In her book The Creative Habit, choreographer Twyla Tharp points her readers to Leonard DaVinci’s notebooks and how he would fastidiously observe nature and write down questions he wanted to explore. He was fascinated with water, for example, and wrote down these questions:
“Where the water is swift at the bottom and not above.
Where the water is slow at the bottom and swift above.
Where it is slow below and above and swift in the middle.
Where the water in the rivers stretches itself out and where it contracts. Where it bends and where it straightens itself.
Where it penetrates evenly in the expanses of rivers and where unevenly. Where it is low in the middle and high at the sides.
Where the current goes straight in the middle of the stream.”
Tharp observes how asking “the question assigned him the task of finding the answer.”
What “where” questions might you ask yourself? Or maybe call them DaVinci questions. Questions you might ask regarding nature, your relationships, work, a hobby, your spiritual and emotional life? Asking a “where” question, a DaVinci question, points you towards unexplored territory and expands what you know about the world and the life you inhabit.
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