New Monday #66

Happy New Monday!

This will be the last of this series of me rambling on about creativity. I've not run out of things to write, but I'm bored with it—I get bored quickly, which is both my halo and my cross. Dang, there's a topic to cover: the halo and the cross, or the superpower and the kryptonite. Argh!

Last week, Dan and I had breakfast a few blocks from the Korneff Audio offices, at a great place with terrific food. However, the standout was the waitstaff—two girls in their early 20s, one in college for music business because she wants to produce records, the other an artist that wants to be a tattoo artist. Both were very put together, both smart, well-spoken, simply lovely people.

But neither was really making any progress towards what they wanted. One was making recordings but not putting anything out. The other was painting and drawing, but no steps taken towards finding clients or working in a studio.

What were they waiting for?

What are you waiting for? What am I waiting for? There are, of course, those fear states we all are prone to—fear of failure, fear of success, fear of sucking, imposter syndrome, etc. You all know them.

It occurs to me that perhaps we wait for permission.

Much has been written on how school and society beats creativity out of us as it simultaneously teaches us what we need to know to fit in, so I'm not going to cover that here. Heck, we've all been through it and we know how it works.

One comes out on the other side of that with various degrees of damage and fear, and somehow, the thought, "Can I do this?"—which kids construe as a challenge to themselves and a simple question—turns into "Can I do this?" as asking for permission, from yourself, from the general world around.

Do we learn this from asking permission from our parents to get a cookie, or asking teachers if we can go to the bathroom (how ridiculous is that?), or waiting for the thumbs-up from signs at street crossings before we walk? Has that looking for permission to have a cookie turned into seeking permission to dream and do? Is it just a bad habit?

Two thoughts:

Art Gives You Permission

I look at any piece of creativity—art, music, design, a well-told joke, a great meal, someone dressed flamboyantly—as permission for me to do that same thing, or to at least try.

A huge moment for me was when I was thirteen and listened to The Beatles album Revolver for the first time: the opening song, "Taxman", starts with a count-off and unmusical noises—obvious mistakes that they decided not to clean up. This hit me like a hammer in the head. Permission to screw up, sir? Permission to capitalize on mistakes? The whole of Revolver is permission to do all sorts of things, like have backward guitars and sounds, add Indian instruments and musical elements, to write about drug trips and dead people, to throw lyrics onto a classical string quartet, to add sound effects and yell into the reverb chamber. To stick the drum mics up really close. To compress the crap out of everything. To flange vocals and everything else.

There is the world of recorded music before Revolver, and the world of recorded music after Revolver. It gets insanely interesting after, doesn't it? It's like the world thought, "Wait. We can do THIS???"

Our influences are permission.

Matisse was another knock in the head for me. I was at a museum and noticed that he would simply paint over things that he didn't want in a painting, and he wasn't too careful about it. You could see that he didn't bother to match colors that well, and that there would be lower layers of picture breaking through what was painted over it.

If Matisse didn't care, why should I?

Here's a handy thing. Adopt the attitude that whatever you see or hear or read is permission for you to do the same thing. This is similar to stealing—perhaps it is exactly the same thing, but instead of thinking, "That's so cool," or "How did they do that," think, "I can do that," and then do it.

It's a simple step to take, but for me, that shift in attitude was life changing.

The very lives of a lot of artists are permission. Gaga in a meat dress is permission. The Met Gala is permission. It's all screaming DO WHAT YOU WANT.

David Bowie in 1972 appeared on Top Of The Pops. It was the first incarnation of Ziggy Stardust. He performed "Starman".

Here's the moment at the beginning of the second verse when he changed the world.

Thousands of kids in England saw this alien freak point to them and sing, "I had to phone someone so I picked on you." And loads of them took it personally as permission. To fly the freak flag or be gay or get into rock bands or do what you want.

Take it all in as permission.

You Don't Need Permission

I didn't need permission from anyone to play and be creative when I was a kid. I didn't have to ask, "Can I make a star cruiser out of Lego?" Kids don't need permission to paint and do weird things to dolls and stuffed animals, to run around the yard pretending to be pirates. They just do these things. Until they get to school and out in the world and this freedom is beaten out of them. Like it was beaten to some degree out of all of us. I can remember specific moments where specific adults almost literally put the clamps down and pulled the fences up.

One doesn't need to ask the world if you can do something or not. You can simply do it, and fuck 'em and feed 'em butter beans if the world doesn't like it. You have a birthright to be creative and do your own thing, to steal ideas and influence, to experiment and screw up, to discover happy accidents. All that stuff.

I always want to give you practical things to do. So do this: put stuff out for the world to see.

This is what's great about the times we're in and social media—it's maybe the only thing good about social media. There is a place with an audience lurking about, and you can put stuff in front of them, and you don't have to ask a teacher if you can hang it in the hall, or a gallery if you can hang it on the wall, or a radio station if they'll play your single, or a network if they can premiere your movie. You can simply do all these things now. The audience might be a bit spotty, but you sure don't need permission.

Look at all the crap out in social media, all the unoriginal copycat junk. Tons of it. None of those people asked for permission. Sometimes I wish they would and someone would say, "No!" but that would be as bad as that art teacher who complained that, "DeLalio, all you ever draw is ships," while totally missing that I was free-handing them with vanishing point perspectives, drawing all the sails and rigging out of my head without a reference. At twelve.

Put stuff out. The more you do it, the more you cement the concept that you don't need permission. You build the permission by doing it. You figure out you can do what you want.

So, take permission from the world at large. Give yourself permission by doing the thing you want to do. For what it's worth, you have my permission.

I hope those of you who already know this weren't bored. Next week is something new.

For those of you who haven't thought of this, treat this episode as permission!

Thanks to all of you who have been writing in.

Warm regards,

Luke