Unlocking CREATIVITY in the 21 st Century David Priilaid James Dean
The Past Rock is dead Creativity has dried up
Electric guitar sales have plummeted. Drop of 33%: 1.5 million sold annually to just over 1 million. Gibson filed for bankruptcy. Fender are in debt.
If you look outside the computer and the internet, there has been 40 years of stagnation. The Big Stagnation
ROCK n ROLL AS INSIGHT
ROCK AS ART IS REPLETE 2016 2012
The Present Can the entirety of Art & Music offer insights to a world struggling to understand what it is to be really creative?
Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin... And there's no tellin' who that it's namin For the loser now will be later to win For the times they are a-changing
ARTISTIC DISCIPLINES THE ARTISTIC MINDSET AND DISCIPLINES Serendipity Perspective Big Ideas Practice Proactivity Small Ideas ARTISTIC MINDSET Love Resilience Suffering
Mindset 1: EXILED CHILD
Mindset 1 continued: MADNESS & ADDICTION Neil Young: always composed on dope. Paul McCartney: The more crises you have, the more material you have. Bill Evans: the longest suicide ever.
Mindset 2: GRIT rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. J.K. ROWLING
Leonard Cohen. I never had the sense that I was standing in front of a buffet table with a multitude of choices. I felt I was operating in more what Yeats used to say was the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. I just pick it together. I don't work with a sense of great abundance." Song writing involves persistence, sweat and also a certain kind of grace and illumination. (2012)
Mindset 3: PASSION 5. Vocation 4. Creativity Not Work 3. Intelligence @ work Hierarchy of Work 2. Competence 1. Diligence
Richard Ford. If they say I d like to try my hand at writing, yes I would say give it a go. If they had that sort of tentativeness about it, I would say sure, it s a victimless crime, you know, go ahead. If someone else said: What I want to do more than anything else in the world is I want to be a novelist, I would say, well why don t you try talk yourself out of it first, because you re probably going to fail." Then if the person says to me, ok I ve done all that, I ve listened to all that you say, I ve tried to talk myself out of it, but I really can t do it then I would say: Go with God young man, go with God. (2012)
Discipline 1: PROACTIVITY Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Sting My dad and I had the same hands. I hadn t really noticed that until he was on his deathbed, and I mentioned it. And he said, You used your hands better than I did. My dad was a milkman. And I realised that was probably the first compliment he d ever paid me, and that was kind of devastating.
Discipline 2: PRACTICE
Bob Seger Glen Frey: Bob was the first guy who wrote his own songs and recorded them that I ever met. He said, you know, if you want to make it you have to write your own songs. And I said, well, what if they re bad? And he said, well they re going to be bad; so just keep writing and eventually you ll write a good song.
Discipline 3: PERSPECTIVE
Melody Maker, 1972: Why aren t you wearing your girl s dress today? David Bowie: Oh dear. You must understand that it s not a woman s dress. It s a man s dress.
Discipline 4: THE MUSE Elvis Costello I don t want to sound spiritual but I try to make an antenna out of myself, a lightning rod out of myself, so that whatever is out there can come in. It happens in different places, in hotels in the car, when somebody else is driving.
Ray Davies: It s the old Jimmy Webb theory: apparently when he wrote Up, Up and Away and the hits for the 5th Dimension group, he lived in a car and had a very transient lifestyle. According to folklore he had all the success, bought a fantastic house, put a studio in it and then couldn t write.
Paul Simon on Sounds of Silence I was really too young to know that there are times when - I don t want to sound silly - but when you are plugged into the universe and all of a sudden something comes through you, and it s yours but it isn t yours. It comes out and you don t know where it comes from.. I don t know why or how I wrote that song when I was 21 or 22 years old. It was certainly beyond me.
THE 3-FOLD CREATIVE PROCESS Santa Fe Institute s Brian Arthur STEP 1: ACUTE OBSERVATION. Stop information downloading. Start listening. Open mind. Suspend inner criticism The Artist s Way by Julia Cameron. Keep a diary of negative selfcriticisms. James Dean
THE 3-FOLD CREATIVE PROCESS Santa Fe Institute s Brian Arthur STEP 2 Withdrawal Reflection Open Heart Takes time. An act of retreat. Still water Attention & Inattention. Zen. Below a great stirring. Prayer, meditation, contemplation James Dean
THE 3-FOLD CREATIVE PROCESS Santa Fe Institute s Brian Arthur STEP 3 Act immediately Let Go! No holding back. No deliberating. David Crosby: I didn t have control over what comes out of my pen.
ARTISTIC DISCIPLINES BOOK OVERVIEW: THE ARTISTIC MINDSET & DISCIPLINES Inspiration & Still Water The Download Big Ideas Ceiling of ideas without the download Perspective Good Art Practice Moderate Art Moderate Art Proactivity Low Art Low Art Little or No Art ARTISTIC MINDSET Artistic Passion Artistic Grit Recovery & Betrayal of the Exiled Child Depression Madness & Addiction
The Future
Control of of technology 2. STEM STEAM + Creatives Incorporated 4. 1. Cambridge Analytica Dressed up and Nowhere to go 3. Treatment of People
Control of technology 2. Corporates and State strive towards STEM Big IT is collared Artistic mindset ignored $$$ = WHAT STEAM High IT Control people centred. Arts incorporated into business practice Creatives understood and brought into the fold ASK WHY? (not WHAT) 4. World run by algorithms. Facebook nudges politics IT runs rampant Creatives not understood or incorporated Creatives empowered but disaffected Non-creatives brainwashed by IT Corporates clueless 1. 3. WHAT = $$$ Treatment of People
Control of technology 2. 4. 1. SET THE TABLE Authenticity & Grit Vocation & Passion & Practice Intuition + Depression Descartes Error (Why, not what!) Creatives empowered but disaffected 3 AI still rampant Non-creatives stifled and brainwashed and bored & unemployed Treatment of People
Control of technology 2. STEAM + CREATIVES INCORPORATED WHY??? (Existential purpose?) Artists are celebrated and showcased. in South Africa in Africa worldwide! Universities & Schools restate importance of art. Artist & creativity is normalized within mainstream culture. Post-graduate Diplomas in Art! (For disaffected accountants.) Business takes on the business of CREATIVITY. 4 1. Moon-shot: BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME By design not default! Treatment of People 3.