Alright, so I’ve never, particularly, been a huge White Stripes fan or maybe any kind of fan the likes of which Jack White seems to attract, but lately I can’t help but be inspired and interested in his perspective. As long as I’ve known about the guy, even when we were probably at the Gold Dollar at the same time, playing music in the late 90′s, I’ve been intrigued by his perspective. Maybe it’s his thoughts on work and creativity. Maybe it’s just nice being able to see someone from Detroit with their Midwest work ethic making it big, kind of showing us than you can achieve things just by working at it. I don’t know, but I stumbled upon this video and decided that I needed to post it. In this video, he makes some good points about work and inspiration and how, sometimes, even if you’re not inspired you still have to work, maybe you’re satisfied with what you come out with, but either way just do the work. Readers of my writings know that’s a perspective I appreciate. In any case, for any working artist, this is an important piece to share: Sometimes you just have to do the work.

Recently, I was struck listening to a very seasoned artist, a world-class, world-famous concert violinist. Perhaps it was an off day, or the tenth interview regarding a new release, but what little they had to say fell very flat. Near the end, the interviewer was able to get more out of them, and able to get a little more enthusiasm about the work that they were discussing, but as I was thinking about our role as artists, if we can’t advocate for our own work, how we can expect any one else to do it either?

If you’re not inspired by your work, if you don’t ache with the thought of doing it, or telling someone about it, or just discussing the profound beauty of it, then why the hell are you doing it? Life is too short to live someone else’s life or to do something that’s not your own. At least, that’s what I’ve always told myself.

For some of us, it’s very easy to talk about ourselves, but for others of us, in my experience, the most creative or inspired, it’s very hard. Because the artist spends so much time steeped in their inspiration and creativity it can become hard to do the self-promotion work and talk about yourself, your process, or most importantly, the art, but we have to. We have to be the greatest advocates of our work. Now, there’s a fine line here, a self-promoting narcissist is a bummer, and sucks the life out of people and conversations, whereas an artist talking with passion and energy about their work spreads this passion like a contagion without a flag that says “look at me, look at me! I’m special!”.

We have to be able to talk about ourselves and our work, if we don’t how can we expect anybody else to.

Not everyone’s an artist. I’ve heard that said many times. I’ve also heard that artists aren’t made, they’re born. In many ways this parallels the discussion about leaders, and whether they’re born or made. I don’t know if artists are born or made. I don’t know if inspiration is something that we all experience, though I have to believe that a wide swath of the world population experiences this, even if it’s only to make a grill cheese sandwich or a flower box outside one’s window.

Maybe this starts to get into what it means to be an artist. An artist gets inspired, an artist has vision, an artist has a commitment to their work and continuing to push the envelope on their work. An artist understands craft, even becomes a craft person, but always works towards the goal of their vision and what they see for their art.

Maybe everyone isn’t an artist. Maybe the act of making art or being creative doesn’t necessarily make someone an artist, but any one of us can make the commitments and be dedicated in ways that I’ve mentioned above. We can choose to be inspired; we can choose to have vision and follow it; we can choose to be committed to our work and be dedicated to that work.

So, yeah, I still don’t know if everyone can be an artist. Certainly, I’ve met many folks who believe it’s an exclusive club, but I can tell you this: In a world where being creative and making art is much better and more satisfying than a world without it, I have to believe that everyone can live better with creativity.

I can pretty much promise you that there are no shortcuts to most things in life, and this is doubly so where anything having to do with creativity or personal fulfillment are concerned. Some things, like shortcuts, we all learn about, eventually, and no matter how deceptive the allure of the shortcut, there aren’t any. Sometimes, the shortcut pays off, a short-term effect that’s usually followed by something that would have gotten worked out along the way, before the shortcut, in all its shining goodness, easy with possibility was discovered and we were seduced by it. However, the funny thing about this is that the best way to learn that there no such thing as a shortcut is to take a few and see just how far you get. Life’s a beautiful teacher and painfully effective in this regard.

I came upon this interesting article about how to create your unique voice as a photographer through the course of some random Web surfing. I was intrigued by the title because photography, like any art or creative endeavor, really can stand alone in its uniqueness once an artist has found their own voice. However, photography, can also suffer, more than other art forms, very easily from being derivative and unoriginal. I suspect this is because the camera, especially where photo technology is today, allows for almost anyone to take a good picture; where as, once upon a time, there was a level of craft involved just to get things to where you can get to with a simple snap of your iPhone’s camera. In any case, as I was reading this article I came up on something that I thought that would be nice to share on my site: Avoiding the #1 Creativity Killer.

Taken from Tien Frogget’s article:

Contrary to popular belief, reading more books and taking more classes does not always make you a better photographer. Now don’t get me wrong; they can be helpful tools that help you to grow and learn – to an extent. However, there is a point that most photographers reach where studying and learning stops being helpful and becomes counterproductive. How do you know that you’ve reached that point?

When you find yourself critiquing and criticizing your work more than you are simply enjoying it.

In my opinion, this is a major creativity killer and the perspective of over-analysis and being overly critical can certainly lend itself to stifling creativity. I’m always looking for articles or folks talking about how to avert the creativity kill, or how to stay inspired, so whether you like photography or not, Tien’s article is a good one and chock full of information that I think any creative artist can take something from.

After I heard about how Hunter S. Thompson worked, I must admit that I was little bit amazed. According to a documentary that came out shortly after his death, he did most of his writing sitting at his typewriter in the kitchen while he and his friends partied and talked. I can only imagine that the same approach would shut me down… Matter of fact, I know this, I work best in quiet solitude. Most artists I know work like this, too, but there are exceptions, the likes of which I hope to learn more about. For today, though, I’m going to talk about how the artist’s life can be a lonely one, but that’s not as woe-some as it sounds.

Being a working artist is a lonely business, mostly because you have a unique view of the world and what’s possible. This unique view, which I believe starts fairly early on, in some ways comes to define the artist, and it’s usually quite a bi-polar experience without a lot of middle-ground. Either you come to terms with your worldview, keep to yourself and accept that you’re different, letting those folks that are prone to the fringes, nearest. Or you fight this worldview, struggle to assimilate and eventually come to terms (or not) that you have this different worldview and allow yourself to live with it. This would kind of be where I fit.

So, for the artist, self-discovery is name of the game. It’s the deal. And through self-discovery you learn about yourself and what works, because we’re always trying to enhance what works. Often times, what works is getting off the trail that’s already been tread, and going your own way. Humans, mostly, are pack animals, but the artist is different. It’s not a choice they make, but they’re just on a different trajectory, I think this wholly attributed to the fact that they just see the world differently, call it vision, or whatever you want, but it’s different and the artist must go and do their own thing. In many ways, it’s kind of like what Joseph Campbell writes about the Hero’s Journey. Maybe the artist comes back around with the new thing they’ve discovered, but even while they work, they’re working, they’re in the solitude of the work — the flow. The spirt and the inspiration flows through them.

I’m putting all this down here, because artists don’t have a career path like doctors, lawyers, land surveyors, or computer programmers. Our occupational training starts very early on. There aren’t special clubs for being an artist, and mostly these would probably just be filled with wanna-bes and posers, anyway. In fact, being an artist isn’t much of a choice, being creative is just something that you’re prone to doing, while others might be prone to playing sports or collecting stamps, the artist creates.

So the artist, in their solitude works. And with a proper balance, always a challenge for the artist who, generally, thrives in extremes, the artist is able to make the successful go of things and make a life for themselves, even possibly a life where making art is part of their life and livelihood. I say take comfort in the solitude, don’t fight it, to say make friends with it sounds uber-cheesy, but shit, make friends with it. Keep focused and keep going. Keep defining your path. Keep to the self-discovery that comes with being alive and also a working artist and work to magnify the beauty.

On the other hand, there’s balance. Keep to the solitude for your work, but also enjoy people, have relationships, get outside, walk around, travel and do things that enhance your world. Creativity won’t thrive under lock-up, rather it’s the freedom of the spirit and being inspired that allows the inspiration and creativity to flow through you. Leave that room for other things and work to maintain the balance. You won’t lose your edge, as so many of us are apt to thinking. You might have honed your skills at school, but there’s no real school for the artist, just a series of steps that further sharpen you and make you able to create — therefore, it’s not a skill that can be lost. Embrace your humanity and the artist will thrive.

You hear a lot about these two things in my line of work. This makes sense considering it’s an interdisciplinary work. Whether I’m looking at something from the communications and marketing side of things and trying to foster creativity or just get some creative thought around problem solving, I end up needing the skills of creativity to get to the core of these things. On the other side, when I’m undertaking things from an IT and Web perspective, we’re always looking to innovate, problem solve and find solutions to things that we haven’t been able to figure out before.

These, seemingly, right and left brain activities, depending on the area you’re working in, seem disparate, disconnected, and I’ve seen folks approach them in that way, but the reality is that whatever it is that gets one to innovate or create comes from the same place.

If you’re going to try and innovate or be creative, you need to put aside pre-conceived notions, “blue sky” as we sometimes call it in IT, just brainstorm and let the creativity flow. You can’t try to organize the thoughts, harness it, or whatever, not initially, instead you have to just let it flow, document what’s coming out of the sessions and then go back, later and start to begin the process of dissecting, reviewing and critiquing the ideas.

I’m thinking of this now, because innovation and creativity in most organizations is kind of like pushing a cart in Ikea, or even worse, pushing a cart against traffic in Ikea. You’ll get somewhere, but it will be an unpleasant experience and one that you won’t embark on again. At the end, will you have achieved the creativity or innovation that you had hoped to? Maybe, but probably not… Managing creativity and innovation is like cooking a small fish, too much poking ruins it…

When you’re creating, I mean, when you’re really in that creative mode it seems like the creativity will never end. Maybe you decide to take your songs to the street or your art work or whatever, and before too long, you’re relying on your art, you’re needing it to live, maybe you’ve given up your job, or whatever, and you’re making a go of it with your art.

That feeling of bliss and creativity is kicking in full gear, but then one day comes, and the elation is gone. Instead of butterflies of excitement about your next creative idea, your gut just feels heavy and your stuck like chuck, trying to think about what to do now that everything in your existence relies on your creative output. This is a crap place to be.

Seasoned musicians and artists know this is part of the deal. This is a part of the ride that doesn’t feel good, and it makes us consider our worst fear: that when it’s gone, it’s gone and it won’t come back, that thing that makes us creative, whatever it is, but somehow it always seems to come back. That’s not to say that it’s not scary as hell when you wake up feeling like beat down, tired and uninspired especially when you’ve got a show to do or work to do.

I would submit that this is, generally, when pharmaceutical, illegal or otherwise, come into play and have for many artists through the ages, but I say, like with anything give it a break and wait for it or just go through the motions and see what happens… Creativity on demand or brilliance in a hurry is a life that many of us have made for ourselves, and there’s no supplement to feeling inspired, but sometimes we just have to suck it up, and work. Go through the motions, put process in place of inspiration.

Eventually, the inspiration comes back, and you’ll be back at it again… the best thing that you can do is not judge the feeling or lack of feeling, but go through the motions. If you can’t feel inspired, at least you can keep things moving, even if it’s not your most inspired work. Usually the malaise will lift in a couple days, sometimes it can go for months, but we’re adaptable, that’s part of working and being creative.

What is an artist? Semantically, I bounce around a lot using musician and artist interchangeably, sometimes going specific and referring to one as a painter, sculptor, writer, etc… I try to avoid the term “creative” like when I’m referring to a person as a creative… that’s my least favorite term used to describe someone who creates things. Ultimately, though, what I’m going after or trying to talk about is the artist, defined thusly, by Wiktionary:

A person who creates art; A person who creates art as an occupation; A person who is skilled at some activity; Artistic

So that’s it, it’s settled… the artist defined for future writings on this here site.

Artist’s take vision for granted. If they couldn’t see their vision in their mind’s eye, or hear their vision in their vision in their mind’s ear, then they would have a heck of a hard time creating anything. The artist creates things from nothing, whether carving a beautiful shape out of a block of wood, or organizing vibrations and frequencies into groups of melodies and harmonies, or manipulating shades of light on a canvas or a computer screen. The artist doesn’t go very far without vision.

The curious thing here is that companies all over the world are struggling to get these kinds of visionaries. Steve Jobs was heralded as a great visionary and he himself really just considered himself an artist. Considering oneself an artist is freeing, because it means you can create, just creating towards the end of creation. Business thrives when the creativity is harnessed and turned into interesting products and innovative ideas, but they all come from the same place, the artist’s vision.

Is the artist born with this vision? Some would say so. I don’t really know, myself. I have vision, but I don’t know that I feel like I was born with some kind of special aptitude. I can tell you that I definitely know how to create the right environment for being creative. I know my process and what works for me, and I know how to work with others to get a creative output, but vision is a wholly mental and emotional process that happens in the mind of the individual. We can talk about it, we can experience other people’s visions, even bring our vision to others, but does everyone have vision or the capacity to have a vision? I guess as I type these lines, I think that each human must have the ability to be visionary, it’s just a matter of that aptitude or process being tapped.

Point is: Artist’s take their vision for granted, but if it wasn’t for the artist and their vision it would be a very dull world with very little exciting or beautiful going on… or maybe we’d learn to live a life more in tune with nature and it’s inherent beauty.