Get Wild

What if the map is the problem? We trade tidy outlines for living curiosity and show how “getting wild” can rescue a flat draft, reroute a stuck project, and even clarify the self that’s been hiding behind a careful plan. Wildness here isn’t chaos. It’s the deeper order you notice when you pause the algorithm, walk into unfamiliar streets, and let the work speak first.

We start with light and shadow—the inner contradiction that powers real art—and a coffee shop moment that reframed preparation as playful wandering. From there, we unpack Song in Space as a jigsaw without a box image, exploring how to avoid predictable escapes by spinning the dial, shifting rhythm, and throwing new spices into the creative stew. You’ll hear practical moves: switch mediums when you stall, change environments to rewire attention, follow a string of “what ifs” until a dead end turns into a hidden door. Travel stories—riding subways you can’t read, surfacing in neighborhoods you didn’t plan to visit—become a metaphor for building work that breathes.

We also tackle the pressure to fit inside digital conformity while sounding original. The answer isn’t louder rebellion; it’s permission to dismantle old temples and rebuild them in strange, honest forms. Wildness lets you see your shadow without flinching, and that meeting often reveals the voice your audience has been waiting for: not the expected perspective, but the unexpected one only you can offer.

If you’re craving a path back to freshness, come wander with us. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s stuck in a box canyon, and leave a review telling us the rule you’re breaking this week. Then put away the compass and see what the work wants from you.

Thanks for listening.

Chapters

• 0:00 Tear Up The Plan
• 1:22 Light And Shadow In Creativity
• 3:06 The Coffee Shop Revelation
• 4:06 Song In Space As A Puzzle
• 5:02 Spin The Dial To Escape Cliché
• 7:00 Travel Without A Map
• 8:35 Go Wild As A Creative Method
• 10:15 A Life Of Wandering
• 11:35 Rewriting Forbidden As Permission
• 12:36 Against The Pressure To Fit In
• 13:26 Wildness Is A Deeper Order
• 14:20 Find Yourself By Meeting Your Shadow
• 15:14 Closing Invitation To Wander

Transcript

Rita: 0:00

Ah, creativity. Everyone tells you to make a plan, stick to the plan, follow the plan. But what happens when the plan is rubbish? Or when you'd rather tear up the plan and dance barefoot in the dark? Today on CreativityGGG, Chris takes us into the wilderness. No compass, no luggage, no tidy map, just the raw art of going wild.

Chris: 0:22

I had a conversation with a friend recently, and they exuded this spirit, uh, this sort of a piece about them, like a calm. And uh I first met this person walking in the park, and they were standing there looking at a tree. They were enraptured by this tree, and I thought, oh, you know, I struck up a conversation, and we became friends. So this is a while ago, and then uh the other day I met them at a coffee house. We were uh talking about something. Now, I've always found that uh peace can mass turmoil. I mean, it's hard to describe what I mean, but you know, deep wounds sometimes are covered over, and peace can be a compensation. And I always get quiet and listen when I meet priests or somebody I think is a prophet or somebody might be a saint. Because behind the light there's there's always a shadow. Behind the light there's always a shadow. Think about it. When next time you meet a saint, I mean there's more saints in the world than you might think, but uh the darkness is what leads us to light. I think is what I mean. In other words, if you have deep wounds in your life, or you've you've had trauma, and you work on that, trying to find your way through it, you will eventually get to a place where you have that under control. You're controlling it through prayer or however you're doing it, and there'll be a calm and a peace about you, but underneath that is a shadow, a shadow. I mean, we've all got them, but I think it's more noticeable in saints in a lot of ways. The darkness is what leads us to light. But people hide the darkness, and uh you have to watch carefully to see it, and I think it's important to see it because the shadow is what shows us the full person, not just the one you're having a conversation with. So we're sitting in this coffee house and we're talking about something that's in my future that I have to kind of deal with some stuff, some wounds, some uncomfortable stuff. My friend said something that that caught my ear. Uh they said that their technique uh for getting ready to deal with things was to get wild. I mean, I didn't know what it meant, but it really caught my ear to get wild. And uh we talked about that, and she told me what she meant, and what it meant was uh to follow no path, uh put away the compass, and wander. Oh, I loved it. I mean, I mean, I loved it because uh I realized that um I've been doing the same thing since I was a kid. No plan, no luggage, no map, just go, just get wild. That's kind of like what I've been doing. So putting together a show like I'm doing with this uh show Song in Space is is trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with no final picture on the box. Uh there are pieces everywhere and you want them all to fit. But uh what if the logic is there is no logic? What what what if you took that approach? Instead of trying to be analytical and logical, just accept that that there's no logic at all. The puzzle will take its own shape, the story follows its own song line. You're just going into the wilderness, you're just getting lost, you're just going wild. So when you work through multiple drafts of a script, it's it's easy to uh lose your way, and it's easy to uh write yourself into a box canyon. I mean, uh the character song in Song and Space gets stranded on an asteroid uh and you plan for her escape a certain way, but it feels predictable. That's maybe when you spin the dial. Let something open. Ask, what if what if until you find a new way through? What if the canyon itself has a door I never saw? How do you uh keep things cooking? Well, you add spice you've never used before. A rhythm, a character, a twist in the harmony. Suddenly the draft tastes different. Suddenly the canyon isn't a dead end. It's a secret passage. You've gone wild. You've gone wild. That's what going wild does. It saves the story from itself. Uh that's what going wild does. It saves you from yourself. I can't tell you how many times I've gone wild in my life. I I like traveling without any destination in mind, and I've done it. I don't like plans. I don't like making dinner reservations. I don't like deciding where I'm going to go. I like just going. Uh, one thing I do as I wander the world and go into different um uh cities and places I've never been before is I just get on a bus and just go where the bus is going and get on a train. I went to um Tokyo, and uh I didn't speak the language, and I didn't read the language, and the language wasn't readable in the most basic sense to me, um, because of the way it was written with characters. So I ended up on the subway actually having no idea even where the exit was. And I just kind of went with it. I took the subways that came in, and I got off when I felt like getting off, and I just took the direction and I wandered around the tunnels. Uh, and then I came up into the streets. I had no idea where I was. I was completely lost. And I loved it. I really loved it. It's dislocation, it's walking the maze. You can use going wild to get past roadblocks to find inspiration in a drought to uncover different perspectives, uh reveal the true center of the story. Oh, well, you know, what can that look like? I mean, what is what can going wild look like in your creativity? Well, you could change your medium. Uh suppose you're playing piano, um, and uh you're kind of bored with that. So try um getting a piece of charcoal and and doing a sketch. You know, it's it's almost better to not have any training and doing a sketch, but just go with it. Uh everybody can draw whether you think you can or not. Everybody can play the piano, whether you think or can or not. Uh get on a bus without having a clue where it's going. Switch buses at random, talk to strangers. That's one my wife does a lot. And to me, it's it's a it's a skill, a miracle. She meets people wherever we go, not just meets them, but gets to know them, becomes friends with them. She's just open. There's a sort of certain wildness to it. I've lived a wild life. I've traveled my whole life. I started traveling when I was a kid. I was traveling last week. It's like a whole lifetime of travel. I've been in places I shouldn't have been, and I've been in places that I didn't want to go, and you know, there's always something, no matter where you are, for you to learn. It can be not easy to live that way, to kind of just go and just get lost. People don't always accept your wild ways. I mean, you go out to the a small town in Australian Outback, and you know, you say to them, Oh, I just kind of wandered here, and they look at you like you're crazy. Like, they don't want to be there, and they don't know why you want to be there, and you're there, and you're like, no, this place is cool. This place is beautiful. And they're like, this place is like a street with four buildings on it. But somehow dislocating yourself gives you a different view of it. But the people that are there, they may not accept that. There are people like us out there, lots of people, wandering, living a wildlife, listening to song lines, finding new paths. You know, when you're working as an artist, finding a new path is sort of like, you know, a breakthrough is exactly what you're supposed to be doing. I've always exercised my creativity as many different ways as I can. I've been a lighting designer, I've been a set designer, I've been an advertising copywriter, I've been a jingle writer, I've been a composer, I've been a songwriter, I've been a performer in coffee houses, you know. I've written novels, uh, written business books, I've been a speaker, uh, but more than anything, I think of myself as a traveler. Just a traveler, just kind of going places and finding things. We did it a couple weeks ago. We went, we didn't know where we were going. And um, you know, we had we didn't, you know, we we just drove and then at around four, because the sun was going down and I don't like driving at night, we'd look for a place to stay. You know, we'd look around. Where are we? Let's find a place near here. And we found some great hotels and great little motels, and you know, met some people and uh ate in some really cool restaurants, and none of that was planned. You take apart your temples, you take apart your ideas, and you rebuild them in strange new forms. Life, kind of like a montage. Life is just triangles and squares and circles that you can kind of put in different um different arrangements, and you can take the word forbidden and you can rewrite it as permission. You can go wild. We're at a moment in history that's pretty odd, you know. I mean, I'm a student of history, I've studied history in depth my whole life. And uh, we're at this really odd moment that I can't quite find a an example of it. I mean, we're we're um, you know, there's just been nothing like the digital world and social media, and you know, I'm not a big fan because as these uh Dijirati have taken control, the world has become kind of yucky, to be honest with you. But but everything tells us to fit in, but we don't fit in. Everything tells us to surrender, but we don't really want to surrender. We want to sing harmony, but we may not want to sing it in this choir, we want to sing it in that choir. We are wild, all of us, and I think if we accepted the wildness in ourselves, and if we accepted the wildness in others, the world would be a little bit better place. But what I'm really talking about is wild in your creativity. Just getting outside the envelope, going wild, getting lost, taking a new bus. I think that was the truth we were talking about at that coffee shop. Wildness isn't chaos, not the wildness we meant, it's not chaos, it's the deeper order of things, the current underneath the map. When we put the compass away, when we dare to wander, we discover. We put the puzzle together a new way, we find a new end for the story. I've never really been lost at all, even though I have a life of being lost behind me. I think I was just always ready to get wild enough to see the world the way the world wanted to be seen by me. It's my perspective that counts, that's different, that is what the world is asking for, not the perspective that's expected, but the perspective that's unexpected. Get wild. Just get wild with your creative. Go on. Get wild. But why? Why do why do you want to get wild? Well, when you get wild, you're gonna get to a place. And what are you gonna find there? What are you gonna see? You are gonna see your shadow. Your shadow. And when you see your shadow with the clarity of being lost, you're going to find yourself.

Rita: 15:14

So, today you've been reminded that sometimes the box canyon isn't a trap. It's just waiting for a new door to be drawn. And yes, Chris will probably keep tossing mystery spices into his creative stew until the pot boils over. That's what wild ones do, I guess. No map required, no recipe followed. This has been Creativity GGG. Now off you go. Wander, stir-scribble, sing, and don't forget to get wild. And if you're ready to wander even further, visit songinspace.com. Join us. Become an audion. It's the wild thing to do.