psychology

Thou, the Creator

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I recently heard a question that led me to understand one of the most significant drivers of creativity.

That question was, “What would your seventeen-year-old self think of you now?“

My seventeen-year-old self would be reasonably happy as I had fulfilled many of my youthful dreams, at least partially. I had worked in video games, even if I found it wasn’t for me. I had and continue to be a published writer, even if it’s self-published. I am in a happy relationship, though I have one amicable divorce under my belt. I had done pretty decently.

But that made me realize that many of my dreams were creative dreams, and what had helped me reach them in part was that I had held on to some of my youthful desires to be a given kind of person. I was the writer, the game professional, involved in IT, and so on. I had held on to the dream of being a certain kind of person, even if the hope slept for years.

That’s when I realized a core driver of creativity is identity. When you identify as something, you become that thing – if not in whole in part, if not as a burning hot dream, then a warm reality. Some youthful identities had never left me, and thus I became them, and my further readings on productivity have confirmed that.

When I looked around at successful creatives I knew, it was almost always the same – each person dedicated to being a certain someone. A documentarian who could write with lightning speed scribed books faster than anyone. A creative idolizing people like Kubrik and punk rockers who could always find a new boundary to walk across into wild art. A cosplayer who constantly created as it was simply them.

And me, a person who wanted to be a writer as a kid who just kept writing, an IT geek that did it as he liked it who ended up in Silicon Valley. All that was just me being me.

Identity drives us. It is that which we are and must be, and nothing stops us because it is us. A failure may interrupt us, a crisis may mean a delay, but we surge ever forward because it’s what we do.

Identity keeps us from distraction. When you have a choice between things, your identity helps make the decisions, minimizing distractions. Even when there is chaos and crisis, that identity helps you go around the distractions when you can. Perhaps in crisis, you even find your identity drives you to a solution.

Identity channels our energies.  It is the lens that focuses the light of our adrenaline and power and fear and hope. It tells our energies where to go, and from that, great things can result.

A person who knows “I am this” is powerful as they are something, even if they are not the best form of it – or the best form of it yet.

For you out there, the creative, find your identity, hold to it, act on it. That’s your skeleton key to life, to unlock what you want to do. I am not saying it is easy or without pain – not at all. I am saying it is what will help you make art, and music, and books, and cosplay, and more.

Let me leave you with something that helped me. Write down everything you want to be/think you are – and keep it positive. Out of these, find seven or less – even if you have to drop some that seem little relevant, consolidate others, or even make hard admissions to yourself. Find what speaks to you.

Now ask, if these are who you are and will be . . . what do you do next?

Keep asking that question whenever you need to. Eventually, your seventeen-year-old self may be quite impressed – or you’ll find they already are.

Steven Savage

Politics and Art: Power Gently Resting In The Palm Of Your Hand

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Let’s get this out of the way: Politics definitely belongs in art.

People are inevitably political; we form alliances and tribes, we try to figure out how to reach our goals. We are political with our friends and family, co-workers and enemies, and everyone else. Politics is human, and humans make art, and all art is a statement on the person and the time it is made – politics is always there.

Politics is human, art is human, all art is political.

You cannot remove art from politics, and anyone telling you that you can wants you to obey their politics. They’re not telling you to “take something out” when they say they don’t want politics, they want you to conform to them. They’re liars (which often makes them poor artists)

Attempts to remove politics from art really is an attempt to make art conform to someone else’s politics.

If you attempt to remove politics from art, even sincerely, you flush it of everything that makes it real. It is unemotional. It lacks context. It avoids cause and effect. Not only is it essentially impossible, any attempt to do so makes it boring.

Even if you try to remove art from politics, you will only destroy the art while trying to conform.

Therefore the only thing you can do is embrace the political in art, to take it all the way. Dive into the experience and make good art. Good art stands on its own, speaks for itself, and is true – even if the truth might be hard, or worse indicate your art is bad. At least you know.

We might as well dive deep into politics in our art because it will make good art – or reveal our own flaws.

It is inevitable if we dive into making art sincerely, to embrace ever side of it including politics, that we will surprise ourselves. Art is a process of realization, and as we all know a work inevitably changes as we create it. That surprise is a sign we’re doing it right – as we express things (including politics) we learn about ourselves, our ideas, and what they mean (or that our ideas aren’t so good).

Good art shocks you and surprises you because as you make it you are learning.

If you are not surprised by your art, if it does not lead you to new paths and thoughts, then something is wrong. You’re not creating, you’re just churning things out, you aren’t learning. If your art is exceptionally political, then it’s likely you’re not exploring your ideas.

If your art, especially art that is intensely political, isn’t surprising you then you’re not learning anything.

I find the best way to approach art and politics is to hold your work “lightly.” Don’t grasp it tightly and try to force it into one form, but let it grow and evolve, let new ideas flow into it and lessons flow out of it. By letting your work grow you grow.

Don’t cling to your art much, let it grow, so you grow as well.

Finally, be ready to let your art into the world. Each time you create you grow and expand. Each work created that way will affect people and make them think. From this you’ll learn even more – to make your next work.

Let art have contact with others so they and you can grow to make your next work.

Of course, you may realize that a work created sincerely, openly, evolving and growing could be a very dangerous work indeed. What can you make without giving in to fit current politics, or to fit into your current ego? What dreams can you make that may change the world for the better?

Well, why not find out? Don’t be afraid . . .

. . . but people that should be afraid of what you can create should fear that somewhere out there, someone is making the art that will challenge them.

Steven Savage

The Artist As Art

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Friends and I regularly run movies and videos for each other online, a wonderful tradition it only took a pandemic for us to devise. We recently watched The Horse’s Mouth, a film based on a well-regarded book, starring Alec Guinness as an artist who destroys as much as he creates. At first it seems to be a relatively standard comedy, but as I sat with it, I felt it was more like Spinal Tap and similar movies – a comedy that hits close to reality. The artist Guinness portrays, Gully Jimson, is a a rambling storm of pathologies, who fascinates and repells at the same time – everyone seems to have a radically different opinion of the man.

The Artist As A Loutish Rorschach Blot as you will.

As Serdar, who introduced me to the film, noted, there doesn’t seem to be a market for stories of working artists. We seem to like our films to be about people who are wild or crazy. We may often see them as offensive like Mr. Jimson, but ultimately there’s something about our culture that accepts artists as talented a-holes. In the film, Mr. Jimson at best does a month in jail for threats, but is somehow accepted despite the fact one may question if his art is worth putting up with him.

But when we step back, our lives often contain many workman like artists and creators. We just pay attention to the annoying ones, and as they consume mental space, we forget everyone not being a bipedial emotional disaster. For every musical star posturing in their psychopathic delusions, I can easily think of ten of more talent and less need for treatment. Why do we ignore this?

First, I think that this is part of the Great Man theory that has infected our culture. We want to believe in a rule-breaking Ultratalent who transcends all boundaries to create great art. Certainly encouraging that viewpoint has fueled the rise of many artists and creatives and leaders, as well as the fall that always seems to come later. We create the idea of a Great Man.

Second, we are envious even if we may not admit it. We wish we were that person, who breaks rules and is awarded fame and money and sex and places in a museum. We want to believe it, so we both encourage it in others and feed the media our demands. We create the idea that maybe we can be like that – and should be.

Third, we believe each creator is unique and thus uniquely valuable. It is true everyone is unique, but that doesn’t mean there is superior value in that uniqueness. Because we may assume some ranting business leader is somehow unique, we assume he must be special. Sometime one is merely uniquely annoying. Yet we create the idea of value.

Fourth, we are distracted by spectacle. A posturing performer, an artist leaping atop a table and yelling at a convention, a start-up king burning millions gets attention. We want to enjoy the show, and writers and moviemakers will deliver that. We’ll create an interest in showing our dreams on sreen.

In the end, the reason we get these figures in media is we want them. Sadly, it means we miss out on the fascinating figures who may have not been drug off into rehab or melted down publicy. This is one of the reasons I adore movies and documentaries that go behind the scenes and into the less known – because often there’s far more there than a strutting rooster of a performer.

We get stories of these pathological artists as we created the delusions and the demand.

This is why, ultimately, The Horse’s Mouth fascinates me. This annoying, obsessive man (and a few others as bad as he) is a decent and passionate artist. But people worship him, or want his art, or tolerate him, believing there is something there. But is he worth it?

That’s probably the question, but except for one or two characters, Gully is surrounded by artists who’ve created their own idea of him.

Steven Savage