The Color of Punctuality, the Smell of Imagination
It’s 10:30 in the morning somewhere, lunchtime somewhere else, and almost summer in a few hearts. A chorus of “Are we recording?” gives way to the soft crackle of global hellos: a retired professor in London clearing his throat; a teacher-turned–school inspector joining from São Paulo, still catching her breath; a new voice from Strasbourg, bright with both courage and hesitation; and a laughing host in South Africa keeping time and mood. Birthdays are confessed, apologies exchanged, a gentle off-key “Happy Birthday” unfurls across continents—and just like that, five people settle into a shared table shaped by fiber optics and goodwill. What follows is less a meeting than a meal of minds: a conversation about creative skills, problem-solving, punctuality, and the kinds of “silly” questions that loosen the hinge between reason and play.
A Global Lunch, Served Warm
Imagine the scene. Frank is somewhere in France, half-teasing, half-hosting, the kind of person who makes deadlines sound like dinner invitations. In South Africa, Janita opens the session with a poet’s agenda: creativity not just as art but as the thread that mends the ordinary—letters, jokes, schedules, stress. From London, Professor Bruce Lloyd brings his subtle gravitas and an affection for precision; he has what he jokingly calls CPD: compulsive punctuality disorder. Rosie, from Brazil, arrives with honesty and a smile you can hear. And then there’s Camille, 25, nervous and brave, speaking in English that is already stronger than she knows: an engineer who quit her job to build Unimate, a student community app where language meets mobility and friendship.
It’s not a panel—it feels more like friends lingering in a kitchen with the good light, where questions are both a compass and a dare. What is creativity? Is it structure or chaos? A talent or a muscle? Something you schedule—or something that ambushes you under a shower, when the mirror is too steamed to catch your idea?
Five Ways to Name a Spark
Camille (Strasbourg): Problem-Solving as Tender Force
“I don’t draw, I don’t paint, I’m not artistic,” Camille says with a shrug that is more proclamation than apology. “But I have ideas—and I like to solve problems.” Her creativity, she suggests, lives where constraints do: in the “engineering part” of her brain that wants things to work. When stress and anxiety press in, she reaches for art anyway—watercolors she’s learning by feel, not mastery—because some problems are solved not by logic but by color dissolving into color. The point isn’t perfection; it’s decompression. Creativity here is a safety valve, a soft landing.
Rosie (São Paulo): Solutions, One Brave Try at a Time
Rosie laughs as she admits she used to run late. These days, punctuality is respect embodied—and in her work, respect looks like practical care. “My boss doesn’t want problems; he wants solutions,” she says, smiling at the understatement of every educator. She talks about supporting teachers who are overworked, under-resourced, and often under-slept. Her most creative project? Emotional literacy in schools—guiding adults to therapy offered by the state, celebrating small steps, and listening as a teacher breathes easier week by week. Creativity, for her, isn’t icing; it’s infrastructure for the human heart.
Bruce (London): The Discipline of Wonder
Bruce is comfortable with paradox. He likes structure; he likes exploration. “Chaos is a form of structure you don’t yet understand,” he offers—then promptly gifts Frank a headline. He’s wary of romanticizing creativity as pure fun. Einstein working on relativity? Not exactly a picnic. Van Gogh painting through darkness? Not obviously joy. Sometimes, solving a leaky roof is just…work. But then he adds something crucial: refining the question is 90% of the answer. AI, he says, helps him explore ideas, but the craft lives in the query, not the tool. When blocked, he has a quaint prescription: slow trains. Not the sleek ones, the older ones that force you to sit still, watch the fields, and coax a structure onto the page.
Janita (South Africa): The Quiet Architecture of Care
Janita likes schedules. She likes neatness, order, planning. Reality, however, negotiates. She’ll write down a book title…and lose where she wrote it. She’ll map her day…and find surprise detours. Creativity, then, is the way structure humbles itself into conversation with the mess of being human. She sees it in art therapy sessions she runs with Frank—early “creative disasters” giving way to flow as practice sets in. Creativity, she insists, is not magic; it’s a skill. Like a muscle, it grows when you use it, whether you’re painting or prompting an AI until the output begins to speak your language.
Frank (France): The Humor of the In-Between
Frank calls mathematics “wonderfully sexy”—then confesses he doesn’t understand it. He loves the elegance of a single right answer emerging from a blizzard of symbols, even if he personally prefers to tango with words. He tells a story about an Advent calendar image project that AI simply…couldn’t. The numbers wouldn’t behave. He and Janita wrestled with it, then surrendered to the obvious: “Just do it ourselves.” Beneath the laughter is a truth: creativity is fun and demanding; it’s the joy of ideas and the drag of time; it’s the delight of play and the courage to take responsibility for the final thing.
Senses, Seasons, and the Silly Questions That Matter
The meeting tilts into what Frank calls “Fruitloop questions”—the kind that sound playful but aim straight for meaning through the side door.
If creativity had a color…
Camille chooses a blend: yellow and orange—sunlight you can taste. Janita laughs that she instinctively thinks pink: pink shoes, pink martinis, pink nails, pink joy. Two palettes, both true. Is creativity sunrise or champagne? Why not both?
What would imagination smell like?
“Sweet,” says Rosie after a thoughtful pause, “but not too sweet. Sweet with citrus.” You can almost feel a peel flexing, that mist of zest above the rind, the promise of fresh. It’s a perfume you’d wear to remember your younger self, back when you were brave enough to try for the sake of trying.
If your ideas had wings, where would they fly first?
“Home,” Bruce answers without missing a beat. The word hangs there, simple as a doorknob. Perhaps the work of creativity is less about novelty than return: to who we are when we aren’t performing; to the rooms that make us honest; to rigor without the performance of cleverness.
If your doodles came to life for a day…
“They’d drag me onto the dance floor,” Frank says, betraying the glee of a man who secretly knows the steps. He pictures elastic lines leaping off paper, tugging him into a happy mess. The point is not choreography; it’s motion. Sometimes the best way to heal your seriousness is to move your body before your brain catches up.
What does creativity taste like?
Janita describes the triangular candies of her childhood—white, yellow, orange; sweet with a small, zesty sting. The metaphor lands like a wink: creativity is sugar with a spine, delight that wakes you.
Here’s what happens in the laughter: the group becomes a mirror, and so do we. We remember that color and scent and taste are not ornament; they’re access points. Ask your senses and you’ll get answers your intellect hides from you. What does your mood taste like today? What’s the texture of your motivation? Who taught you that play must justify itself?
The Tension Between Control and Surrender
Structure vs. chaos becomes a theme, as if the conversation itself were testing its edges. “Chaos is a form of structure you don’t yet understand,” Bruce says. Frank grins and adopts it on the spot as a manifesto. What a forgiving phrase. It gives us permission to be in-process—to love schedules and still misplace a book title, to make a plan and still sing off-key at a friend’s late birthday.
Camille’s work life is scheduled down to the morning and afternoon blocks, visible to the boss who checks if the plan matched the day. Rigorous, necessary. In private, though, she loosens the grip. No rigid timetable, more improvisation. Rosie nods; punctuality matters to her now, but she’s learned to hold time as a kindness rather than a weapon. There’s an insight here about adulthood: maturity is not the absence of chaos but the confidence to greet it kindly.
And yet—even the kindest plan meets the world. The group wanted AI to build a numbered picture for their Advent calendar. It didn’t. The numbers misbehaved; the charm wore thin. So they decided to build it themselves. There is a certain liberation in that pivot—from coaxing a tool to surrendering to the art of doing. Not every process needs to be optimized. Some need to be inhabited.
Create Your Own Summer
The call ends as such conversations often do: with warmth, gratitude, and the soft logistics of the next time. Frank will be traveling—maybe he’ll dial in from a slow German train—and he promises a future session from Korea, alongside a friend. Parting words carry the easy intimacy of a group that has found its rhythm: “Thank you.” “See you next time.” “Have a beautiful day.”
If there’s a final lesson, it’s this: creativity is not the thunderclap of genius; it’s the steady domestic weather of a life. Sometimes it’s yellow-orange like a citrus sun. Sometimes it smells like roses and rain. Sometimes it’s a train that moves slow enough for your best thoughts to catch up. Sometimes it’s a shared tune sung a little off-key to a friend who needed the song last week and gets it today instead.
Wherever you are reading this—in a kitchen, between meetings, on a train that’s faster than your notes—you have permission to practice. To ask a better question. To fold chaos into structure. To choose punctuality as kindness. To call a friend and sing badly and mean it. To doodle until your lines take your hand and lead it somewhere you didn’t know you could dance.
Frank once joked about “creating our own summer,” and perhaps that’s the truest craft of all: to bring a season of warmth with you—bright, punctual, generous—no matter the weather outside.
