5 ms·

I have been struggling to produce some form of artistic, or even creative output almost all my life, in different media and contexts, and I have had to learn #1

I have been struggling to produce some form of artistic, or even creative output almost all my life, in different media and contexts, and I have had to learn #14 on my own. Trying hard, and I have thought about this on many occasions, I could not come up with a more essential and fundamental prerequisite to making art. There is so much "art" out there that simply does not have a story to tell. There are so many struggling artists that do not have a story to tell, and they keep wondering why they don't achieve success of any measure. I'm not going to say that realizing this made me insanely successful overnight, but it has given me a direction and hope of ever actually reaching the point at which I can be satisfied with something I have created. However, I think that it is more important than just as a way to make good art. The quote originally reads: "Why must you tell THIS story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it." I would say that this generalizes to: What is the value of what you're doing? This is crucial. A lot of people do things without value, or do not focus on the value and let themselves become sidetracked by the whole ritual of their form. What I mean by "the ritual of their form" is the often sizeable set of gimmicks you feel forced to tack onto whatever you are making. For example, every website now "needs" Oauth and social network support and other junk, which is not crucial, but it's something everyone feels they need to have. This sort of ritualistic dance happens in every form of output, be it when they create a computer program, a business (we need to be agile! be green! support the community!), a new philosophy, a new movie, a new bicycle, a new mathematics theorem, a new noodle recipe. The generalized form does lose its potency, though. Applied literally to music, you'd ask: What is the value of the music you are creating? I think asking What is the story your music tells? is much more accurate. I guess I am trying to say that the word value can be interpreted in different ways, and many of them are not going to get you very far from what you are doing already. For example, when thinking of technology, value is application. So I'd ask: What sort of application can this technology bear? If I were going to add anything to Pixar's list, it would be this: !!!! KEEP A SCRAPBOOK, ASSOCIATE ENTRIES TO THE VALUES (EMOTIONS, THEMES, APPLICATIONS) THEY EVOKE !!!! Yup, all caps, so that you don't scroll past. This was the single thing that boosted my productivity most in the last several years, and it out-classes everything else by very, very far. I currently have two folders under $HOME/Documents, called "creative" and "topics". I first started "topics" where I'd save pages visited, notes, documents, and so on in a directory tree, so for example I have topics/computers/haskell/refactoring/. and topics/electronics/tubes/. and topics/health/bodybuilding/training-plan/. and so on. Later I started noticing that I also visit a lot of creative stuff that I want to keep a track on, which I cannot sort into this rigid system I built under "topics" because it evoked emotions, rather than ideas of practical applications. I guess that this is my Starship & the Canoe (and if you haven't read the book, at least read a summary). The "creative" system came into place a bit after I started trawling Youtube for music I like, and decided to sort it according to emotion. I now have 59 private playlists, with entries like "feeling of optimism and inner peace", "peril / 70s car chase", "hanging at the peak", "hyped", and "pleasant summer sun", many of those have more than 20 entries. Some of the names won't make much of a sense to anyone but me. My "creative" directory contains entries like "beauty", "inspirational", "introversion", "poverty", "trippy", and so on. If there was only one thing they were to teach me during primary and high school, I wish it was how to do this. Sadly, they didn't. As many people, I can't really pinpoint one skill I use every day that school has taught me.

Swizec 14y ago
Nice read. My system for being creative is slightly easier to follow: 1. Do cool things 2. Show them to people And that's pretty much it. However, I do keep a notebook in my pocket at all times to jot down interesting ideas, not so much because I'd ever look at it again, but because it makes me think about it a little bit longer. My value evaluation system is similarly silly - if I still remember the idea a week from now, two weeks from now ... whatever. If I have an idea consistently for a long period of time, then there's probably something there. The next step is to make it and see if anyone else thinks there's something there. Or at least to tell people and ask them if they think there's something there.
- cheatercheater 14y ago
  > Nice read. Thanks, made it into a blog post: http://cheater.posterous.com/art-and-values http://cheater.posterous.com/art-and-values > if I still remember the idea a week from now, two weeks from now ... whatever. If I have an idea consistently for a long period of time, then there's probably something there. Hmm, I think you're losing out a lot by not making an honest effort to work on your ideas. Something insignificant today could be important ten years from now, that's why photographers often have such huuuuuge collections of photos. I'd also venture a guess that sometimes your work is repetitive. If you start recording what you did when then you can notice this and 1. stop repeating yourself 2. start re-using the work that really does need to be repeated But the biggest reason to keep a scrapbook is that quite often the best ideas work like this for me: I have an idea today, two months down the line I get something in my mind and I try to compare it to things already in my scrapbook; turns out it's that idea from two months ago. Then, a year or so down the line I'll revisit it, and come up with a tiny detail that makes the thing complete and ten times better. Ideas are like puzzles, and sometimes you get a new piece every ten years. By not keeping a scrapbook I deprived myself of the ability to solve the puzzles of my life. It was like some Kafkan nightmare where I ran around in circles with no apparent purpose and nothing to show for all my effort.
larve 14y ago
Why worry about value? I make art mostly because I enjoy the process, and don't usually care about the result at all. It's much easier to handle that way, and I pretty much never get block. If I feel tired of what I'm doing, I just resort to doing exercises or copying and analyzing other people's work. I think the point "why must you tell this story" is not about whether you should make art, write that story, draw that picture, but for you to research your inner reason to make this piece. Obviously you tell the story because you want to, this question just helps you make the intention clearer, so that you can structure your work around it in order to bring that essence out. In photography/painting, you would pick a main subject, which can be anything you find interesting, images you see or images you imagine or just abstract work, and then build the image around the reason you find that image interesting. Not about whether the image or the work of art has any inherent value, of course it has because you are making it.

Swizec 14y ago

Nice read. My system for being creative is slightly easier to follow: 1. Do cool things 2. Show them to people And that's pretty much it. However, I do keep a notebook in my pocket at all times to jot down interesting ideas, not so much because I'd ever look at it again, but because it makes me think about it a little bit longer. My value evaluation system is similarly silly - if I still remember the idea a week from now, two weeks from now ... whatever. If I have an idea consistently for a long period of time, then there's probably something there. The next step is to make it and see if anyone else thinks there's something there. Or at least to tell people and ask them if they think there's something there.

cheatercheater 14y ago
> Nice read. Thanks, made it into a blog post: http://cheater.posterous.com/art-and-values http://cheater.posterous.com/art-and-values > if I still remember the idea a week from now, two weeks from now ... whatever. If I have an idea consistently for a long period of time, then there's probably something there. Hmm, I think you're losing out a lot by not making an honest effort to work on your ideas. Something insignificant today could be important ten years from now, that's why photographers often have such huuuuuge collections of photos. I'd also venture a guess that sometimes your work is repetitive. If you start recording what you did when then you can notice this and 1. stop repeating yourself 2. start re-using the work that really does need to be repeated But the biggest reason to keep a scrapbook is that quite often the best ideas work like this for me: I have an idea today, two months down the line I get something in my mind and I try to compare it to things already in my scrapbook; turns out it's that idea from two months ago. Then, a year or so down the line I'll revisit it, and come up with a tiny detail that makes the thing complete and ten times better. Ideas are like puzzles, and sometimes you get a new piece every ten years. By not keeping a scrapbook I deprived myself of the ability to solve the puzzles of my life. It was like some Kafkan nightmare where I ran around in circles with no apparent purpose and nothing to show for all my effort.

larve 14y ago

Why worry about value? I make art mostly because I enjoy the process, and don't usually care about the result at all. It's much easier to handle that way, and I pretty much never get block. If I feel tired of what I'm doing, I just resort to doing exercises or copying and analyzing other people's work. I think the point "why must you tell this story" is not about whether you should make art, write that story, draw that picture, but for you to research your inner reason to make this piece. Obviously you tell the story because you want to, this question just helps you make the intention clearer, so that you can structure your work around it in order to bring that essence out. In photography/painting, you would pick a main subject, which can be anything you find interesting, images you see or images you imagine or just abstract work, and then build the image around the reason you find that image interesting. Not about whether the image or the work of art has any inherent value, of course it has because you are making it.