Courage in Creativity

Displaying creativity is about bearing yourself in public. So many creative people are shy of showing their talent. Their shyness isn’t irrational. The fact is that when you create something and put it out into the world you will get criticism. It’s unavoidable.

That criticism might not be voiced. It might be that you play a song for a group of friends and one or two of them are just thinking you are awful but still politely smiling. When you put such a performance out into the wider public arena, you better believe you’re going to hear some of that negativity.

That means that being a creative requires courage. In effect, you’re saying ‘this is what I have made or what I can do, this is what I think is beautiful.’ There will always be those who don’t agree with you.

I guess what I want to say is that if you are a creative person then be bold, don’t be afraid to be wrong or get criticised. Do your best work, be honest and be proud of yourself for trying and for showing others what you have done.

Whether you are a creative person or not, you will find yourself on the other side at some point, consuming someone else’s work. Bear in mind how hard it can be for that person to show you what they are showing you. Be kind, respect what that took. Don’t be a git. It’s not funny or clever, it’s just an admission of small-mindedness.

Ultimately, we all want to live in a beautiful world and the way it gets more beautiful is by the collective efforts of creative people. It’s in all our interests to encourage each other. Call me naive but there’s no way around that fact. Think about it.

…but I digress.

The Perfectionist's Plight

I am a perfectionist. It might amuse some people I know to hear me say that because I can be quite untidy, often have a day or two of beard growth and make little or no attempt to style my hair! I promise you, however, I am a perfectionist.

Being a perfectionist is a curse. It makes me hugely unproductive. In everything I do I want to impress; I want to do things to 100% of my ability. This all sounds great; high standards are never bad. The problem is that life is not perfect. There are ever decreasing returns on how much time and effort will pay off. Getting from 95% to 100% of what I am capable of demands exponentially more time and energy than getting from 80% to 95%.

Even worse than this is the fact that in our universe of imperfection, 100% is actually unattainable. Time constraints, tiredness, personal tastes of clients, a lack of proficiency et cetera can get in the way. This leads me to sometimes taking an unfathomably long time to complete tasks. This frustrates family, friends and employers alike. It also infuriates me.

I don't want to tell anyone to lower their standards. For every perfectionist reading this with a nodding head there will be someone who happily accepts slap-dash. They probably tell themselves they are the ones that 'get things done.' In reality, too often people just don't care about their work. Those people are the ones that create the stupefying situations in life where a product or service is breathtakingly bad. Those people make my head hurt.

Of course, the world needs those people who get things done well. They are the ones that end up in suits in boardrooms. They meet deadlines. They're also the ones that understand the perfectionist's plight the least. They could never design a beautiful product or write a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. They are the agents who call the writers and tell them they need to get a move on! It takes all kinds…

Most people are somewhere in the middle. They care about their work – they want to do well – but in the end they know that things need to get done and they draw a line at a sensible point and finish the task.

I need to learn that 95% is good enough and that the more work I can do to 95% of my ability the better that 95% will look. As one improves, that 95% will almost certainly become better in absolute terms than what once would have represented 100%. Keep working, keep improving. Stop worrying, procrastinating and nitpicking.

…but I digress.

Static

There are more people alive now than there has been throughout the history of the human race in total. We saturate our planet. Geographers will tell you that if we were to spread out evenly we’d each have 47¾㎢ to live in. But we don’t spread out. We clump together and live packed into apartment blocks that tower upward like sequoia trees in asphalt jungles. Perhaps this way of living exacerbates the problem I want to talk about, but the fact is there is just a heck of a lot of people around these days.

When you combine the sheer volume of human life with the globalisation of thought and culture that cinema, satellite television and the internet have brought, you get a real cultural problem. I’m going to call it ‘static’.

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In our great cities, people are everywhere.

I visited London recently and walked along the South Bank from The Shard to Westminster as the sun set. As I walked by the Globe Theatre a notion that had been forming in my mind crystallised as I thought of Shakespeare and the famous names of old; there’s so many people now in this place that potential great ones are lost in the background noise.

Where are the original thinkers? The great artists? The luminaries? I thought of Dick Whittington setting off for the city where the streets are paved with gold and asked if there was really any opportunity in this place any longer. Does anyone succeed in our time without a huge slopping spoonful of good luck? By extension, do great people stack shelves whilst unremarkable celebrities dominate our culture?

When Shakespeare came to London the population of the city was a little over 100,000. Think of how much more intimate that would have made the place. How much more likely the great people of the age would have bumped into each other. In 2013, London is infested with 8 to 15 million people depending on how you define it. I feel jealous of those that got to live in a time when they shared the earth with so many fewer people.

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The London of today is vast compared to that of Shakespeare's day

This vastness of connected humanity means it takes exponentially more effort, money, luck to rise above the static. It’s not enough any more to write a nice song, you have to strip naked and swing on a wrecking ball to get airplay. It’s not enough to paint a beautiful landscape to be a famed artist, you have to set dead animals in formaldehyde or dress like an insane Arnold J Rimmer. You can’t write a great book and have it published and wait for the success you deserve, you must win a prize to gain media attention so your book stands above the others. It goes on and on.

I find myself wondering would Shakespeare have been famous in 2014? Would we even have noticed his talent? Perhaps with such an astonishing talent the question breaks down, but would Beethoven have been celebrated above Lady Gaga or would he have had to create some ‘look’ to get noticed? In an age of X-Factor and Britain’s Got ‘Talent’, would he have been relegated to the classical music charts whilst our inane culture bought the latest nobody’s single in the hundreds of thousands?

I can’t help feeling the age of the great individuals has passed. Now, great scientific advances come from institutions, not individuals. Committees of civic planners shape our cities rather than the great philanthropists of yesteryear. Perhaps nothing has fundamentally changed, but the scale of our numbers now seems to have removed the romanticism, lengthened the odds for individuals and drained our world of personality.

…but I digress.