The brutal art of the shower thought
Or, lather, rinse, reject
Creativity requires constraints. Think of Michelangelo working for the Pope, of Hitchcock in the studio system, of Keith Jarrett playing his best concert on a dodgy piano, and of the many rules the 21 million members of the Shower Thoughts community on Reddit have to follow.
Pavlov probably thought about feeding his dogs every time someone rang a bell.
What precisely is a shower thought? It’s a thought that occurs in the shower, of course.
More generally, it’s shorthand for a conceptual connection that can only occur when a combination of routine activity and white noise lets your conscious, list-making brain take five. You need to clear the mental beach so the brainwaves can crash into it.
If people had two arms on the same side, we would wear F-shirts.
According to r/showerthoughts, it’s “a miniature epiphany that makes the mundane more interesting.” But it’s what a shower thought isn’t that really defines the genre.
It kinda makes sense that the target audience for fidget spinners lost interest in them so quickly
A shower thought accepted to this forum cannot be common, unoriginal, or personal. It can’t be a question, a joke, a piece of advice, a protip, or a play on words. It has to fit in the title of a post. And no, it can’t be a thought about showers.
Oh, and it’s not a democracy. The crowd may love a good pun, but the moderators don’t.
This forum is a great example of the two-step process to surprising creativity. Step One is the wild experimentation, the free jazz, the vomit pass where there are no bad ideas. Then it’s time for Step Two, the rigorous, humourless sifting through the results.
You need to free your mind, but you also need to cull the results like so many Danish mink. Ideas without edits are nonsense; edits without ideas are nothing.
Light bulbs were such a good idea that they became a symbol for a good idea.
When the rules on r/showerthoughts get specific, they get fascinating. There was a suggestion that the formulation “nouns are just adjective+nouns” (eg, milk is just immature cheese) needed banning, specifically because it was too formulaic.
If you don't wear the right clothes when you go for a run, you look like an insane person.
So you actually had Step Two making a rule that Step One couldn’t deploy rules. It’s similar to the criticism levelled at Oscar Wilde, whose wordplay sometimes seemed too much like wordwork.
It’s hard to let someone know that they’re bad at taking criticism.
The process doesn’t always work: Plenty of great shower thoughts don’t fit the criteria, and some of those that do are no great shakes. But perfection isn’t the goal.
The goal of the shower is to get you clean. Cleanliness is next to godliness. God is revealed via epiphanies. Shower thoughts are miniature epiphanies. That doesn’t count as one. And that’s as it should be.
Quick quip; lightning
“I have had a good many more uplifting thoughts, creative or expansive visions — while soaking in comfortable baths or drying myself after bracing showers — in well-equipped American bathrooms than I have ever had in any cathedral.”
— Edmund Wilson
Link link, nudge nudge
“[Nature writing] is starting to resemble its subject matter: It is everywhere, often quite boring and repetitive, and not as good as it used to be.”
— James Rebanks, in a glowing book review of Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments.
The 73rd issue of GWQ is like body wash for your brain. Wait, wouldn’t that make it brainwash? My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting is more like a hot bath, except instead of soaking in your own filth, you get to soak in the filth of the great wits. Wait, that’s not appealing either. Constrain my creativity by tapping the ♥️ below.