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.

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…

This morning, as I meditated on Dr. King’s work, I was reminded of what some consider Dr. King’s last goal: The eradication of poverty. Poverty is the great equalizer, it affects all of us in some way, shape or form. As Dr. King said, “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. … The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty.” This was known as the Poor People’s Campaign. He also talked about poverty in one of his last speech’s, which I’ve linked to here.

Below, I’ve also embedded a YouTube video that I watch sometimes when the world doesn’t seem to make sense, and the clarity that I thought I had about the trajectory of life is more opaque than usual. The words of Dr. King always lift me up.

All of this is to say, and this is also a reminder for myself, as much of my written work is, that we not only have to be grateful and thankful for everything we have, but we also can’t forget our responsibility to help those who are in worse shape or in more dire straits than ourselves. Dr. King understood this and taught this, leading by example. In some weird way that I feel, but don’t understand, we as humans are all connected, so whether through the creation and sharing of beauty, volunteerism or cash donations, helping others is helping ourselves.

Sometimes, no matter how much you try, you can’t separate yourself from what isn’t good for you. I’ve seen it a thousand times, and suffered from it plenty in my own life. In some ways that’a preface to nothing and in other ways, I guess what I’m trying to say is that making anything better requires constant evaluation and analysis, but also painful decisions that don’t look to have an immediate return on the painfulness of the choice.

I try to make far fewer declarations and pronouncements, these days, because, frankly, the older I get or the more bullshit that I’m exposed to, the more I realize that I’m just fumbling through and each day has a thousand lessons, and it will be a successful day if I can pull only one of those into my reality, integrate and work to make something better than it was previously.

So, I guess, that’s it, everyday make something a little better… or how can I make right now just a little better? Stop thinking destructive thoughts, go for a walk, stop eating that piece of cake, go ahead and eat that piece of cake… take a deep breath, whatever… there’s always some craziness trying to make its way to the fore of our mind… ultimately, everything’s going to be alright.

“It’s sort of like job growth in Texas,” says Joe Donnelly, a former deputy editor at L.A. Weekly, laid off in 2008 and now pouring savings and the money he made from a home sale into a literary magazine. “Gov. Perry created thousands of jobs, but they’re all at McDonald’s. Now everyone has a chance to make 15 cents. People are just pecking, hunting, scratching the dirt for freelance work. Living week to week, month to month.”

This is a great quote from an even better article at Salon.com, by Scott Timberg, on the struggling creative class…

One of the things about the 52 Songs series and getting it off the ground in a ‘live’ format is the memorizing of words. I read that Trey Anastasio from Phish started using a teleprompter in the last couple years, and before that the crew would quickly write out lyrics on poster board and throw it under his feet as he was performing… with over 300 songs the crew never knew what to expect with a band that is known for not putting together setlists.

Similarly, a friend of mine was telling me about a singer/songwriter who he really liked, and she was getting right into the hook of his favorite song when a stage light went out and she wasn’t able to sing the tune because she couldn’t read the lyrics.

On the other hand using a music stand seems quintessentially uncool… so I’ve struggled, my memory has grown, and I’m even looking vitamins, recipes and exercises to increase my memory… Some of my friends, I’m sure are saying ‘…about damn time!’

Seriously, though the memorization of words is an operational detail that could be easily overlooked, but it’s something that has really hit me where I live as I get ready to launch the Teag and PK shows that we have coming. Anyhow, this post all came from watching this video where Dave Matthews talks about forgetting lyrics and sometimes just mumbling… been there…

The rattle of bare tree-tops was first great sound that ever stopped me and made me listen. At that moment I began to contemplate just how profound a thing sound was. The trees, bare from winter, with their empty canopies blowing to and fro, rattling, and creaking and crying against the placid winter backdrop, drew me in. I knew that I was experiencing something, at once, very much in that moment, but also something timeless, and this gave me pause, reason to reflect on the simplicity of the scraping limbs and the common serenade of nature’s music.

This experience is something that I come back to nearly every time that I sit down to compose or write a song. It takes me back to a place of purity, it cleanses my mind of music theory, intellectualism and other mental clutter that moves composing away from the enjoyment of sound. Which, after all, is the thing that brought us to this place to begin with.

Lately, being better means putting all of my energy into the songwriting, and frankly it feels great. The 52Songs series is a great challenge and one that continues to drive, stimulate and even frustrate me at times, but I can feel the growth. Better yet, I can see the growth in my work and my approach.