studio non troppo : music : facilitation

In the work of creating, there is a difference between reaching and pushing.

Being an artist seems to require doing your work without waiting for the right mood, for inspiration, for perfect circumstances. Also, it seems that artists don’t know exactly what they are working towards. Even if there is a clear image of a desired end creation, the way to get there isn’t clear. If it were otherwise, if everything were clear, it wouldn’t be an artist’s way; it would be an algorithm.

For an artist, even if the way seems clear, the traveling turns out differently. It is unclear, or it leads somewhere else, or both.

Even if the goal is ineffable, the artist seems to require a lean, a tilt. Dissatisfaction is source as well as sink.

But if I don’t find myself writing in spite of poor mood, or absent inspiration, or adverse circumstances, and am therefore not now a writer; if I am not drawing or painting, and am not now that sort of artist; if I am not making music and am not now a musician–nevertheless, in doing my work of each day, I am now Artist.

First, I would like my spirit to be restored, so I can regroup, find new inspiration, and find new ways to create.

My employer would like me to do more work first, in the hope that additional effort will improve the work environment soon.

A common enough impasse, it scatters your force.

With fine ingredients, it can be easy to make delicious food. Starting with good parmesan, butter, and garlic, for example, it is hard to go wrong. With poor quality ingredients, on the other hand, a cook will have to spend a lot of effort to conceal their shortcomings.

With good tools, a construction or repair project can be made as easy as possible to complete. Sometimes, “as easy as possible” might mean just barely possible. With poorly made tools or the wrong tools, the project may well drift from “barely possible” to “not quite possible” (or to “Now there are more problems.”) A worker will have to focus creativity on overcoming the limitations of the tools rather than attending to the work to be done.

Photo: PhotoDu.de

Yesterday, I saw a relatively new iPhone app called App Incubator, with which anyone can send in ideas for a new iPhone app. A development team will review the ideas and decide whether to build the application. If they build it and get it into the Apple app store as a paid application, the person who sent in the idea will get a percentage of the revenues.

I haven’t read any of the fine print, but I did start wondering about all the usual questions surrounding new “intellectual property” in the form of ideas: on one hand, it’s easy to feel protective, even secretive, out of fear that someone else will profit from “our” ideas; on the other hand, without sharing ideas, it’s a pretty sure thing that nothing will happen. A Golem-like reluctance to exchange ideas puts too much friction into the innovation process, interest wanes, and development stops.

Even though I’m versed in the issues on an intellectual level, I was surprised to discover how anxious this new application made me feel. It focused a lens on my self-perception: I think of myself as one who can come up with lots and lots of new ideas, and I would welcome rewards in return. I did immediately find myself generating many potential iPhone app ideas, even in my sleep (I woke up with my head full). But I also felt a possessiveness, a hesitation to give these ideas away too readily, even though any idea without its realization wouldn’t generate any financial compensation, anyway.

Everyone comes up with ideas. But the people whose minds seem optimized for the generation of new ideas are usually not the people who find it easy to push through the realization of any one, given idea. Idea generators are nomadic, and idea “realizers” are agricultural by temperament. App Incubator is one model for a partnership between the two types.

Certainly, other models are possible, but any ideas for alternatives will themselves need to be realized. Whether it’s called “bootstrapping,” “it takes two to tango,” “complexity theory,” or “mutual arising,” all beginnings are difficult.

Photo: woodleywonderworks

It’s important to have a good relationship with failing.

Since failing is not an objective, external fact, but rather an interpretation we make, it turns out there is an art to failing. And like any art, doing it well takes practice.

Let’s say you’ve got a great idea. It’s a really great idea, and you fully expect it to be your personal jackpot.

Your idea is this: you’re going to reveal to the world your comprehensive list of songs that plants like.

You’ve discovered that your Meyer lemon tree likes a particular Puccini aria, but only on weekdays. On weekends, the lemon prefers certain jazz standards, like “Stormy Weather.”

You can get your tulips to do yoga by whistling Sousa marches to them.

And so on.

Now imagine spending years compiling your trade secret knowledge into an encyclopedia of plant song.

You hire web designers and marketing folks. At last, after five years of development and tweaking, the big day arrives, and you launch your product. Unfortunately, no one wants it. One person buys it, but he uses it as a doorstop.

The objective event of no one buying your product is not, in itself, a terrible thing. What is bad is the feeling of disappointment you have. After putting in so much effort, this experience of failure is bound to be hard to shake off. You might even feel like taking it out on your plants.

Now compare that scenario to this one. Same idea, different approach to realizing it:

Instead of spending years (and lots of money) putting a plant song book together, you make a list of “The Top Seven Songs Adored by Jade Plants” (informed by your copious research, of course), and within a few days, you put it online for anyone to see. You don’t charge a cent for it, but you do have a friend who knows a little bit about web design put up a form so visitors can post their comments. Then you tell all your friends about your new site.

Imagine all the things that could happen.

If your friends visit the site, but none of them even comment (or if they only leave comments such as “just stop. please.”) then you have learned something.

If  one of the commenters asks whether you need to have formal voice training to sing to your plants, and the next comment is “Yeah, I was wondering that, too. Will I hurt my voice if I sing to my plants too loud?” then you have learned something else. It might be time to find a voice teacher you can partner up with.

In fancy engineering contexts, it’s called rapid prototyping.

I like calling it “fail as quickly as possible.” Get something out there, learn from what works and what doesn’t, try the next thing. Note that this “proactive failing” really only makes sense if you are doing something. The various ways of not acting, such as procrastinating, don’t provide the same benefits.

Try writing a comment to this post, even if you’ve never commented on a blog before. Share your insights about failing in productive ways. I look forward to reading them!

Photo: Michael Dunn!

Success results from a good mix of will and sensitivity.

Edison had the will to invent (from the Latin invenire, meaning “to find”) the incandescent lightbulb. Although thousands of his experiments failed to result in a working lightbulb, he persevered. His will helped him overcome setbacks and non-starters.

Edison also had the sensitivity to learn from setbacks, to adjust what he was trying, rather than repeat the same experiment over and over again.

If you have the will to express yourself, be glad that you possess such an elemental force. You would have little chance of making it through the bracken and bog of false starts and failures along the way to expression if you didn’t have this will.

But to the extent you want to communicate and not just express, untempered will does not work, at least not for a project of any complexity.

This is because you have to be sensitive to the other participants, the other stakeholders. If you were Edison, this sensitivity took the form of noticing how nature worked and how it didn’t work. Some materials simply didn’t work as filaments, and pointing a finger and insisting wouldn’t have made any difference. His goal was a kind of communication: he wanted to play the inventing game together with nature.

If you have an idea you want to get out there, you have the best chances for success if you have the will to express you idea and the sensitivity to observe how other people respond to it. If other people reject your idea and you are listening to them, you are already communicating. Your lightbulb will work eventually.

Here are two resources for you. Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles is a call to arms (or pens, really), providing practical insights to help you employ the will necessary to create.

John Wiley Spiers’ How Small Business Trades Worldwide: Your Guide to Starting or Expanding a Small Business International Trade Company NOW is a primer for starting an import/export business, but more importantly, it lays out a compelling argument why cultivating your sensitivity to other stakeholders (customers, in this case) is the perfect navigational aid.

Please share your feedback and contributions in the comments. What resources have benefited you?