thinks about awareness represents a dimension of mind as different from bare awareness as is the third dimension  different from the second dimension. Yet there’s a further step in dimensionality: If mind—awareness—is another dimension, then thinking about thinking is what humans do. So if space […]

Life Enhancement via “Self Rev”

I have a friend in Oakland, California, named Sheila Rubin, who leads workshops on how to do “Self-Revelatory Theatre.” (This approach to my knowledge was first written about in the mid-1990s by another friend, Renee Emunah, and mentioned in her book, Acting for Real.) This is good stuff, but the appeal so far has been […]

Life Enrichment

There’s a new field emerging: Life Enrichment. It’s for just what it says. It emerges from improvisational theatre and psychodrama, and has roots in the way we played with imagined scenarios as kids—cops and robbers, house, hospital, whatever. Our great grandchildren may say about our generation, "Can you believe they were mostly just one person? […]

Life Exploration

This is also a form of life expansion, and it’s not medical model. It’s a coaching model. Many—perhaps most—people who are referred aren’t really wanting to take on the world in new ways. They just say to themselves, “Don’t try this or you’ll seem foolish.” But life expansion is a form of non-problem-centered work with […]

Life Improv(-isation)

There is improv (short for mainly dramatiic improvisation) for psychotherapy, also known as psychodrama, pioneered by Jacob Moreno. This has been given new life by professionals who have also done improv for therapy. There’s also comedy improv, done by people associated mainly with the theatre arts—though some few have glimpsed at improv as a way […]

Lifelong Re-Creation

It’s time here in the early 21st century to recognize that many procedures that have arisen from the context of “therapy” have far wider application! (It’s no more daring to note this than to note that there are now many thousands more applications for computers and associated technologies than there were back in the 1950s.) […]

Lords of the Dance

Well, actually a Lord in the British hierarchy of nobility is not all that high of a status. ("Lord" is how Marquess, Earls and Barons and their sons as well as the sons of Dukes are addressed.) But really I’m referring to third- or other lower order spirits of each dance, as if each dance […]

Low-Grade Mysticism?

As I’ve been contemplating the nature of some more vivid dream images, it occurred to me that I’m experiencing in dream-imagery some aspects of the lower levels of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Semi-mythically speaking, “my” angels—the super-conscious forces, personified, of whatever is “growing” me—have been reminding me increasingly of the seemingly infinite horizons in […]

Lubricating “Grace”

Now there’s been some talk about how I doodle and make things up. I admit to this, but the process is more subtle and complex than it seems. To dismiss it as “just imagination” is as shallow as dismissing, well, imagination, as “just” imagination. What’s this “just” stuff? As if we are entitled to make […]

Making Stuff Up

I’m afraid I’m profligate—er, no… promiscuous? wrong word. Un, precocious, preternatural, portly? No. I do expressive myself a lot, though, through many channels. Check out my website and especially the section on confabulations. The latest one is relevant to current events, I think. To confabulate is to make stuff up. One then may or may […]

Mandaladoodle

You may have noticed that my drawings and mandalas are less than perfect or professionally painted. This is for several reasons: (1) Ideas come thick and fast, and so I get impatient. (2) I confess to being a little lazy. (3) I want to get this out to you while they’re still fresh in my […]

Archives