Creative Rebellion Essays: Vision & Creative Confidence
Vision & Creative Confidence
I would posit that the common thread between so-called creative types (artists, designers, musicians, writers, et al) and entrepreneurs is that they both require two things: Vision and Creative confidence. Both the artist and the entrepreneur are making things that are, hopefully, unique, and in the latter case, useful. But either way, something is literally being pulled out of the aether.
Which is no easy feat.
Having a vision is the first step. It’s the itch that needs to be scratched. Usually, it starts innocuously enough, and often in the shower or while you are stuck in traffic, and there it is: An idea! If it’s really pressing, you jump out of the shower and write it down on a post-it note, smeary black ink on a yellow square pad, or you try to forget about it but it keeps popping back up. There’s usually a surge of, What if? And once it’s committed to the whiteboard or paper or Evernote then you’ve gotten yourself a bonafide vision. Often this initial surge of excitement is followed by a slew of reasons why you can’t do it. Surely someone else has already thought of this thing, right? Or what if I suck? Or I really don’t have time to do it. I certainly don’t have the money to start that new app. Etcetera, etcetera ad infinitum. Amen. Said idea is now officially blocked.
And yet, as you sit in your cubicle or at Starbucks, it keeps bugging you. And this is the point where creative confidence comes into play. It’s almost a delusional sense of optimism. There’s no evidence that your particular endeavor is interesting or wanted but here’s the thing: If it interests you deeply, it will probably resonate with a pretty decent percentage of the 7.5 billion people on this planet who are interconnected via the Internet. Even a thousand fans, as Kevin Kelly wrote in this essay from about a decade ago, will be enough to float you and your idea via Kickstarter.
Over the weekend, my family and I spent time with my wife’s childhood friend on a very nice boat in Laguna. As I tend to get along with young people more than folks in my age range, I had the most interesting conversations with their 25-year-old son. He is clearly a highly intelligent and talented writer and musician but had recently hit some rough patches in his creative career and was essentially lying low at home. He was clearly in a rut, having lost his creative confidence. His father, a very successful lawyer, mentioned to me over dinner that he had never experienced anything but confidence in his abilities and he didn’t fully understand what his son was going through (and his son nodded in agreement). I mentioned that while I am now reasonably confident in my abilities that I was very much like his son and I went through some deep troughs of doubt in my 20s. Here’s what I told the young musician-poet.
“You are young. Unattached and not paying for overhead. Now is the time to do it. Put it all on black. Whether you are a musician or an aspiring tech entrepreneur, you have to invest deeply in yourself and for a moment in time, do what seems insane – devote all your energies into one thing. Swing for the fences. Do the moonshot. You literally have nothing to lose. As you edge towards 30, you may find yourself needing to get a ‘real adult job’ and then you will start to slide into the expectations of society: getting a serious relationship, getting married, maybe having kids and then before you know it, you are 40 and you aren’t sure if you are much more than the labels assigned to you -- husband, father, manager, whatever. Now, none of these labels are intrinsically bad but people tend to associate heavily with them and then they lose sense of who they are without them. You can actually have both – be a great father and a poet and a provider – but it’s good to get the foundation in place now. While you are young. You can do it later but because you have more at stake (family, a mortgage, a fulltime job) your tolerance for risk will be much lower. So do it now.
Do it without being affected by either success or failure.
You will experience failure and if you are lucky, you have a lot of them and quickly get over them and learn and learn and learn. If you are unlucky you have a success right out of the gate. The reason I say that’s unlucky is because you may not have any idea why you were successful. Or maybe you will. But in either case, the best thing is to roll with the punches and not take failure personally. And the same goes for success. Don’t take it personally either. A lot of success has more to do with luck and timing than just brutal, raw talent. The point is you have to put it out there and not worry too much about whether it’s good or not. If you were in the state of flow while making it and truly immersed in the experience, then you’ve already been rewarded. You got paid. The rest is just a gift to the world: The song, the painting, the new application that helps to save the climate. Whatever. It has to fill your soul first and then, I guarantee you, that out of the billions out there in the wonderful world, there will be a thousand or so who will love what you do. And if they don’t, then it wasn’t for them.”
The young man texted me later that evening to thank me for the talk. “I finally posted my stupid song on the internet and it feels pretty good…” And then he sent me a link to a track he posted to Soundcloud. It was beautiful and heartfelt. I responded to him:
“It sounds amazing! It’s not a stupid song at all – be careful of what words you attach to your art. Words have power. It’s great and you should keep putting it out there.”
He then posted it to Instagram that evening – it appeared to be the first time he’d posted anything on that social network. Today he posted another song to Soundcloud and promoted it via Instagram. He’s on his way and it looks like he’s coming out of the trough.
And I think that’s the main takeaway. When you are not sure what to do, do something. The technique I use is to simply make “sacred time” for my creative work. I happen to get up early to meditate and write but it can be the evening for you. Whatever the time, the only rule is that you either do the thing assigned to that hour (write, paint, make music, sculpt, design, craft furniture or dance) or you do nothing at all. No mobile phone, no laptop, no social media, no TV, no nothing. You either do the practice of creating or you do nothing. Eventually, your monkey mind will calm down, mud settling into the bottom of a swirling glass of water, and you will get bored. Then you will pick up the paper or take a dance step or start strumming the guitar.
And then you will be on your way.
Creative confidence comes from the doing and then the courage to actually launch what you did out into the world. I’m doing it right now, with this essay. Sure, there will always be trolls but if what you do is true to you and from the heart, then it will absolutely not matter. Well, it may smart a little bit but you will find more energy from the making of a new thing that has never been seen than suffering from the vampiric drain of naysayers.
When I walk into a bookstore or library I’m often overwhelmed by the insane volumes of books that have been published. And I think, how do I have the audacity to think my book will matter? Well, as I told the young poet:
“There have been billions of people who have been born and died before you and maybe trillions after you leave this mortal coil. So it doesn’t matter if you do something or not. You are not in competition. You’ve already won the lottery – you were born! The odds of you actually existing are hysterically infinitesimal; basically ZERO.”
So go out and make more paintings, more music, more designs, more poetry and good companies that help the world. In the end, it all ends the same (someday the sun will explode) and it all goes away, so while you are here, allow yourself to break free from the constraints of societal and corporate expectations and allow your true face to come to the fore. Remember all laws, aside from the laws of physics, are manmade. I’m not suggesting that you break civil laws (you definitely shouldn’t steal or kill) but creatively rebel against rules that are imposed on you. Respect tradition and build on it. But discard that which no longer serves you. I told the young man:
“All truly new endeavors are ugly at first. The irony is that the framed posters of Monets and Renoirs you get from the mall were considered an affront to proper painting. Van Gogh and Cezanne’s post-Impressionist work was considered to be even more barbaric. Fast-forward to Warhol and his soup cans were laughed at. With technology, the first iPhone was scoffed at by former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer – he said it was a ‘not very good email machine.’ As Kurt Vonnegut said in Slaughterhouse Five, ‘And so it goes…’”
So I leave you with this. Have crazy vision. And then have crazy belief in yourself and the idea. If it fails, it fails. You go on. Have no attachment to the end result. Just focus on being in the moment, with the creative process and you will find that creative confidence, like all muscles, comes from just doing a lot of something.
Now go crazy.
John
What I’m reading:
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Just starting this one but being a huge Gaiman fan, I’m sure it’s going to be amazing.
What I’m listening to:
Hyperspace by Beck. Well, at least three of the pre-release songs, Hyperlife, Uneventful Days and Saw Lightning. Love his work and his experimental spirit. Talk about creative confidence.
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