Accidental Creative

Reading + Listening List

One of the ways we can grow as a community is by sharing some of the thinking and work that is inspiring us. In an effort to be more consistent about this, I’m building a “Bookshelf” section into the next iteration of the AC site so that it can be a resource to those among us looking for things to inspire them.

Until then, here’s what I’m reading and listening to this week:

READING:

The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art

Mark Rothko is arguably one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. This manuscript was believed to have been written around 1940-41, but remained hidden away in a warehouse until just a few years ago. I am not yet finished with the book, but I believe that it’s a great read for anyone wishing to delve into the interplay between artist and work or artist and society and at the very least it challenges the reader to think about the significance of the created work.

HBR: Pixar and Collective Creativity

Ed Catmull discusses how Pixar manages to stay fresh and “on-top” of its industry. Some key learnings include building culture instead of systems, taking risks and responding to variance rather than controlling for it, and the incredible number of individual ideas that go into creating a product (which emphasizes the importance of valuing process + product.)

LISTENING TO:

HBR: Pixar and Collective Creativity

If you’d rather listen than read, Ed Catmull gives a great interview summarizing his article in HBR.

Time Business Podcast: Can Yahoo Fix The Buzz Problem?

Speaking of Faith: Fishing With Mystery

So…let’s share the love. what are you reading/listening to this week?

Got A While To Wait?

Got an e-mail from a Premium subscriber who took things into his own hands when a contest delay got a little out-of-hand. Some of the third choices are remarkable. Thanks, for sharing, David.

The Paradox of Rejection

“Ill hath he chosen his part who seeks to please
The worthless world, - ill hath he chosen his part,
For often must he wear the look of ease
When grief is at his heart;
And often in his hours of happier feeling
With sorrow must his countenance be hung,
And ever his own better thoughts concealing
Must he in stupid Grandeur’s praise be loud,
And to the errors of the ignorant crowd
Assent with lying tongue.”

These words belong to Michelangelo, who in his lifetime faced criticism, rebuke from authorities, moralistic questioning and reprimand from his patrons. It is often tempting to think that the great masters experienced a freedom that many contemporary commercial artists lack, but in reality many of the same pressures have been present in the “create-on-demand” world for centuries. (The difference being, of course, that your client isn’t likely to kill you if you displease them.)

This morning I was reading in Mark Rothko’s The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art and was reflecting on a few instances of rejection that I’ve recently experienced in my work. It can be easy to toss a bit of “self-help-hyper-psycho-babblish” language at these situations, but the reality is that each instance of rejection is akin to a minor earthquake. It takes a few minutes to decide if everything is still intact, if all of the familiar landmarks are still there, etc. All of our perceptions of our work, our value, our identity, etc., are so fragile and easily disturbed and called into question.

Our identity is not determined by our creating, but it is an expression of it. So any rejection of our creating can, if we are not cautious, begin to usurp our sense of purpose and worth. It can be as if our reason for being is in question. The temptation at that point is to (1) disassociate ourselves from the judgment and circle the wagons, (2) discount the judgment as useless and ignorant, or (3) to come out with full guns blazing and defend our work.

The paradox of rejection is that, if treated properly, it can be a tremendous source of growth for artists. In order to do this, however, we must be aware enough to properly respond to the situation and not react out of self-defense. Here are a few questions that help me when I’m tempted to check out of life:

1. What is the kernel of truth in this feedback? It’s important to separate the feedback from the source. Don’t allow baggage over past conflicts to taint what could be very helpful advice.

2. What should I change next time? Are there any specific action steps that could help me better engage my work?

3. Can I move forward with a clean conscience? In other words, am I holding this against the person who’s delivering the feedback or can I be confident that I can work with this person in the future without letting this instance taint our working relationship? Interactions with authorities, (especially dysfunctional ones), can lead to residue and baggage. We need to keep ourselves clean.

In addition to this, I also typically spend a lot of time processing and writing about my learnings from the rejection so that I am certain not to allow it to attach itself in an unhealthy way to my creative process.

So…how do you deal with rejection of your work?

How A Trip To New Orleans Saved My Conceptual Soul

From August 2-11 I was among three hundred and twenty (320) people from Cincinnati who invaded New Orleans. A seven-bus convoy. Our mission was to partner with Habitat For Humanity in its effort to rebuild sections of the city destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

First was the seventeen-hour bus ride. Call it detox, really. It was my chance to escape for a while, gaze out at the passing landscape and simply forget myself. No agenda, no problems to solve (except how to get comfortable enough to sleep on a bus.)

It felt like we were all in something together.

After an overnight bus ride and a day of relative quiet, one of the first things we did in Nola was tour the region and survey the damage. I was shocked by the extent of the remaining devastation. Entire neighborhoods are still in shambles, teetering on the brink of collapse. In spite of hearing reports from the scouting trip, I was floored by what I witnessed.

On day three we began our labor. Two-hundred and eighty of us were charged with doing the Habitat work, and thirty-or-so of us had the opportunity to hang out with kids who had been displaced by the storm. Many of these kids had lost everything and had only recently been able to return to their homes.

Now on to the save-my-conceptual-soul part. I can’t adequately express what it felt like to get out of bed each day with a clear and simple purpose. Fellow ACer Rob Seddon was also on the trip and said that it was like we were “living the way we’re wired to live.” There was no arguing about what we should do, which direction to go, there was no questioning or solving problems, no moving “big rocks” around (unless they were real rocks.) There was the simple hammering and sawing and moving and engaging and loving kids. That was all. It was simple and it was beautiful.

I love concepts and I love working with my mind. I love solving problems. I love the challenge of it. But as July was coming to a close, I had been neck deep in problem-solving mode for a while. I had huge projects underway in multiple areas of life, the re-work of the AC site is still unfinished, and I was prepping for Nola. (Drowning is the most appropriate metaphor.)

This trip was the concrete answer to my conceptual problem.

There is something that happens when we engage others in generosity and simplicity. As I’ve written before, creativity is simultaneously outward-focused and inward-seeking. We act so that we can re-act. In doing so we recover ourselves from a lifetime of “positioning” and “mask-wearing.” When there are no titles, no bonuses to earn and no extrinsic motivations we are free to purely and simply see the world as we uniquely do and to share that with others as we creatively engage. We are free. And as Parker Palmer says, no act is truly creative unless it is born out of freedom.

So this is my encouragement to you: take the opportunity this week to serve. Do something at personal cost for someone else. Forget yourself for a few hours and lose your masks. Creatively engage.

I was recently surfing the web and I came across something on another website that I’d written to our Premium community a few months ago. (Yes…it was strange to be looking for a quote and to find my own…:)

Life is made up of moments and choices. We can choose to do the small things we must do with great care, or we can choose to stay focused on the “big things” and miss everything in the process. It’s the small, step-by-step, creatively and beautifully engaged act that changes us and ultimately changes the world.

Engage creatively today. Go outside of yourself and then…recover yourself.

Preservation Hall

IF you’re in New Orleans and IF you have a few hours to stand in line and IF you want to hear some of the most incredible music you will ever hear, you MUST make the effort to visit Preservation Hall. We had a private show last night. I still have chills.

It beats the “I went to Bourbon Street and only heard John Mellencamp cover band” blues.

New Orleans

So…I’ve been on radio silence for a few weeks. Many of you know that I was on vacation until very recently. This week…

I’m in New Orleans with 312 other crazy people partnering with Habitat for Humanity in building homes for displaced New Orleans residents.

Yesterday we took a tour of the entire region by bus. In spite of images and advance warning, I was not prepared for what I saw. Many parts of the greater New Orleans area are still in devastation. It looks like someone dropped a nuclear bomb (a few days ago.) Entire neighborhoods were flattened and haven’t been touched in three years.

Here are a few random tidbits from the bus tour:

• New Orleans Parish is 185 square miles. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 145 of them were covered with water. Lots of water. Rich and poor alike had their homes completely destroyed.
• The 1.5 million residents of the New Orleans region had less than 24 hours warning to evacuate. When many Houston residents tried to evacuate they went 12 miles in that amount of time.
• There is nothing French about the French Quarter. It was built by the Spanish. Hmm.
• Before Katrina, there were over 3,000 hospital beds in New Orleans Parish. Today there are less than 500.
• Before Katrina, the population of New Orleans was a little over 600,000. After, it’s under 300,000.
• Over 5,000 children were separated from their parents during the Katrina aftermath. The last children were not reunited until March ‘06 - nearly seven months later.
• Until 1805 you couldn’t live in New Orleans unless you were Catholic.
• 320,000,000 trees died in the storm.
• 100,000 homes flooded in the New Orleans metro area.

I’ll be posting more throughout the week…the work is fun but so are the random things I’m capturing…

AC #122 - Lisa Johnson (# 2)

By popular demand, AC #122 features the return of AC favorite Lisa Johnson. Lisa is working on an exciting new project called FreeAgent Formula for those who want to learn how to “break away” and start their own business. Whether it’s a design shop, a free-lance practice or whatever, Lisa has some great advice for how to make it work.