The Creative Power Of Incongruous Thinking
How to unleash your creativity by combining overtly mismatched pieces into something never seen before.
Thinking Outside Of Multiple Boxes
Universally acclaimed musician, writer, actor, and visual artist, Tom Waits, has claimed that one of his most productive approaches to songwriting consists of setting up multiple radios in a single room and tuning each one to a different station…and then just listening to the chaos they create. One radio might play jazz; country on the one adjacent; rock in the middle; a commercial might be playing on the next, and nothing but static might be hissing out of the last. The possible combinations of overlapping sounds are seemingly endless. But how could this chaos ever possibly be used as a means of coming up with a new song? Such an unlikely feat becomes possible with the liberating power of “incongruous thinking”.
The word “incongruous” refers to something “not harmonious in character” or “inconsistent” when viewed in relation to something else. Quite obviously, overlapping a variety of radio stations fits this definition to a T. While one could argue that “music is music”, it’s still painfully obvious to the ear that juxtaposing the sounds of classic country with modern death metal, for example…
