“Mediating doesn’t fit in that sequence,” Gifford (Yoda) Booth shared.

We were asked to take our essential internal creative process and reflect on it to make sure that it was complete. I’d just finished presenting my homework assignment on what I find enchanting. I knew that something was missing surrounding my mediation mantra of “moving-flowing-flowering” and mediating was as close to it as I could sort out in the moment.

Rainbow glass reflecting and refracting

I’d added a beginning and end concept to my mantra – “seeing (internal) – moving – flowing – flowering – mediating.”

“Mediating is an external concept and would fit better with your external compass and creative process,” Gifford offered.

My colleague, Chris Strong, added “mediating means to ‘intervene between people in a dispute’ and that is clearly an external phenomena.”

“I mean mediating in the sense of McLuhan‘s ‘the medium is the message’. In order to think about something more deeply, I need to get it out of my head so I can see it. Once I see it, it comes back into my head a different way. When I really need to think through something (seeing), I have to stand at a white board or a flip chart (moving) and draw objects (flowing) and their relationships (flowering). Kind of like I did with my ‘vine root’ process (mediating),” I explained.

As we neared the end of our 12 session, TELL seminar, one of the themes that kept repeating as it was brought to the surface of the explicit, is my need to mediate my thoughts. In this session, I described by internal process of mediating by getting things out of my head. In other homework assignments, a clear process of external mediating became much clearer.

Whenever I go to create something, I quickly (so quickly that most of the time I miss it consciously) go through a process of what am I trying to communicate, to what audience, and what tool should I use to mediate the content. Usually the mediation is some form of Powerpoint slide deck or a Word document or occasionally an Excel spread sheet when I need to work with numbers. Sometimes the media is a blog post or Facebook post. Other times, I use the mediation step as an excuse to see if there is a tool that I am not aware of that would be a better choice than the standard Microsoft Office tools.

In an earlier assignment, I wanted to pull some video clips together in a more interactive way for the observer. I didn’t want a static video that I could produce with an Adobe Premier or an Animoto. I wanted something that was more interactive. That search led me to the great tool Zaption which was pretty close to what I wanted.

For today’s assignment, I spent a couple of hours looking to see what story telling tools were available since the last time I searched six months ago. I love these intentional quixotic searches for new tools in the context of what I want to mediate. I had a flip chart full of the content ideas I wanted to express and knew my audience, but I didn’t want to do a simple Powerpoint presentation. In the search and quick evaluation of tools I tripped over, I came across Exposure.

For this homework assignment, it was pretty close to what I was looking for.  I could add photos and videos and surround them with some explanatory text. The tool also used the scrolling navigating promoted by the “look and feel” of Apple’s website. I was able to express or mediate the completely inexpressible – my inner creative process – to myself and to my companions on the TELL journey.

As I am learning in The TELL, a process for revealing the artistry in everyone in order to give voice to inner vision, my inner creative process is unique to me. Yet, until this moment, I didn’t realize how important “mediating” was to my inner muse.

Seeing – Moving – Flowing – Flowering – Mediating.

I look forward to meditating On Mediating in preparation for my next assignment.

Thank you, Yoda.