Creativity Exercise 4: Thought Expression

I am on exercise 4 in Regina Pacelli's book, Whole Lotta Creativity Going On, and I am honestly second guessing my book choice because I can draw nothing but blanks, at first.

In exercise 4, we are given the prompt, "early to the vine" and are tasked to come up with 4 ideas of what that phrase could possibly mean. Each idea should be different. The first should be believable; the second should be witty; the third should evoke thoughts of peacefulness; and the fourth is to be utterly outlandish.

To me, this exercise is challenging me to perform similarly to the way an AI image generator and/or chatbot does. 

My first thought was "grapes". I would wake up early to go to work in a beautiful vineyard to tend to some wine grapes. 

 

My next thought was the song, "I heard it through the grapevine" as in, the song by the late Marvin Gaye in which he refers to grapevine communication. According to AI, grapevine communication is defined as a type of informal communication that occurs between people in an organization, often without the involvement of management, in other words, "gossip". Therefore I envision myself standing at the office watercooler at the beginning of the day listening to and spreading half truths.

 

How did the term "grapevine communication" come about, I wondered? According to Gemini, the term grapevine originated in the 1800's when telegraph lines were strung between buildings and people compared the imagery to that of grapevines.

 

I imagine the telegraph lines to be rather unreliable at times, to then I envisioned at person walking across a high wire to communicate face-to-face to clear up any miscommunication.