The most precious commodity we have as artists is our ability to see things differently. The artist looks at a pile of junk hundreds of others have absent-mindedly walked around on their morning commute and finds within it whole universes. The artist hears the same middle-of-the-road slogans we all bathe in all day every day and finds deep within them or around them or because of them new and amazing discoveries about what it means to be human.
In short, to be an artist of importance, you need a mind of your own and in order to cultivate a mind of your own it is essential that you disconnect from the prevailing narratives which grow narrower and less remarkable every day.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news kids but as far as I can tell we are living through one of the swiftest and most efficient periods of cultural and intellectual closing ever experienced in modern human history. If the Renaissance was a period of extended and unprecedented opening the early 21st Century is most certainly the opposite. In fact, it's difficult to identify even one controlling force in the construction and organization of our modern lives which does not in ways sometimes subtle and sometimes clumsy nudge our collective unconscious toward greater predictability and mediocrity.
If you care about your work, about the culture at large and about managing to carve out a satisfying existence in the Age of the Algorithm, you have no choice but to consciously choose everything and anything which might support your quirky, unpredictable, independent and often inconvenient way of looking at the world.
How do you do this?
Prioritize any input yet untouched by the Algorithms.
What do I mean by this? Whatever you feed your mind will ultimately nudge your way of thinking in this or that direction.
Here are some examples of choices you may find yourself making. Get in the habit of asking yourself how each potential use or your precious time came into your consciousness. Chances are, if mass media played a role in it at all, it will lack much in the way of nourishment for a mind that finds inspiration in the most unexpected places.
I'm not saying avoid mass media entirely. But I am saying a diet consisting of nothing but mass marketed culture will do much to mold you (slowly over the years) into an easy uncritical consumer of whatever it is the machine would prefer you consume. And, let's face it, when you accept such a bland and safe role for yourself the Algorithms and the corporations who control them will reward you immediately and handsomely. And your rewards will be widely shared via social media so as to encourage others to follow in your footsteps. Because of course, corporations are not in the business of ensuring the survival and thriving of an idiosyncratic unpredictable and less efficient culture. No, no, no. Unpredictability and inefficiency are fast becoming dirty words in the lexicon of our brave new world.
SHAKE UP YOUR WAY OF SEEING
vs.
BUY WHATEVER IT IS THEY'RE SELLING
Read a book you never heard of.
[Read a book that everyone is reading.]
Organize your living space to satisfy your most impractical desires.
[Organize your living space according to a map you found in a book by some expert.]
Try not to let go of friendships unless the pain is unbearable. Navigating the terrain will expand your mind.
[Only remain in touch with people whose support you can count on and predict.]
Take a chance on a creative project you can't quite explain in terms of your own motivation for doing it.
[Only produce work that fits neatly into your idea of how your career should be interpreted.]
Lean in to at least one pain-in-the-ass inconvenient task each week.
[Hire people to shield you from having to ever confront another unpleasant task.]
The next time you read something online that inspires a new idea, keep it to yourself. Write it down in a notebook.
[Offer most of your original responses to social media posts as posts to social media, immediately shared with the world.]
Solicit feedback on your work from people who are in no way experts on the work you do.
[Confirm that the parameters of each new work of yours can easily be traced to longstanding traditions in your field.]
So, I'm curious. Does this resonate with any of you? And if so, are there more pairs of Do's and Don'ts you'd add to this list?
