So I got a message from MT58 asking me to contribute a piece to our new TNOCS site. First reaction, honored beyond words for the invitation. Second reaction, sheer terror. My brain immediately began running in circles shouting “Ack! Ack! What can I write about? I’m not creative! What have you done to me?”
Panic started me thinking about creativity. First, a short history of my own creativity…very short. Two years of forced piano lessons as a child… that didn’t take. One year of forced dance lessons as a child…that didn’t take. A few poems written as an angsty teenager that, suffice it to say, did not lead me further down a literary path.
But…I definitely have appreciation for art of all types. Does that count? I like to cook, usually adjusting recipes as I go, and sometimes inventing new ones. Does that count? I make lesson plans that attempt to present math in a fresh way and capture students’ interest. Does that count? What does count?
I know there are a lot of Springsteen fans on this site, and I have long used one of his lyrics as a way to summarize my particular approach. “And the poets down here don’t write nothing at all. They just stand back and let it all be.” That’s my approach to music, literature, and visual arts. I just stand back and let it all be, breathe it in, bathe in it. Maybe cry a little bit if it’s just too beautiful. My daughter once told me that I was the only person she knew who could actually be brought to tears by the beauty of a cardinal in a forsythia bush highlighted against a bright blue sky.
I would love to hear from some of you about your own creative lives. We have musicians, composers, writers, and visual artists on this site (and so far I’m just talking about MT!). How do you indulge and encourage your own creative impulses? What medium? Detailed technical knowledge or just wing it? Strict discipline or whenever the muse strikes?
Let’s talk about it. Maybe we can inspire each other. At the very least we can learn more about this wonderful TNOCS family.
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Thanks for the post, lovethisconcept. I wanted to be a sportswriter growing up and I actually worked three summers as an intern for our local newspaper while in college and also worked a year as sports information director for said college but life came along and that dream went nowhere.
But as my moniker (DanceFever) implies, I’ve always loved to dance and whether driving in the car, cooking dinner or playing with the grandkids, I have to have music on and when possible dance a step or two.
So glad you liked the post. I can’t say that I dance. Don’t know any real steps. I tend to move somewhat rhythmically from side to side and call it dancing. But maybe when we finally have our TNOCS meetup you can teach me a few steps.
“I know there are a lot of Springsteen fans on this site”
Well Rabbits Rabbits is plural and squared, so he accounts for several of them…
Yes, he is a rabid Rabbits Rabbits on the subject of Springsteen. I wonder if he has joined this page yet. I hope he comes along for the fun.
When I was six (1977), I saw both Fantasia and Star Wars in the theaters, and was totally captivated – not just by the films’ content, but with the idea that someone could help create something like that. I just didn’t know how I would get there (also, I probably had / have ADHD).
I could draw all right, but nothing amazing. I taught myself how to get around on a computer and code in the early 80s, but never went deep into programming. I started reading scripts and tried writing some, but didn’t get anywhere. I went to film school and thought about maybe doing cinematography, but never got anywhere significant there (see, again: my “I probably had / have ADHD comment).
In my early 20s, a friend got me a job at an animation software company – I did technical support and sales demos. As more studios bought our software, I was getting farmed out to be embedded at a studio for a while, to help get people ramped up. This gave me the opportunity to work on all kinds of amazing shorts, TV episodes, and film projects at Disney, Warner Bros, DreamWorks, and Fox (these were the 90s animation explosion years).
I finally got poached by DreamWorks, and have worked on every movie besides “Antz” that they’ve released. I pivoted away from Production to a pure tech role in the early 2000s (production hours are killers for a marriage), but I still get to see the films & shows get made and still have insight to the filmmaking process that inspired six-year-old me.
So, not where I thought I was going as a child, but very satisfying nonetheless.
That sounds like such interesting work. We have enjoyed the heck out of the DreamWorks films. Now I have to re-watch some of them and look for blu_cheez in the credits.
My name is so far into the credits that I have to force my kids to stay in the theater long enough to see it.
I thought I would be a comic-book artist … I’d collected since I was 8 and took a few classes at the Y after school to learn how to draw superheroes. As a high school freshman, I showed a “portfolio” (hah, really a couple of pages of a storyline) to the school newspaper editor. He said my artwork wasn’t so hot but he liked the writing and asked if I were interested in trying an article for the paper. One thing led to another and a newspaper editing (and occasional writing) career that ended in 2008 only because the industry was drying up and I’d have been unemployed had I not jumped first and pivoted to grad school and then high school counseling.
Other creative things? I enjoy scrapbooking (have one for every year since 1994 and broadly themed ones before then) and baking (but am more judicious these days … in early COVID times, I gained lots of weight making whatever I wanted, and realized that needed to be tamed). I’ve been doing some audio editing recently and enjoying that, too.
I so envy you your scrapbooking skills. When my daughter was born, I was determined to do a baby book for her. I have it fairly well done up to about 6 months. The next 20+ years consist of several shoe boxes full of pictures and mementos. Who knows, after I retire I may go back and actually get some of them together.
Was comic book collecting something you just did as a child, or has it carried into your adult life? I think I have a collecting problem – I’m 8,000+ issues in now, and my wife is concerned for my sanity at times. Thankfully, music is easier to hoard.
I did so almost continually from 1971 to 2011 or so … I sold my first collection in 1987 because I was being paid so little at the Fort Wayne newspaper that I was in danger of defaulting on my undergraduate student loans. Selling that collection paid the loans off (though when I think of some of the issues I sold … Giant Size X-Men 1? Justice League 22? … I still get a lump in the throat). DC’s New 52 made a perfect jumping off point for collection two, which shares space with my records/CDs/cassettes/videotapes in a media room across the hall from where I am now.
I know this is going to sound like the same old story but it happens to be true.
When I was 10 or so, I loved comic books (Sgt. Fury was a favorite). but they seemed to be recycling the same old stories but then I happened to find a new comic on the scene by some guys named Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I had all the original comic Number Ones i.e. Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Thor, all the Marvel heroes.
After a few years there wasn’t enough space in my room so I put them into several big boxes and moved them down into the basement. After my freshman year in college I came home to work for the summer. One day I decided to read some of them but to my surprise, my mother had thrown the all out.
When asked why, my mother said I was in college now and didn’t need that “baby stuff”. I was livid but kept my composure and reminded her those would very valuable one day. She just laughed “Who would buy those silly things ?”
As the years went by and articles would pop up stating the original X-Men was worth so and so, I would casually drop the article in front of my mother and not say a word.
Ouch…
Gasp – No she didn’t! Oh, oh that hurts my heart….
My degree is in Creative Writing and I had every intention of being a professional writer. I quickly discovered that writers starve. So I made an excellent career move and became a musician.
And starved some more.
I eventually and accidentally fell into software development and have been doing that since but I still want to write. Most of my writing has been limited to songs but that certainly counts. Some of my older songs make me cringe, which is true of all writing, I suppose.
I mentioned towards the end of the Punk Side Of Town featurette series that I was starting to write a novel and I’m still working on it. It’s pretty hard. I’m on my fifth revision and haven’t even completed the full arc of the story. It keeps changing as new ideas come to mind. I have to question, would this character behave this way? If not, do I change the action or the character? It’s all about choices, as is all creativity.
Even Lennon and McCartney’s very early stuff is kind of cringey. I have loved what I have heard of your music. And, of course, I am super impressed that you have an IMDB page. Still waiting to hear a live show.
And, of course, it goes without saying (which always prefaces actually saying something) I will be preordering the novel when it becomes available.
Wait, I have an IMDB page? Hold on….
LOL, I totally forgot I did that, and had forgotten that movie, too. It’s not very good and I’m not as happy with my music for it as I am with the Catalyst soundtrack, but it’s kinda cool that the page is there. I think I need to update the bio though.
V-dog,
Your writing is inspiring. I read you entry about meeting your future roommate to my wife, and there were tears as I read. What an absolutely beautiful story; beautifully written.
I can’t wait for the novel.
Man, thank you! Today happens to be our 39th anniversary so you could say it worked out. Or you could say she hasn’t come to her senses yet. Either way, I truly appreciate your kind words.
Happy anniversary!
Happy anniversary, Virgin. Here’s to another 39 more.
Totally with you, lovethisconcept. I am in awe of creative people where it’s so effortless for them.
It’s funny, I was just reflecting this past week on the first time I was amazed at someone’s creativity. One of my best friends in elementary school was this girl who had 2 younger brothers. First started hanging out at her house all the time in kindergarten, so her brothers were like 3 and 1, still babies. But the 3 year old was already quite the artist. Parents were obviously very proud, had his artwork everywhere on the walls. He was probably 8 by the time I stopped hanging out with her, and his stuff already looked like it was drawn by a 50 year pro.
That always stuck with me, how obviously his talent emerged from infancy basically. I may have never thought of myself as creative at all, but I was fortunate enough to realize what my passion was as a pre-schooler – maps and geography. Once my dad introduced me to 2 geography majors he knew that both worked for the federal government, that was it for me. I was like, I can do this as a job?! I had an answer ready for people who’d always say, what are you going to do with a geography degree, teach?
Then, once I got settled in a career and found I had a knack for editing maps, I realized I was artistic after all. Cartography has a huge aesthetic factor – there is an art to creating an effective map (see: any National Geographic map). It’s a skill that tends to get lost in today’s age of digital mapping, where folks are simply maintaining digital Geospatial data. Once I realized that, and understood creativity comes in a variety of forms, I didn’t feel like such a loser that I can’t even pick out curtains effectively.
As for my friends’ brother? Well, he and and a couple coworker buddies in Silicon Valley created this little website called YouTube about 20 years ago. Last I heard, he’d done pretty good for himself when he sold off his shares. Lol
I love maps and totally agree with you on the aesthetic factor. I would love to see some of your maps someday.
Well, since you asked….!
This was MrDutch and my covid lock down hobby – we decided to create a street detail map of our home county. Now I just gotta get out and sell some to businesses. Ha!
I’ve found that most everyone likes to peruse a map, especially if the content is something that they recognize, or otherwise would have even a casual interest in. Local neighborhood, favorite vacation spot, even the spot where you and your SO first met…
I think that the family Dutch is onto something. It is a very neat idea.
The product is unique and a great conversation piece. My thumbnail marketing instincts say that if you brought a sample map to local professional’s offices, you’d have a fairly good chance of making a sale. From there, perhaps a website where people could order…
…sorry. You got my entrepreneurial juices flowing, there, dutchg8r…
All that most of us have to show from the lockdown is an extra 10 pounds. Nice that you have used some of that time to create something truly lovely.
“10 pounds.”
Ha. You are the eternal optimist.
I should be so lucky.
dutchg8r, have you talked to SrCarto? He’s a cartographer, too, I believe.
And yes, there’s an art to nearly everything. We generally don’t see it, but the best of the best in any field is an artist.
Yep, pretty sure I know which agency SrCarto worked for as well. The older I get the less surprising it is how small the cartographic world really is!
I like thinking of creativity from a broad angle. Like dutchg8r said, it comes in a lot of forms. We can be subtly creative in many aspects of life, not producing formal “art” but instead creating moments of Artful Living. Sometimes it’s an occasion of true efficiency and resourcefulness, like when you need a certain thing to assist with whatever situation you’re facing and you’re able to quickly scan the room and find that thing. Or better yet, some other thing that’s intended for a different purpose but will work just as well.
Improvisation is another angle that can be applied widely. For example, I’ve got a certain sense of humor, but it doesn’t rely on jokes or gags or slogans. It’s usually more of a spontaneous, off-the-cuff reply to something someone else said. It’s dry, but there’s a way to inject some absurdity into it and help make it more obvious. I think of it as pulling a little bit of humor out of the air, and I think my batting average is impressive. I can often get a chuckle or a laugh out of someone with one of these spontaneous quips, and to me that’s creating a better space around me, and benefiting others.
In the more material sense, I like building patios and retaining walls. My favorite medium is demolished concrete, aka Urbanite. My biggest project was a Labyrinth, roughly 50’ across, built (almost) entirely from chunks of old sidewalk, factory floors, parking curbs, old bricks and stone, you name it – from replaced headstones to central heat/air unit pads. I spent a few years on that one, it was a volunteer project for a local middle school – actually the same place I went to 6-8th grades at. Here’s a photo:
That is very cool! You must have been so proud and relieved to finish that, Both Grouse.
I’d have a hard time putting into words just how relieved I was to finish building that. As someone who has a history of starting projects and then flaking out on them, I really never should have taken it on. It was a HUGE undertaking, relative to the similar projects I’d done before. In that regard it actually worked to my advantage that the project was in such a visible, public space. The school is next to the local park, which you can see in the background of the photo. Flaking out on it and hauling it away would have been harder on my ego than the glacial pace of progress was.
On the other hand, the slow pace let me leisurely consider the many different elements that I had to work with, and put them together in a way that was truly satisfying. There are some hints of chakra/spectrum colors built in, there are lines to three of the compass points, and rough solstice markers. Of course, little of that is obvious and it’s generally too esoteric for people to care about it. But it strikes a chord deep within me.
The labyrinth is beautiful, and I imagine that it really is a very peaceful place to be. I had never heard of urbanite, but it seems like a wonderful way to get some beauty from brokenness and waste.
My favorite thing that you said, though, is about the subject of artful living. That is exactly the idea that I was going for in my piece. As you say, just saying the right thing at the right time can be art. Humor, empathy, anything at all really. Sometimes even the perfectly timed insult that puts a bully in their place.
Using things in new ways or finding ways to make what you have work instead of buying something new can definitely be art.
I think we’re on the same wavelength, LTC! And I love the idea that effectively putting a bully in their place can be a creative act.
Urbanite is one of my very favorite things, especially when it’s used with enough artistic flair that it’s appealing to the eye. Just thinking about it triggers something in my brain that I think may be similar to what a lot of people feel looking at great paintings – zones me right out and holds my gaze.
Acquiring urbanite can be a low-key adventure in itself. I think the vast majority of concrete and stuff I used in that labyrinth came around as a result of me spotting it from the road as I drove by. (I’ve got a rule to ask the owner before I load it up.) Sometimes piles of demolished concrete sit around for years, at least around here. It really nags at my soul to see all this material being discarded – lying around as an eyesore, or used as landfill. At best it’s eventually ground up into useful gravel. Seems like a missed opportunity.
I can go on and on about urbanite. Here’s a photo that I think fits your theme well, showing the creative process in very slow motion:
I can see an obsession with urbanite in my future. We are currently in the process of planning a patio area at my house. Urbanite has now moved into the lead on the list of possibilities. And I had never heard of it until yesterday!
Nice! I’ll glad to share what I know if you’d like advice, either here or via email.
I will definitely be in touch.
Are you on facebook? I kept a page going for a few years there (Urbanite Building) that you can look at, lots of photos of the construction process of the labyrinth and some related stuff.
I am on Facebook, and I will definitely be looking up your page. Thanks!
Nice! Where is the labyrinth and is it available to the public?
Yes, open to the public. Here are the coordinates, it’s actually visible in googlemaps!
36°08’54.8″N 82°50’34.4″W
[Giggles like a dope]
Look at that!! Right there next to the track! I love GoogleEarth treasure hunts!!!!
I’ve never heard of urbanite building either, that’s an awesome way to repurpose items – love that.
I’ve been trying to get back in touch with my creative side. I came from a family with artistic inclinations, and used to draw fairly well. I was also always drawn to music (though never formally trained in anything), and writing.
I initially went into college thinking I would major in English, but it was ultimately behavioral science that drew me in, and I eventually got my Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience. I was always interested in science, even as a kid, but in order to thrive as a scientific researcher, I needed to double down on my systemizing tendencies and shut out a lot of artistic impulses.
Now, I’m a few years out of academic research, working as an analyst (but really more like a research consultant), with a lot more time on my hands. So, I’ve been trying to dip back into some creative projects. I’ve started writing a music history blog, and have started to write and record some music. I think it’ll be a while before I make stuff worth sharing, but even getting started with something feels good.
I love hearing that you are getting started on some new things! I hope that when you have some things to share, you will share with us.
When you are ready, please let me know the location of your Music history blog. I want this to be a place where we frequently back link our friends artistic endeavors and other fun projects.
And I understand that you’d want to focus on your own project, but please know that you have a home(page) here if you ever want to write something up.
Thanks, good to know!
This is my blog page:
https://phylogenicrecords.wordpress.com/
It’s kind of a look into the deep roots of transgressive genres like punk, post-punk, and industrial–but it’s also whatever the heck I want to do with it. 🙂
Just got back from vacation and I can’t wait to dig into this.
Welcome back! We missed you!