I remember being five and finding one of my older brother’s junior high school notebooks. On the cover, he had scrawled “David Bowie Rules.”
I didn’t know who David Bowie was, but I wanted to know what his rules were. I felt stupid asking my brother about this.
I decided to create my own version of David Bowie’s Rules and keep them to myself. I don’t really remember thinking too much at all about what to base the rules on. I just wrote. So I listed them in my own notebook. I only got two rules down:
1. Snack at 3:00
2. Gandalf can’t go in the living room.
The Rules were recovered recently as I was ordered by my Mother to sort through my boxes of collected nonsense in the attic of their home. Aside from a fond remembrance of Gandalf, our dog from 1982-1993, I was moved at how I had interpreted my brother’s words.
These “Rules” are an example of exactly what we strive for in approaching our work: Naivety.
This ability to see the world as a child is a gift that few possess as an adult. Every year we get older and creatively dumber. Our senses become attuned to our surroundings in such a way that we literally sleepwalk through our days. Everything is routine. Our senses get numbed. It is why we stare so long at the shocking (a horrible accident) or the never before seen (foreign travel). When we come upon these rare instances, we are briefly children again, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar. Never will our reactions to this instances be so pure and unfiltered.
It is not just naivety we should strive for, but also a sense of creative urgency.
Jelly Helm recently brought to my attention the idea of creative “urgency.” He pointed me to a film as an example, Jonathan Demme’s recent documentary, “Heart of Gold.” Neil Young gets a brain aneurysm and schedules a surgery to save his life, Before the procedure he writes and records an album, “Prairie Wind,”. The urgency he had at that moment comes through in the lyrics. You could sense a man giving away the last bit of himself creatively.
Think about other instances of beautiful clarity in one’s last words throughout history. Revolutionary War Spy Nathan Hale, who before being hanged by the British declared, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Or War of 1812 hero Captain James Lawrence’s “Don’t give up the ship.” And maybe said best, Karl Marx’s final comment was, “Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”
Hopefully no one reading this is in such dire straits. And most likely none of you is a very young child. We can only hope to mimic these points; to imagine ourselves perceiving something for the first time, or facing the possibility of our last voice.
Urgency and naivety are keys to connecting your work with your audience. Every audience is varied, but I think these both touch upon something that we all share. We are all human. On some level we respond and connect to the purity that flows from these two points. We all have observed the wonder of a child seeing something for the first time, or feel the gravity of ones situation as they face illness or death.
It is that naivety and urgency which pushes us towards creative clarity.
No bullshit. Just passion and a clear idea.
I've got creativity to spare. Too many ideas and not enough time or the skill to put all of them into action... (than again maybe that's a good thing)...The idea of losing that? is terrifying.
On Jun.04.2006 at 02:32 PM