RIDING THE HYPE CYCLE

Pursuing creativity leads me to experience an idea that dominates my imagination which moves me to make something with this idea. The making is often accompanied by invited (and too often unsolicited) criticism which makes me realize that what was in my head hasn’t been realized. I wallow. And sometimes, this is where the story ends but, when I have luck and providence, a new experience occurs—my failures evolve and the original idea matures into a vision that sparks greater ideas.

The cliché goes that one must suffer for their art and, try as I might to bracket this observation as stereotype, it seems the creative process is fraught with emotional pain.

Otto Rank, the existential psychoanalyst, in his work Art and Artist, put it this way in distinguishing between a neurotic and a creative:

The neurotic, in the voluntary remaking of his ego, does not get beyond the destructive preliminary work and is therefore unable to detach the whole creative process from his own person and transfer it to an ideological abstraction. The productive artist also begins . . . with that recreation of himself which results in an ideologically constructed ego; [but in this case] this ego is then in a position to shift the creative willpower from his own person to ideological representations of that person and thus render it objective. It must be admitted that this process is in a measure limited to within the individual, and that not only in its constructive but also in its destructive aspects. This explains why hardly any productive work gets through without morbid crises of a ‘neurotic’ nature.” (emphasis mine)

It seems that the pursuit of art can make an obsessive demand on the artist, which can resemble madness. Those who have faced a real or figurative blank canvas have felt their mind twist when they’ve had to consider disappointment bleeding towards despair.

Rank summed up art as, “. . . life’s dream interpretation. . .“ and his method towards understanding its practice is stated well by Anais Nin in The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol.1: when she describes the doctor by, “. . . his curiosity, not the impulse to classify . . . relying on his intuition, intent on discovering.” The psychoanalysis Rank practiced with Nin deviated from his fellow Freudians, in that he lived through the author’s “writer’s block” with her (to the point of a sexual relationship), rather than removing himself from it towards diagnosis, and emerged as a character within her work, “The Winter of Artifice”.

Rank practiced a more active and egalitarian psychotherapy focused on the here-and-now, real relationship, and conscious mind and will, rather than past history, transference, and the unconscious. He therefore used empathy as a means to insight, which in turn made the creative process, and its inherent anxieties, real.

The words used to describe the creative process seem to validate the observation that creativity and crisis are inevitable partners.

We speak of great works being “wrought” with “painstaking” attention and “born” from “vulnerable” places that can be “raw”, “tender” and “fragile”.

But, why is this?

The creative cycle seems to follow a predictable path of awareness, introspection, self-criticism, despair, back to awareness. Each new Idea seems to come with a mix of enjoyment and angst.

My writing process often goes something like this:

1. I get excited about an idea I consider ambitious,
2. I share this ambitious idea
3. People don’t get it and I get upset at their confusion
4. Embarrassment follows when I understand and agree with the confusion
5. Despair strikes, I want to give up
6. I start over

F is usually the point where my inner-critic tells me to run from the embarrassment I’ve brought and suggests a scheme to do something else that has lower emotional costs.

A sort of Rankian empathy from a fellow creative person (usually my wife) accompanies G with a call to improvise.

It seems that the pain of creativity is related to the loneliness of disappointment and the cure for this pain is to consider that I’m not as terminally unique as I might think.

I’ve made a recent discovery that has accelerated my ability to get past my disillusionment.

My “day job” is in the world of communications strategy and recently I’ve been doing some reading on an idea known as the "Gartner Hype Cycle".

Considering the “Hype Cycle” has given me a better idea of how my creative process is not an anomaly, but rather a standard experience for any new idea that looks to be meaningful to other people.

Gartner is an information technology research and advisory firm located in Stamford, Connecticut and their "Hype Cycle" was developed to show a visual path for the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s easy enough to read. You consider a new idea against the visibility it engenders (e.g. sharing a play concept with a variety of friends) relative to the time it takes to make that idea meaningful to others.

There is an initial peak of inflated expectations, and this peak is followed by an inevitable crash when the new idea doesn’t seem to live up to its expected importance (e.g. Microsoft’s “Zune” as a competitor to Apple’s “iPod”).

Recently, The Hype Cycle has been used to better understand how “old” media (e.g. TV and print) has become secondary to “new” media (e.g. Twitter feeds) and the resulting analysis that is needed in the face of strategic confusion and/or disillusionment (e.g. the inability for companies to monetize the attention their Facebook page gets, where the anticipated instant groundswell of “customer created” grass-roots campaigns has not resulted in immediate profitable product sales, despite the campaigns “branding” success, evidenced by the “likes” their Facebook page has received).

For my creative discipline, play-writing, this cycle seems to approximate my creative process.

I refer you back to my A through F experience above.

I find it difficult to persevere sometimes while working on a play because I worry that the struggles I have evidence my illegitimacy as a writer.

My wife is a choreographer and she has shared the same struggles.

And while we are only a sample of two, it seems that the angst we experience is similar to that of fellow creative friends.

These struggles have made me keep asking, why is that?

But when considering the Hype Cycle, I’ve started to think that asking “why” is less important than asking “where”.

It isn’t necessary I understand why I feel the way I do but rather what my feelings tell me about where I am in the process.

If I am filled with certainty that my new idea will create a revolution within the concept of say something like, how exposition works, then it might be good to check my “Hype Cycle” and at least consider that I am riding a wave of inflated expectations.

If I am in despair that I am dried up and no ideas can come to me after another scene in my writing group has failed to communicate my intention, then I might need to see that I am resting in a trough.

And whatever my feelings might be in a given moment I can recognize that if I provide myself the charity of time there is a probability given the “Hype Cycle” that I can ride towards enlightenment and productivity.

The “Hype Cycle” and more specifically learning to ride my personal “Hype Cycle” seems a good navigation device to get through the emotional storms that crop up in the creative journey. I’m seeing how it can be a model for me to better understand that the despair I often feel when trying to create something has little to do with my personal failings, it might just be the creative pursuit’s objective nature.

Disillusionment stops being an abusive parent and instead becomes part of the process where the slow climb out of it towards future productivity is enjoyed over time.

To reiterate Rank, considering the “Hype Cycle” puts me, “in a position to shift [my] creative willpower,” and seems to offer a partial answer to the question of creativity’s suffering.

An artist is not that different than the "idea generating technology" Gartner has mapped.

I shared this hunch with my writing group and we seemed to agree that a writer grows as a writer when she identifies a process that brings her enjoyment or, as Rank puts it, when the artist can detach from their work and, “ . . . render it objective.”

Letting go in this way helps new ideas to happen.

The question remains, why do creative pursuits hurt sometimes?

The Hype Cycle offers an implicit answer, because they do until you understand that they do and, that’s what they are supposed to do and, then they don’t anymore.

And you keep writing.

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.