Play around with artistic awareness through different types of thinking. At times, allow bananas to be bananas. As a therapist, I often hear my husband say, “just let a text be a text, don’t read words between the words.” Same thing. There is health in simply seeing bananas.

Practice awareness of explicit ideas.

Practice now: just see bananas.

Of course, the brilliance of art is that bananas may also be so much more. In this way, even side-by-side bananas can be sexy, no matter the shade or degree of spotting. For the writer or poet, onion expressions may embody layers beneath the surface or inspiration for bitter tears.

Practice representational awareness.

Practice now: what does an onion mean to you?

Practice now: create a story about the side-by-side bananas.

For the farmer, a relationship to an onion may be quite different than the one that top chefs hold. Point of view affects our experience with anything, including art. Both people may be working with the same onion but very different internal processes. And for those who have never seen an onion, what on earth could it possibly be? (Boobies? my then breastfeeding daughter once said of my mother’s skilled onion still-life)

Practice alternate points of view, expanding awareness.

Practice now: challenge yourself to imagine and see through different points of view, completing the phrases below.

This is not an onion, it’s a  ______________

These are not bananas, this is a picture about ________________