I made an honest mistake. I relied on my memory. However, an aging brain’s memory is even trickier to rely on. I should have known better. But age and an uncharacteristic bravado caught up with me, and I ended up creating a novel floral arrangement.

Is this what it means to be creative? To not rely on memory, but to rely on what you think is your memory? Maybe mixing things up is being creative, or maybe retrieval gone awry is creative. I'm sure the Nobel laureates and all the brilliant minds I've met would vehemently disagree with me. Or perhaps they wouldn't!

Well, here is the whole story.

I was reading about the different European styles that have influenced flower arrangements over time. I came across the Georgian Period and the Victorian Period styles, and I read about the designs that were popular then and the purposes they served. This time, I consciously tried to create a floral style that might suit the AI century. There were several temptations, but none were practical.

The Dutch-Flemish bouquets captivated me—lush and overflowing, just like the ones I had seen in art galleries and museums. My rational brain chided me: "Totally impractical!" Where would I even keep such a massive bouquet, and it would likely be just one. I gave up on that idea.

Next, nosegays from the Georgian Period thrilled me because they were miniature and because of the word itself. I found the word inappropriate in the era of 'they/them' pronouns. Tussie-mussies is the modern word for nosegays, but I also found that word inappropriate. My mind ran in all sorts of directions until I read the true meaning: a combination of a bunch of flowers and moss. Still, the tussie-mussie was another impractical option to recreate. How would the flowers survive? Maybe they weren't meant to survive. Was I supposed to just toss the flowers after a day or an event? It seemed such a waste of beauty. And there were no events today worthy of tussie-mussies. I could already see a tussie-mussie being tossed out in my mind's eye.

Then, I obsessed over feathers, lace, and ribbons, which belonged to the Victorian era. The concept of using props in a floral arrangement attracted me. Feathers seemed easier to use than lace to adorn a bouquet. In my mind, no feather is more beautiful than a peacock feather. I imagined the plumage in all its glory, unfurled as the clouds gathered. There was no looking back. My flower arrangement would have peacock feathers; I decided with finality.

Doing something is very different from reading about it. Writing about it is different too, as it brings in the element of an audience and imagination. Thus the dynamic changes when you write. Anyway, I started arranging peacock feathers in a flat bowl base (thanks to my Ikebana vase collection) on floral foam (yikes!). Before I knew it, I had created a fan-shaped design with the feathers as a focal point.

In my mind, I thought I was creating a Georgian-era fan-shaped floral arrangement. I had completely forgotten it had feathers, and worse, my mind thought feathers were featured in Georgian-era styles. For the longest time, I thought I was building something from that era. But it didn't look anything like a Georgian-era piece. In fact, it didn't look like any European era. It looked Oriental, ornate, and impractical.

This was not what I was aiming for. I searched high and low but couldn’t find any references or images of how feathers were used in Georgian-era floral arrangements. How could I? There probably weren’t any. I found Great Gatsby-inspired floral arrangements with black and ostrich feathers, but they were no help with my little design. Besides, the Gatsby era is separated by continents, culture, and a couple of centuries. It was an honest, creative mistake.

Critically, the spread of the feathers makes the arrangement look attractive and lush, but the color of the peacock feathers overpowers all the flowers. However, a bright-colored rose stands up to the peacock feathers because of its size and hue. If I ever recreated this design, the ugly foam would be covered with something more eco-friendly that could also nurture the cut flowers.

I’d like to use moss to cover the foam. There we go again. Bringing in the "mussie," consciously this time but only in my imagination, to modify the creative process. Maybe there's more to creativity than just the encoding, storage, and retrieval of a memory gone wrong.