The Spirit That Animates the Machine

Creative people have a great advantage and a great problem. The great thing is that they have Spirit. The problem is they tend not to have Machines (systems, processes of delivery, etc.). What you get is a lot of great ideas that never get done. Great art created but never seen. Amazing investments in the soul of a culture that goes unnoticed.

Administrative people have a great advantage and a great problem. They have great Machines. The problem is they tend to not have much Spirit. They miss the reasons why the Machine was created. What you get is great information that doesn't mean anything. A better widget that no one wants to use. The minutia of timelines, deadlines and deliverables that doesn't get anything done that needs to get done.

If you lean towards more Spirit partner with someone that makes Machines. If you are someone that makes Machines partner with someone that has great Spirit.

It's amazing to see what happens when the Spirit animates the Machines.

Mind Space

So this is part 2 of a 3 part thought on creativity. To be honest, this is the one that I probably have the most trouble with. Something you should know about me is that I am part Artist and part Administrator. This is a paradox I am still struggling to come to grips with. That said, part of my problem in this area is that I need a system to capture ideas and sort them and be able to come back to them later. Unfortunately I haven't worked it out completely. But one thing that has really worked for me is a journal devoted completely to artistic ideas and whimsy.

A journal is a great thing. It becomes the bucket that holds all the creative thoughts that ooze out of the cosmos of the mind into one place. I highly recommend the black and white composition books. The important thing is that they have a string binding and not glue. I will be very adamant about this. The string is important.

So how do you capture the ideas once you have them?

The Sketch

There are some amazing works of art. Sculptures, paintings, drawings, architecture. We see the final work (although I have heard it said that art is never finished just abandoned) and rarely think about the "pre" work. The sketches. The innumerable variations and permutations tried out on napkins, scratch pieces of paper and post-its.

These works didn't just happen. There are some artists, the Impressionists come to mind, that based their art around capturing the moment. But even they did prep work.

So what?

Make sure you do the work before the work. That song that you just wrote that flowed out like it was written in the heavens. It's not finished. That spoken word piece needs one more word tweaked. That script is missing something a character, a conflict, one great line.

Don't despair. That's the process. A series of sketches that lead to the final execution of the piece. And then you can finally abandon it.