WHY PEOPLE MAKE STUFF

Most of the creative people I know and with whom I like to spend my time pursue their work without assignments. They create because they don’t have a choice. Nobody’s forcing them. They have no choice, because to ignore the impetus pushing them to create is to leave a relentless bathroom faucet dripping in the nighttime of their mind.  Musicians know there’s always another another guitar lick to get into their fingers, another set of harmonies to explore. Photographers want to see what happens when they frame their world in a particular way. Poets pursue the right words in the right order to present something that evokes an image as much as it engenders a feeling.

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THE INFLUENCING MACHINE

Most of the time we don’t seek out fresh voices because fresh voices take work to take in. Even old fresh voices: most people these days aren’t going to stream an great chestnut from the French New Wave. More to the point, we are all inundated by information and increasingly complicated lives. Be honest: ordinary things are endlessly complex and often exhausting in the modern world.The inertia to shed previous skins and try something new holds the vast majority of us locked in habituated place. There’s a reason so much of the country eats at McDonalds as frequently as they do.

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PAINTING THE WALLS

In a time when we’re all overwhelmed by media from carefully managed corporate committees, or ceaseless chatter from social media, a small painting on a piece of a former teenager’s bedroom wall is enough to make us stop and smile and notice how it, too, has influence—perhaps even more lasting influence than any disposable electronic signal that may tempt us for ten irrelevant seconds.

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CONVERGENCE

Convergence suggests that many seemingly novel ideas are probably similar to solutions developed for entirely difference circumstances. What works here….will probably work there, too. That’s a profound insight if you spend your life doing creative work. Rather than re-invent the wheel, consider how that well proven device might enable you to discover someplace entirely uncharted.

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