Allowing Creativity to Unfold

I stalked this pair of sandhill cranes one afternoon a few years ago near my old home in Florida, trying to get a good closeup of the parent and offspring (anyone know the parenting habits of cranes?) together.  They did a little dance with me, aware but tolerant of my presence as long as I didn’t get too close.  It dragged on for nearly an hour, the circling and repositioning, but really, the best shots I got were somewhere in the beginning, long before my ego got involved in getting the “perfect” picture.  As a result, I was dissatisfied with what I had.  If I had paid closer attention to what the moment was giving me, my experience might have been completely different.  I could have gotten myself out of the way.

Creativity is that same dance.  It’s painful when what you envision doesn’t materialize–when the song or the poem or the painting seem to be missing something or feel like they are grinding to an unsatisfactory place.  It’s tempting to circle and fret and take a million shots.  Tweak and revise and go again and again.  But truly creative people believe in what they are doing enough to sometimes simply sit with it, hold the idea softly and let the process unfold.  Most of the time it’s just about leaving well-enough alone and allowing the art or music or word to find its own voice.  It’s about getting ourselves and our ideas of success or beauty or perfection out of the way.  It’s about opening to all the possibilities rather than stubbornly demanding that THIS ONE is going to work no matter what. Creativity is about patience not pushing.  My favorite guru Pema Chodron puts it like this:

“Patience means allowing things to unfold at their own speed rather than jumping in with your habitual response to either pain or pleasure. ”

So even though it was painful to think there were better shots of those beautiful cranes to be had and I didn’t get them, no doubt my insistence on trying to force the moment let something else beautiful slide right by me.

Next time I’ll let the birds call the shots.

Curiosity–Stretching Perceptions in New Directions

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
Samuel Johnson

I discovered this curious creature on my mimosa tree one spring day a few years ago.  At first I thought it might be a pod, a nest or a cocoon of some sort.  In the years I have spent exploring nature both in the woods and in the confines of my garden I have seen many ingenious delivery mechanisms for seed and larvae.  Something told me not to touch this furry little bubble though, in spite of it looking rather soft and inviting. Upon carefully twisting the branch to look at the underside, it revealed itself to be a caterpillar.

When I investigated the critter further, I determined it was the caterpillar of the Southern Flannel Moth Caterpillar – Megalopyge opercularis, also known as a Puss Cat or Flannel Cat.  It’s a variety of stinging caterpillars that can leave a nasty rash and painful sting, or even cause a dangerous reaction in people with histories of asthma or allergies.

So when I read the quote from Johnson about curiosity being the first and last passion, I thought of the dangers and rewards of being a curious soul.  Where does curiosity take us?  To the peaks and valleys, to places that test and reward, to new understandings and painful dead ends.  It stretches our perceptions in every direction.

Would this “cat” have killed my curiosity about him if I had touched him?  Probably not, but I dare say it would have been one of those painful stretches of perception!

Spontaneity + Limitations = Art?

Middle River, Virginia

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem. ~Rollo May

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Better Ridiculous than Boring–Taking Risks

This may be my favorite photo of all time, simply because it shows me taking a kind of risk I am not known for.  I have always been the person watching and encouraging other folks to be creative, to perform, to play with their own self-image, to risk being thought a little foolish for the sake of art and fun. I’m the promoter, the stage manager, the organizer but NEVER the front person. I don’t like to be the center of attention, and I have to admit part of it is because I’m afraid of making mistakes, of not being good at what I attempt. I worry about being perceived as foolish.

But this quote by Marilyn Monroe aptly describes the spirit of me donning orange wig and pink coat and stepping outside that fear once in awhile:

Imperfection is beauty; madness is genius and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring. ~ Marilyn Monroe

You have to  risk  feeling a little ridiculous to be truly creative. 

What’s your version of an orange wig, pink coat moment?

The Black Swan Approach to Marketing–Accept Uncertainty

Attention.  Uhhumm. Attention everyone. Hey! Listen up!  What’s wrong with you people? I’ve got something that you might just want to hear!  Why is it so difficult to get anyone’s attention these days?

I have asked myself this question quite a bit, not only when trying to learn new ways to get attention for my clients, but in figuring out how to make the topics I love to write about more marketable in an over-saturated, over-worked, overly rushed marketplace.  What does it take to stand out these days?  And I’m not talking about having the next best-seller, platinum record, or prestigious show at the Metropolitan.  I’m talking about garnering enough attention to make a living wage off what you love to do.

I haven’t figured it out yet, I’m still counting my pennies at the end of the month, but what I have done is begin to make peace with the effort.  When a friend began raving about a 2007 by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called The Black Swan,  I became intrigued by the psychology of, in relation to marketing the creative arts, something he writes in the beginning of Part 1:

“Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.”

Ok, so not the best marketing slogan for someone wanting to sell books.  And if you carry it a little farther, you could say “Heard music is far less valuable than unheard music” or “Seen art is far less valuable than unseen art.”  But here’s Taleb’s point.

“We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended.  It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order…we take what we know a little too seriously.”

Taleb goes on at length to explain the phenomenon of “black swan” occurrences, or highly improbable events with three basic characteristics:  1) they could not have been predicted 2) they had massive impact and 3) we try to explain (and, I might add, figure out how to repeat the financially lucrative events) afterwards.  He cites 911 and the meteoric rise of Google as prominent black swans, but believes that black swan events are the norm rather than the exception.  Taleb contends that being wired to believe that we can understand, explain and predict anything in the world is a basic human pathology that keeps us enslaved to what we know rather than open to the relevancy of what we don’t know.  Hence, we don’t like to even acknowledge the existence of black swans. Accepting unpredictability doesn’t reinforce our ego’s delusion that we can figure out anything and everything if we just put our minds to the task.  It’s damn near impossible for most of us to grasp that stepping into the uncertainty of our existence is the first step to truly being free.

Alright, so what does this have to do with marketing, particularly marketing creative material?  My guess is that it’s critical in the increasingly massive information age where we now exist.  We are going to have to change our thinking, to accept at a very deep level that there are more books than can possibly be read, more music than can ever be heard and more art than can ever be seen.  Nothing that worked the first time will work again in the same way.  No amount of hard work and perserverence will make a dent in the sheer volume of material available. There is too much to pay attention to, with very few useful ways to sort it out.  What ends up rising to the top of the barrel is completely random.

I’m not saying that we should throw out everything we know about delivering books, music and art to the widest audience possible.  We still have to do what we know how to do.  What I am suggesting however, is that when we understand that nothing we do to predict success is valid, we give POSITIVE black swans more space to arise from our creativity.  Once we let go of what we know about successful writers, musicians and artists–once we stop trying to explain the successes of popular creative icons–once we refuse to accept our brain’s propensity for rewarding what we already know with even more attention rather than encouraging a healthy curiosity about what we don’t know–we can begin to benefit from the ”successful” black swans rather than try to emulate, envy or curse their luck.    And how do we do that, you ask?

Always keep more books we haven’t read in the library than we’ve read. Don’t waste precious energy analyzing what’s already been done, why it worked and how to make it happen again.   Let the inherent unpredictability of life free our creative spirit.  And most of all, awaken to the black swans everywhere.   They have a whole lot to teach us about what we don’t know.  And maybe, just maybe, giving our full attention to what we love will get some attention in return.

But I’m not betting on it.  I’m just doing it and seeing what happens.

The Triumph of Enthusiasm

Photo courtesy irishviews.com

If you’re a dog lover like me, you can appreciate the unbridled enthusiasm and energy they exhibit when they are doing what they are born to do.  It’s equally fascinating to think about the trouble dogs forced to exist in an environment unsuited for their nature can get into.

I had a border collie once that got so bored with being cooped up in the house he decided to redecorate by stripping the wallpaper from the walls.  When I impressed upon him that such behavior was unacceptable, he became so lethargic and uninterested in life that I thought he might be sick.  But the minute he could cut loose to roam a nearby  pasture looking for a domesticated animal to herd, he was like a new dog, jumping and running with the energy and enthusiasm of a young pup.

I dare say, keeping what we were meant to do always in mind in our creative endeavors has to have a similar effect.  I know that the biggest hurdle I often struggle to overcome in my writing is to stop thinking about what I can sell and just write what I care deeply about.  I’ve watched writers, musicians and artists wrestling with the same thing.  It doesn’t take long for the lethargy to set in.  And before you know it, you’re wondering what you saw in this whole “art” thing anyway.

Author and speaker Og Mandino said:  “Every memorable act in the history of the world is a triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it because it gives any challenge or any occupation, no matter how frightening or difficult, a new meaning. Without enthusiasm you are doomed to a life of mediocrity but with it you can accomplish miracles.”

Ah, and doesn’t enthusiasm beget energy and imagination and genius?  Trust what you love and pour your enthusiasm into it.  The rest will follow.  Could all the dogs in the world be wrong?

Creatively Kissing the Ground

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”  ~Rumi

I adopted that Rumi tagline as my personal motto several years ago when I was feeling very discouraged about getting my freelancing business off the ground.  I had given up trying to survive on what I was making from selling articles to magazines and begun managing a talented songwriter.  We were both broke, and at our first business meeting looked in each other’s eyes and said simultaneously, “I’m tired of being poor.”  I didn’t know how a starving writer was going to help a starving musician do anything but starve a little longer, but we popped a bottle of champagne and set off on a  new path together.

Over several years in getting to know this amazing individual, he remains the epitome of the “Let the beauty” quote to me.  He has been slogging away at making a living as a musician for longer than he wants to admit, road weary and barely surviving most of the time.   Yet despite the trials and tribulations and a desire for what he does to be more financially rewarding, he’s never far from the belief that if we are living our passion and telling the truth as we see it, we have everything we need.  He has the keen ability to turn nearly every event in his life into a touching and deeply personal, yet universally meaningful song.  This uncanny gift, relentless touring and his 1000+ songs have gathered just a small circle of loyal music lovers.  “How could this be?” I thought the first time I heard his music.  It’s poetic and entertaining and moving.  I remain perplexed by his lack of commercial success, but have developed a strong admiration for his ability to keeping the beauty of what he loves at the forefront of what he does.

One of his performances sticks in my memory.  He was flushed and nervous despite having spent thousands of nights just like that doing the exact same thing.  I had seen him prepare and perform enough to know how much of his heart he pours into every show, and yet again, he blew my mind with the innovative and touching material he pulled out of his box of tricks.  I realized each of his songs are moments when he finds yet another way to kneel and kiss the ground, and each time he sings them he is weaving those moments together to create them anew for us.  After the appreciative audience had departed and we were closing up the event, I heard him telling someone, “It’s nights like these that remind me why I do what I do”.

I’ve since amicably parted ways with this musician as a client and am getting ready to publish my first book. As I  step out onto that unknown stage, risk failure, open myself to a whole range of new disappointments, I’m reminded of my friend’s attitude of abundance.  What a great memory to keep me humble, to keep allowing each word I write to become a bow, to let what I love be yet another way to kiss the ground.

NOTE: Check out Nathan Moore’s latest bow, Hippy Fiasco.  Kudos to my friend for finding another creative and inclusive way of kissing the ground and for being a steadfast inspiration.