The author fed Cicero's quote about having "a garden in your library" into AI, which literally visualized plants growing among books. Rather than seeing this as failure, they recognized it revealed the quote's beautiful impracticality. This demonstrates the power of "obvious" prompts that strip away romantic interpretations and force confrontation with core ideas. Working with AI requires nimbleness—alternating between directing and discovering unexpected elements. The creative ego resists starting with basic prompts, but this approach dissolves anxiety and reveals genuine insights, making assumptions visible where real creativity begins.

Architecture school taught the author to act amid uncertainty by simply beginning—making any mark, however humble. Creativity functions as an operating system, not a skill, where problems become fertile opportunities. The key is starting without guarantees, accepting failure as essential, and trusting the process. A ten-minute exercise of continuous action without editing installs this creative framework. When you remove the possibility of doing wrong, anything becomes possible.

The author asked Leonardo.ai for a 15th-century Flemish street scene and was stunned by its period-accurate detail and contextual richness. AI partnership isn't tool use—it's like dancing with a semi-autonomous partner who has their own moves. Layering prompts compounds details beyond their sum. Real creativity requires abandoning rigid control over outcomes while maintaining process discipline. Most creatives resist this, protecting an illusion of control that was never real anyway.