Last month, Walk the Pod discussed curiosity. What is it, what does it mean, what are the rules of this energising feeling?
Follow your curiosity, absolutely, in your art. Your curious instincts drive you to make the art you want to see in the world. If we create out of ambition, not curiosity, are we even making art at all? asks creator and actor Abigail Thorn.
Thorn shot to success with her YouTube channel, PhilosophyTube, where she ‘gives away her philosophy degree, for free.’ She sticks to her rules when making videos: creating out of curiosity, not ambition. Her videos must follow her creative vision. And this keeps her on track.
Thorn’s curiosity must have tempted her down non philosophy tracks. I’ve no doubt she wondered if she could squeeze in a video about history, or chemistry, along the way. But creative restriction is essential. And for that reason, not putting yourself on too tight a schedule, so that you can go off down a creative cul de sac or two, producing to your brief later, is crucial.
I’ve no doubt, too, that Thorn wanted to produce videos that would make her channel as popular as possible. Creators growing their empire generally want more views, likes, subscriptions and everything that goes along with it. But the restriction that she must make videos which follow curiosity, not ambition, prevented her from becoming a one woman content mill.
Thorn’s refusal to make anything which does not flow from her curiosity, means she’s made fewer videos than she could have. And yet her work is uniquely hers. It’s all on her philosophy theme, it hangs together beautifully. And presumably, when the curiosity bug bites, and it’s not a philosophical calling, she follows that curiosity anyway, creating general knowledge which can spark new ideas on philosophy later.
And we must follow our curiosity down the occasional cul de sac. Having a huge amount of general material in our heads to combine in interesting ways with what we have to be creative with today. Yes! Claude.ai can be creative for you. But whatever Claude comes up with must be allowed to flow through your brain, because otherwise it’s just a generically creative idea, not one that is uniquely yours.
Ideas man James Webb Young extolled the virtues of gathering a huge amount of general material, in order to have things to connect with when doing creative work. The creative process he wrote in the 1940’s can be followed successfully today. Creativity is a process, not a Goddess given epiphany. A creative dilemma can be worked through just like a mathematical dilemma. It’s not as straight forward, but it can be done.
In trying to work out how it’s done, Webb used the analogy of the sudden appearance of islands in the South Seas. They seemed to appear out of nowhere, but scientists know it is the work of countless, unseen coral builders, working below the surface of the sea, that cause the island to emerge.
Just like the coral builders, your mind’s ability to build general materials to the point where new ideas spring forth is one of the most incredible phenomena of being a human in the world.
So, going off down curiosity tangents when they are not directly related to the art we’re trying to make today is encouraged. Without a vast amount of general material, our attempts to connect today’s problem in new ways will fail. Where we only have the material directly in front of us to work with, we are only going to come up with obvious solution. But if we read widely, and make connections between what’s in the general body of knowledge we have in our heads and the material we have to work with for this project, today, we will come up with something unique, interesting, and in our voice.
But it can’t be forced. Webb talks about working like a curious octopus. Exploring the material with the ‘tentacles of the mind’ - just gently rotating the material, bringing it close to other things we have in our head, seeing what fits, what sparks new ideas. If nothing comes straight away, go for a walk. And there, 45 minutes later, an idea! Suddenly, we are off and running.
The more creative you are, the more important it becomes to place restrictions on what you’re going to make. Not to create a sales niche, but for the art to be enjoyable, and to have integrity.
The White Stripes restrict themselves using the number, 3. Three instruments, three colours. Everything was vocals, drums and guitar, or vocals, piano, drums. “The whole point of the White Stripes is the liberation of limiting yourself,” Jack White told Rolling Stone. “Too much opportunity kills creativity.”
Once restrictions are in place, then exploring a project by trusting your curiosity becomes an absolute pleasure. The structure of the form keeps the thing on track; the restrictions prevent you from succumbing to decision paralysis. You have three brushes, three colours, two hours, now, what are you going to paint?
The final part of the puzzle, is to return to your project, over and over again. Don’t push yourself until you have no juice left. Ernest Hemingway regularly stopped writing in the middle of a sentence, on the basis that he knew where the story was going next. ‘Stop,’ he counselled, ‘When you still have your juice.’
The photographer Andrew Zuckerman told us that curiosity and rigour are the secret to creativity. But rigour must not be applied to the point at which the artist falls over. You are the only person who can get your art finished. You are the only person your family has, who is you. Get back to it, every day. Rigour does not mean grinding on, refusing to rest properly.
Rigour perhaps means, working out what the parameters of a particular project are. Working out what not to do. Working out, perhaps, the space between the notes. Taking away, to an equal extent that we add in. Pursuing a vision, resting along the way, until it is done.
I'd say too, just start, don't wait until the time is right. Even if abandoned, starting gives you something to pick up.