Creative Handles and Creativity

One of my most creative and insightful friends, Pat Foltz, sent me a link which shows once again how the creative industry may deny itself creative thinkers by over-simplifying creative challenges.

Corporate creativity (e.g. advertising and marketing) when it works really well emulates the creative arts (e.g. Theater, Music, Dance etc . . .) because it sees itself as a craft which demands intellectual orientation; rather than as an automation that is best enabled by logistical organization.

For example, the latest theory in advertising is that creative solutions will best be wrought by professionals who grew up with the Internet. This theory recognizes communications has gone digital and therefore young people should have the greatest facility for digital communications due to the inference that they grew up with it. The theory offers intuitive appeal because we know that psychology follows the theory of evolution where environmental pressures define traits selected for future success but I struggle with the implications because the theory folds into itself a concern for craftsmanship with what appears to be an automated solution. I think this due to how the industry defines the theory relative to the people working in the industry.

The segment handle to organize the theory reaches for superficial considerations and I question the validity of it due to this.

Young people who are supposed to lead the creative and strategic charge in advertising are called "Digital Natives". Those not age appropriate are known as "Digital Immigrants". One's citizenship in the land of Digital (Native vs. Immigrant) is rooted in one's age.

The thinking behind this organization I fear is too general to be logical. A recent article in Fast Company exposes the generalization. It does this by both promoting the argument and defeating the thinking surrounding digital citizenship with its description of the creative demands digital communications invites.

For one to say that the Millennial Generation are "Digital Natives" because they grew up in the age of the Internet is equivalent to saying all Librarians are quiet and shy because they work in a silent environment.

A person's age relative to media is predictive of their creativity with that media as much as any creative person's age is relative to a problem that needs solving; incidental at best.

The Fast Company article articulates this well when they say, "(Digital Natives) need to behave more like improv actors - 'story building' instead of 'story telling" - so they can respond in real time to an unpredictable audience."

It seems that digital "citizenship" has less to do with age and more to do with mindset.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Reevaluating Perfectionism = (Accepting Agitation + Embracing Mistakes)/Self-Delight

Yesterday my wife and I were discussing her discontent.

Jackie, my wife, is an accomplished jazz dancer and fledgling choreographer. The last two years have seen her take risks in her craft. She's developed her choreographic voice while completing her MFA.

Last month she finished her thesis and resigned from the professional company she has been a member of for 8 years.

She's between gigs awaiting a teaching opportunity at Northeastern Illinois University.

All this seems to be a catalyst for what appears a healthy dose of existential angst.

She is unsure if she deserves to consider herself an artist when her days now seem filled with grocery lists, novel reading and her Pilades practice.

She, like most creative people, is a perfectionist who weighs her appreciation for her chosen craft against vague ambitions and current circumstances. This usually creates a perception where the creative person comes up on the losing end. Living life is a mundane practice that suffers against the imaginings of aesthetic invention.

As we spoke I suggested that her desire to perceive her current experience with some form of duality discredits the appreciation she might have in recognizing that no matter what she does there is no chance anybody will create a "Jackie Brenner" piece because she is the only Jackie Brenner there is. Creativity is an act of selfish self-will that does not need the approval of others to be.

We've had a lot of these discussions because both of us are choosing to practice our crafts. Self-consciousness and the perfectionistic need for approval stop the urge that drives creativity. We keep encouraging each other to keep going.

Perfectionistic attitudes can be reevaluated and be seen for the silliness they are.

Dudley Randall, in his poem, "A Poet is not a Jukebox" writes that a writer, " . . . writes what agitates his heart and sets his pen in motion . . ."

From the age of 20 (when my first play was produced) and over the next 10 years I dreamed self-expressive dreams equivalent to Randall's pledge but, always ran headlong into a self-defeating level of perfectionism triggered by public criticism and competition. I wanted so badly to be seen as good I contradicted the truth of Randall's poem.

Dudley Randall was the poet laureate of Detroit and he was a hero of mine but in a popular sense never really climbed to the imaginary pinnacle I placed him. He always trailed and continues to trail a list of more well known Detroit popular "poets" like Smokey Robinson, Eminem, "Dutch" Leonard and Jack White.

I mistakenly made my private appreciation of Randall somehow evidence of his fame failing to acknowledge he spent much of his professional life scribbling beautiful poems dedicated to simplicity and realism while working at the Wayne County Federated Library System as head of the reference-inter-loan department.

I gave up on play-writing in 1999 for various reasons, of which, the two primary ones were a failed marriage and a failed commission. I had poisoned good relationships with my inability to reconcile how writing not only offered me the experience of respecting my unique life and perspective but demanded I do so with no greater expectation than Randall's day-job. I had promised my wife at the time (now ex-wife) a part written for her (not my promise to make) so she would find me adorable and smart (something that was increasingly rare in our relationship) and promised the theatre whose commission I accepted an entertaining play that combined humor and truth (yet delivered a ghost story centered on suicide and the victimization of a society by a government determined to develop weaponry that could perfect germ warfare).

I honestly tried to be adorable, smart, humorous and truthful with the focus on creating something that would serve the expectations of my ex-wife and commissioned employer.

I failed miserably because I was too focused on being adorable, smart, humorous and truthful with a focus on creating something that would serve the expectations of my ex-wife and commissioned employer.

I instead could have just been myself.

I failed to recognize that promises towards perfect outcomes relative to other's expectations is a contradiction to the power art provides. I was hoping to be the single in the juke-box with the well-worn button that people pushed to shake their booty against a popular rhythm. I tried really hard to be a crooning well-loved Temptation and succeeded in being a reviled and misunderstood Stooge.

I share this in the wake of empathizing with Jackie's angst and finishing my first full-length play in 11 years. I did it as an act of completing the commission I lost in 1999 and my process was about what was true to me. I hope people get it but, don't know if they will. I tried to write a play that was about what is agitating me and something I'd like to see.

My journey back to writing plays started with this blog and this blog started because I needed a place to put down my honest thoughts. It was necessary to climb out of a people pleasing hole I started digging with my failed commission. Fearing I was stupid I attempted fitting in for the last 10 years and just succeeded in deepening a rut gouged by mediocrity. I left play-writing for a career in advertising as a brand planner. For those outside the advertising business, a brand planner is a corporate social scientist who tries to honestly contradict client mandates for the sake of consumer relevance. In reality, too often, he or she needs to be a spin doctor satisfying client mandates for the sake of the agency's profitability. Or, as one planning friend shared with me, "Man I want so badly to believe I work in the Bauhaus but feel like an order taker at a Fast-Signs franchise."

The ad game is a shuck and jive childish pretense where the perfection it pretends to offer is real. A place where nobody ever admits they don't know. But, embracing mistakes is the only way I've been able to understand my ideas. I am not perfect. I never will be and I realized as I wrote the latest play that making art provides a relaxation not found in pretentious perfections.

To be creative is to be sloppy, a tinkerer and live within the premise, "Progress, not perfection." It is all progress. My life as a writer is a way I can bring value to all of my life and allows me to embrace mistakes as evidence of something uniquely me. Getting lost inside the puzzle of the latest play felt like an encouragement. It was a science of the mind that allowed me to observe my confusion and determine its meaning.

Or as Dudley Randall writes:

"A poet is not a jukebox.

A poet is not a juekbox.

I repeat, a poet is not a jukebox for someone to shove a quarter in his ear

and get the tune they want to hear.

. . . a poet is not a jukebox.

So don't tell me what to write."

Jackie and I then went and checked out a puppet show about gay marriage where both death and the devil were murdered by a homosexual Punch. Good stuff.

Fire the Critic

I'm 51 pages into the first full-length play I've attempted in 11 years. The current writing spurt is a by-product of my reaching out to an old colleague, Guy Sanville of the Purple Rose Theatre, and asking him if it would be to his liking if I finished an assignment I left unfinished 11 years ago. I was commissioned by Guy to write a play in 1998, and did so, but delivered a story that lacked emotional coherence. My need to live up to the expectation of being smart led me to write something that would create the appearance of intelligence. As such, it didn't seem true. Guy demanded re-writes which made me afraid that I wasn't really as smart as I pretended to be and, therefore, I stubbornly invited an impasse which led to the project's downfall. I didn't write with any consistency for the next 10 years until I started this blog. My internal critic told me that my last attempt was evidence of my mediocrity and therefore I should think of other things than writing. I've since earned an MBA and started a new career in Marketing. Both pursuits have been interesting but not satisfying. The dissatisfaction stems from the fact that these pursuits seem to benefit from enabling the internal critic.

As Billy Crystal said in his alter ego, Fernando, "It is better to look good than to feel good." Or as an old friend of mine who is a recovering alcoholic says, when faced with the reality he has to practice rigorous honesty or die drunk, "You can't save your ass and your face at the same time."

Creativity in the business world for the most part is about looking good and saving face. It is sales. I mistakenly thought it was creativity when I pursued it and thought I could put the internal critic to rest. People practicing innovation in business will probably tell me I say this because I am no good at it but, recently a friend of mine, an Account Planning Director and therefore a "thought-leader" in the world of Advertising (a seeming contradiction in terms) admitted as much to me when he responded to my criticism of his blog as self-serving by saying, "I guess you could call this blog self-serving, but what blog isn't? I think most planner's blogs are self-serving to some degree". I agree with him. This blog is self-serving. I write it so I can practice respecting my opinion and clear up the confusion I've created by trying to look good. The only difference is, I am not trying to look smart in this blog by turning sales promotion (e.g. Advertising) into a pseudo-science and saying things like, "In a world where sharing is the new media, friendship is the new currency and advocacy is the new goal," which is a thought my friend promotes at his blog. That sounds creepy and Machiavellian because it is and it is evidence of the type of creativity one manages when the internal critic motivates looking good and saving face as a means to selling.

Part of the brief I received from Guy was to, "fire the critic" because you can't, "re-write an empty page".

The poet Dudley Randall once wrote, "a poet writes what agitates his heart and sets his pen in motion." Firing the critic allows this. Practicing it with my creative writing has led me to practice it in my work-life too and I no longer look to offer ideas as a means of selling an image that will allow me to look smart. Instead, I'm watching out for my own bullshit and when I start looking to position intrinsically meaningful realities like friendship in fungible terms I fire the critic and seek honesty.