May 5, 2025 • 29 mins
This episode, Archer Ezra Rosenbloom and I are reflecting on some stand out ideas from the first 4 conversations and seeing if we can take them a little further.
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Credits:
Music: Douglas Appleman - http://www.Douglas-Appleman.com/
Copyeditor/Proofreader: Reed Floarea - https://www.floareaindexing.com/
Co-Host: Archer Ezra Rosenbloom - https://www.instagram.com/cos_and.effect
Co-Host: Griffin Ess - https://www.shadedareas.com/
Original date of episode publication: May 5th, 2025
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Hey, Archer. How's it going?
Hey, it's going all right. Heading towards the end of the
semester. Got a lot of finals coming up,
but, you, know, keeping my head above water.
Gotcha.
Griffin, And how about you?
Fatigued, Running around like a chicken with my head cut off,
but, you know, keeping everything moving. And, the new
notebook- is that going well? Are your arms and legs
(00:26):
being spared of ink?
Yeah, it's become a very good system. I'm glad I have
it.
Heck, yeah. Is it structured in a way that
only you can structure things as far as people I know?
no. It's not nearly as complicated as any of my
spreadsheets. It's just when I need to write
a new list, I turn to the next page
(00:48):
that-
sometimes that ends up with, like,
five days worth of to do lists in a row
that mostly have the same things on them. I
suppose I do have a little set of symbols that I use for myself to
mark if something needs to be done a different
way, but that's the most esoteric I get with
it.
(01:08):
Gotcha. And how's the, cosplay Instagram
going? I saw that there's been some activity.
There's been some activity. Considering the lack of
photos, there hasn't been as much as I would like, of course,
but it is
frustrating because I want to take
everything as far as it can go as quickly as
possible, but that is simply not
(01:30):
sustainable. And, until I have something
actually good quality to put there, I don't want to
just be filling it with nothing.
No, that's absolutely fair. And with August
approaching. We'll find you some excuses. I'll try. We'll get
Vinny roped in. It'll work.
(01:50):
Okay. So I'm not scheduled to talk to anyone else
today. Things had to get shuffled around. - Oh! - Yeah.
So in the spirit of trying to keep
a schedule with, releasing these conversations, I
figured you and I could sit
down and go back over the first
four conversations and sort of do a
retrospective as a fancy term for it.
(02:14):
Then, you know, make it a habit to do
these check ins every four conversations or
so. You know, given that this
whole project's kind of like building... I don't want to say
building the plane while we're flying it, because I hate that fucking concept.
Like, I like plans, I like structuring and building
beforehand. You know, you can still learn and adapt as you
go.
(02:34):
Sure.
Want to help me dive back into some of the topics that have come
up?
Yeah, sure. Sounds fun. - Neat. - One of the things that
I really value about our conversations is that a lot of the times the
same things stick out to us. So we're able to discuss them more in
depth than if each of us were bringing up like a thousand
individual points.
(03:02):
All right, so first chat was
Lauren, who went into her...
She touched on a, like, fear
of death freeze. But I want to wait until later to tie that
specific topic in because George also mentioned something about
that. But she did go into
that idea of finding what you don't get bored of
(03:24):
as a way to like, focus your energy on your
creative output or what you're trying to put your energy
towards. And that is an
interesting metric to test against
because I do know some people who could talk about anything without getting
bored. But I do know that there are some people who have
hyper fixations on things that aren't really
actionable. And I obviously have
(03:46):
things that I've found ways to monetize,
as a gross way to phrase that in the common linguistic of
our epoch. I'm trying to think of a way to make that
more actionable in like, a way it can be, how someone could
self identify.
Yeah, I think the term hyper fixations
always gives me pause because I
think a lot of people just use it to
(04:07):
mean being very interested in
something, and that's not the
actual meaning of the term. Like, it's a very specific
term for neurodiverse people.
But in terms of like, actual
hyperf fixations, they come and
go pretty much at their own whim.
So the danger with building
(04:29):
a brand or a
social media empire on something that
you are hyper fixated on is that one day
it's gonna stop.
Right
And then you will not be able to continue at all.
Because the creative manic energy
that was driving you to dedicate your entire life towards this
thing is gone.
(04:50):
Right.
You will not be able to keep going. Honestly, on
the subject of neurodiversity in,
like, creative fields, when I was
listening to Lauren, it reminded me a lot of a
creator... she's on Dimension 20. She's written for
a bunch of shows and stuff like that. Siobhan Thompson
you know of, her, right? - Yeah
(05:11):
Yeah. So in an interview that she did
promoting a Dimension 20 season, she said
something that's really stuck with me on being
a creator with specifically
adhd, that "because you get
bored so easily, if you're not boring yourself,
you're probably not boring other people"
Ooh, I like that as a more positive
(05:32):
angled way to filter this stuff. That's great.
Yeah. Another issue
with severe ADHD is
feeling very sensitive
towards other people not being
interested. So it was a very good
mindset shift to have of. Okay. My
metric for losing interest in something is way
(05:54):
lower than a lot of other people's. So if
I'm holding my own interest for this long,
chances are I'm holding theirs too.
Yeah, no, if you can get that self doubt voice to like dial
down while you're trying to create stuff and really
takes those speed bumps out which then you can actually build
some momentum with what you're trying to do.
Yeah.
Actually this project was born because I felt like I was doing
(06:16):
a bad job on a first version of this concept where
I was just trying to solo explain
creativity psychology concepts and post
those online. But like, man, I was
boring myself. Like I would listen back and be like this is really
dry. I didn't have
a lot of good examples because I only had my own angle which
(06:37):
there's maybe a dozen top things that like
I actually apply and use actively. So everything else was
very academic and that's not bad. But
it's... You can get that in a book.
Yeah.
Well, the other thing that I'm a little excited about is
Lauren had that next
project. The she mentioned, her upcoming book:
IN THIS FAIR CHASE which she's getting closer to
(07:00):
releasing. I got put on making the cover and I
had a very interesting moment where
she asked me if I wanted to do the cover She gave
me the concept and I did a
really rough... like thumbnail
with extra layers rough... digital sketch.
And I was like (07:18):
"Something like this?"
She's like (07:21):
"That's perfect!" and like as far as she was concerned it was done.
And I had this like, "Ohhh, OH NO.
no, no, no, no.
Give me that back. Give me that."
So I had to like nudge her to be like:
"No no, no, let me do one more pass."
It really wasn't print quality in terms of resolution.
Happy to say that, I kept the energy she was looking for
(07:42):
and got it to a quality that I'm not going to be horrified to have my
name attached to.
Yeah, that's always the thing about when you're working
with people you actually like that you're friends with
is sometimes they're very support
and they genuinely love
everything you do. So you
try to tell them (08:02):
"No, I don't like this
isn't the final draft for me. I wouldn't feel good about putting this
out there." And they don't... they're unwilling to
not like anything you do. So
they're like (08:14):
"No, this is perfect. This is great. Don't do any more."
When like... No, actually let me do more work because I
can do better and I dont want to put that out.
That's very much what just happened. But yeah, no,
I'm very happy to say that, we're at the phase where
like dimension edits are coming in of like the exact
size of the cover versus like the spine and stuff like that. So
like, I'm excited. I haven't done... I haven't gotten to do a book cover
(08:37):
in a while.
Very cool.
All right, next person was Lesley, who
had the, "Fish Queen of the Gowanus Canal" musical.
Yeah, it was really
cool not only to hear her
talk about that, but I kind of got to observe
it secondhand. I wasn't able to make it
to any of the shows, unfortunately. But I've heard
(08:59):
our mutual friend talk about it. I heard you talk about it after
you went to the shows. It's a great
experience seeing not only the
creator talk about her perspective
in making it, but independently
here, how positively other people were
affected and like having the full picture
of. Oh, everybody enjoyed this.
(09:21):
Everybody was benefited by this.
No, it's kind of neat. One of the things that I liked most about that
conversation was seeing similar community
based concepts pop up where the people are
collaborating. People are tying their own
creative passions together into other
visions. Performative or not is just
always my favorite thing. Watching peanut butter and chocolate try to
(09:44):
figure out the various iterations they can make of themselves.
...
That metaphor seems to have puzzled you.
By the time I got it, any reaction I would have
given would not have been, appropriate
anymore.
Entirely fair. But editing does
exist so that pause can be removed.
(10:06):
That was also part of the thoughts.
I've also been thinking more about the fact that that musical was
born out of work that wasn't intended to be used
together. So I recently
I had to do a lot of like cleaning and
reorganizing my space. And I found like
(10:27):
a couple of old projects that I had not
even remembered doing for years. A small
book called A Tourists Guide to Creativity,
which was like a little illustrated
advice guide on how to stimulate creativity
in one's life. That was literally written
as if a travel guide for going into an imaginary
(10:47):
land.
That's fun.
Yeah, I had like printed maybe 150
copies and I had like 2 left and then a little - I want one. -
I'll grab you one. I'll bring it on...
I'll bring it when I see you this weekend. And then I had another
one which was, The Misadventures of West.
I had this recoccurring character in some of my illustrations of a
(11:08):
fox with wings and a unicorn horn.
And I made a whole little like children's book
of West kind of going through a dreamscape
essentially. It's a very weird project, but
like, it's got legs to it, I think. But now
I'm like looking at everything I'm doing, trying to figure out like,
what else I can fit together with what to
make something that is greater than the sum of its
(11:31):
parts. Is there anything like that in
costuming?
Sometimes, yeah. Within like the
strict costuming classes,
not that much. But in
external stuff like designs for
shows, abstract designs that I've
done, just by way of turning final
(11:52):
projects into something that I can do easily and
instinctively instead of meeting to write a 15 page
paper about it. Yep, I've gone back and
been very self referential.
I did a final for a class last
semester where we had to do
a 15 page analysis of pretty much
(12:12):
any topic we wanted. So instead of
going through the text and spending hours upon
hours in the library, I decided I was going to do a
costume analysis. And I pulled
old designs a lot from the Royal Shakespeare Company. They have
great archives for costume designs. so I went back
into RSC archives and pulled a bunch of original
designs and did a full
(12:35):
analysis of the costume history of the three
main characters. And that was a way
to reference past costume
study that I had done, reference other
people's costume designs and
give a little:
Next on this show you'll see where I got to bring
(12:55):
it back into like. And here's how
my close study of these kinds of
designs informs what I do in the future.
Gotcha. It definitely sounds like you're stitching
things together, which is on theme.
I couldn't help it. I felt it, it was gonna happen.
Yeah, sorry. But
(13:15):
no, that's great. I have to assume that there's a
version of this in every type of creativity. I just, some of
the, the more tangible hands on ones, I'm
not always aware of how that
works in a
much more tangible way. I do go back
to old designs and old concepts, but I also go
back to old projects that I never finished.
(13:37):
like yesterday I was cleaning and I went through
my mending box and there's
like a couple of projects in there that still have pins in them that I
never finished, that I don't think
I ever will. But I can reuse the
fabric for Something gota. I can turn
a failed corset into a
(13:57):
frog.
What's... Wait, a frog? Is that a clothing
term?
No, it's not. So I
have a lot of free periods and they didn't want
me like on my phone in
classes and I was sitting in classrooms
for most of them. So I started just bringing a little plastic bag
with a needle, some thread, some stuffing and like some scrap
(14:19):
fabric and I made like 20 of these
things. Just tiny little frogs.
Can I have one? I. Yes,
thank you.
It's a pattern I found online. it's a
very basic three piece frog
pattern. My friend bird calls them the senior year
frogs despite the fact that I still make them.
(14:42):
But yeah, no, when I say I can turn a corset into a frog, I
mean I can reuse the fabric on a
frog. And
I've also been looking into those like smaller toy
type projects because I never make them for myself because why would
I? I have enough knick knacks in the house. but
as like some of my family members start to
look more seriously towards having kids, I
(15:05):
want to be the crazy aunt
who always has like a handmade toy for
them.
That's amazing. I love that.
Yeah.
So very topical for us given that
I get to go see her perform in
two days at time of this discussion...
and you're coming with...
(15:26):
Yes I am.
Maddie from Twenty Sided Tavern.
Yay.
The non-linear paths forward
concept and the I don't know mindset
have been floating around my head a
lot lately. I don't know many people
who have the capacity to approach
(15:50):
anything professional or
future with a... With trusting that "I don't know"
is an okay answer. Mmmm.
I think it's rare. I think it takes a lot of practice to get there.
Oh yeah. I've gone through a lot of religions, a lot of
philosophies and, and
(16:10):
I will say that going through Zen
practices they were... It was
a lot of the same thing I think I'm having now where
people would try to control the
outcome of uncontrolled outcomes.
Whereas like having an I don't know mindset...
I still feel myself trying to have a knowledgeable
(16:30):
approach to and "I don't know" approach.
That's always the trick is how much can
you pathologize your own process
and like how many layers of
self analysis can you sink into
before it becomes actively harmful?
Yeah.
And no longer helpful in the slightest.
(16:52):
It definitely feels like trying to chase a rabbit
into the briars sometimes where
it's just doing more harm.
You're not built for that. They are.
Yeah.
Ideas are built to escape you.
You are not built to catch every idea.
Yeah. I wonder if that's why
"genius" was originally concepted
(17:15):
as an entity outside of yourself, where, like, it
wasn't something you had any direct
ownership of. It was just something that visited you
if you were lucky enough to understand the moment.
I think that could be. That could also be
why, genius and madness always seemed to go hand
(17:35):
in hand is
both were things you were set upon
by an outside entity.
And honestly, if you are visited
by genius and try to catch it and miss, you can
drive yourself mad pretty easily.
I have a presentation due on that very
(17:55):
concept in - Amazing -
an hour and a half.
Oh, my God.
It's the last day of our, Hamlet as philosophy class,
and my friend Emily and I, were either
given the honor or the insurmountable task,
depending on your perspective,
of leading the class through the analysis of the very last scene.
(18:17):
So got we've got Act 5, Scene 2,
the big fight. and
because both of us have had massively busy weeks,
what we have done is each of us have gone through
individually and taken our own notes, and we're going to meet up like,
10 minutes before class, see how many of those notes match
up and play support on each other for the
(18:37):
other topics.
Yeah, it's kind of how I was trying to approach this.
That makes perfect sense.
I love that style.
That is effectively what we did for this as well. Yes.
And the interesting part about it is both of those were
suggested by each of you. I did not
suggest this technique in either of them.
(18:58):
The other one that I really like, that Maddie put the nail on the head...
or hit the nail on the head of. I know how phrases work.
...
Oh, yeah. Famously.
Famously.
The importance of hobbies outside of your
creative focus.
It's one of those things that I feel like a lot of people who
I know who are creators, a special profess-
(19:21):
especially Profess-
especially professional creatives have a
tendency to, like, over
control the environment and fail to, like, have
new input, ideas and energy coming in through other hobbies
and activities.
Yeah, I think I noticed that.
(19:43):
It's unfortunately, like, I'm not gonna
be enlightening anybody when I say that's a direct route to
burn out.
Yeah.
I can't remember if Maddie specifically touched on it, but it was
something that I was thinking about after re listening to your
conversation with her. I Feel very
grateful that I am not solely
responsible for making sure that I have other hobbies.
(20:04):
like other people in my life
bring me into other creative things
frequently enough that I am not the soul
arbiter of how I spend my
time outside of my
industry and my like academic life.
Gotcha, no, that's great. Yeah, no, I think it's one of
those vital concepts that a lot of people can,
(20:27):
especially because a lot of creators I know aren't as
extroverted as some of the other
professions, especially more like
corporate professions where like communication is the goal
most of the time. Like it can be tough for
people who aren't naturally
... egalitarian isn't the word
... gregarious! Who aren't naturally gregarious.
(20:53):
to. To be able to like
be folded into other people's plans like a D&D game as it
were... which needs to happen sooner rather than later when
you're not as busy. I'm working on it.
Okay. So finally
George, my dearest friend, probably one of the people
I've known the longest in my life.
(21:13):
He went back into something that Lauren had
gone into... the fear of death and its effect on
creativity and like how
being temporary beings. It can be
crippling thinking that you're putting energy towards something
that doesn't amount to anything if
you don't view your creativity as inherently
valuable. And how some people
(21:35):
freeze under that pressure and other people are freed by the
concept. And I'm definitely on the freed side,
but a lot of people I know are like (21:40):
"What's the point?"
Especially like when things aren't
going great in the world.
Mmm I honestly don't.
I haven't been able to figure out where I fall on it yet
because my
relationship to death for one has been an
interesting journey. And it's certainly not
(22:00):
over. You know,
I'm gonna have a weird relationship with death for my entire life.
That's a great quote. We're putting that somewhere
okay.
Because I have been in so many situations
as a young adult where I have been
forced to confront my relationship to
(22:22):
death earlier than I necessarily would have
liked - Yeah. - it has developed
into its own thing.
Like it is not that I have a
relationship to death within creativity, and a separate relationship to
death within academics and within industry and all of
those. I have one relationship
to death and
(22:46):
it is distinct and largely
unaffected by my separate
relationships to creativity, relationships to academics,
relationships to industry. Because I've
had to create such a strong
barrier there when death
comes knockin in my Life,
(23:06):
it eats everything. So
I had to get very good at building a wall
between it and everything
which has inadvertently led to
death being a constant figure, but
more an observer, not a contributor.
Interesting. So I
(23:27):
definitely have my own distinctly separate
relationship with death, but through very different
constructs of just a personal series of experiences when I was
very young that have made me...
it's why I'm so reckless. It's why I'm so
unstructured. It's why I don't worry
about not having a plan in a lot of ways
because I've always been of the mindset
(23:50):
that like that door is there and I have to go through it
eventually. I'm not worried about any other door
because nothing's going to be worse than that finality.
So like what am I afraid of here?
So experimenting or playing with information or trying new
ideas doesn't mess me up. Failure doesn't mess me up.
It's like none of those things faze me
because none of them seem real compared to that other
(24:13):
thing I know is eventually waiting.
I can't make value judgments... I do not
know what is better and what is worse.
But I think yours,
at least to me where I'm at, at this moment in my
life, yours sounds more helpful
than mine.
It definitely feels most times like
(24:35):
my relationship with it seems more helpful than a lot of the
ways my peers and friends and
loved ones are interacting with it.
Like mine definitely frees me from a lot of things
that it seems to
burden in others.
I like to think that death doesn't place
any more of a burden on me than anything else
(24:57):
does. Its
weight is not heavier than
the weight of graduating
or having
dreams not be achieved.
It is a friend in a
lineup of things
(25:17):
rather than something that looms way taller than the rest
of them.
That seems healthier than a lot of people I know.
But George and I did get to close out with
him citing what I had forgotten I really put the nail on
for him at some point. Apparently of my "be the pebble"
approach to a lot of things. Like when things aren't going
well and there's nothing I can do to fix
(25:38):
that exact thing...
Apparently it impressed upon him when
my instinct was to try to make other people around
me happier in a moment that I can't make myself
better off in because I can be made happy by
knowing that exchange happened, but I can't improve the
thing that was bothering me.
Yeah, I think the way I took
(26:00):
that in my head and I'm sorry
my Memory is a sieve, I cannot remember if it's something that was put
there by you or not, but -
We're not going with salad spinner anymore?
... sorry. Continue.
... is the other thing about being a pebble
is that you're being kicked along by
these other people along a path. And it's not
(26:20):
a bad thing. It's not a harmful or hurtful thing.
The people in your life are kicking you along the
path, and you're, you know, getting worn
down over time, and new
little nicks appear in your surface, and you
get smoothed down by some of them. And
it's another way of having everybody
in your life contribute to you as a creative. Even when
(26:43):
you're in stasis and not making moves, you are being
moved.
I love that. Well, in an
attempt to unpack concepts, we've definitely delved
into philosophy, and I don't hate it.
I'm looking for-
Oh no! Not the philosophy.
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing us do this again
in a little over two months with the next
(27:04):
four conversations.
Sounds good.
Neat. Well, I will see you in a couple of
days for showtime otherwise. Oh!
What?
Griffin!
One's for you, one's for me.
Okay.
I... You know, just the fact that I was able to
(27:24):
get them to...
I'm not gonna do this on the recording.
No, don't do that.
Do you think that is gonna get used?
No. Maybe.
(28:02):
How's the new noteberk working out? Are your arms and legs at
least pleased with the, ink poisoning not sinking in?
Was that worse?
Sorry, you said note-BERK.
Well, we have our comedy clip for the ending.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
Head over to shadedareries.com to learn more about the show.
(28:22):
Or head to patreon.com/createartrepeat
if you'd like to support the show and
maybe get some merch out of the deal. Until next time,
stay thoughtful, stay playful, and keep creating.
Hey, Archer. How's it going?
Hey, it's going all right. Heading towards the end of the
semester. Got a lot of finals coming up,
but, you, know, keeping my head above water.
Gotcha.
Griffin, And how about you?
Fatigued, Running around like a chicken with my head cut off,
but, you know, keeping everything moving. And, the new
notebook- is that going well? Are your arms and legs
(00:26):
being spared of ink?
Yeah, it's become a very good system. I'm glad I have
it.
Heck, yeah. Is it structured in a way that
only you can structure things as far as people I know?
no. It's not nearly as complicated as any of my
spreadsheets. It's just when I need to write
a new list, I turn to the next page
(00:48):
that-
sometimes that ends up with, like,
five days worth of to do lists in a row
that mostly have the same things on them. I
suppose I do have a little set of symbols that I use for myself to
mark if something needs to be done a different
way, but that's the most esoteric I get with
it.
(01:08):
Gotcha. And how's the, cosplay Instagram
going? I saw that there's been some activity.
There's been some activity. Considering the lack of
photos, there hasn't been as much as I would like, of course,
but it is
frustrating because I want to take
everything as far as it can go as quickly as
possible, but that is simply not
(01:30):
sustainable. And, until I have something
actually good quality to put there, I don't want to
just be filling it with nothing.
No, that's absolutely fair. And with August
approaching. We'll find you some excuses. I'll try. We'll get
Vinny roped in. It'll work.
(01:50):
Okay. So I'm not scheduled to talk to anyone else
today. Things had to get shuffled around. - Oh! - Yeah.
So in the spirit of trying to keep
a schedule with, releasing these conversations, I
figured you and I could sit
down and go back over the first
four conversations and sort of do a
retrospective as a fancy term for it.
(02:14):
Then, you know, make it a habit to do
these check ins every four conversations or
so. You know, given that this
whole project's kind of like building... I don't want to say
building the plane while we're flying it, because I hate that fucking concept.
Like, I like plans, I like structuring and building
beforehand. You know, you can still learn and adapt as you
go.
(02:34):
Sure.
Want to help me dive back into some of the topics that have come
up?
Yeah, sure. Sounds fun. - Neat. - One of the things that
I really value about our conversations is that a lot of the times the
same things stick out to us. So we're able to discuss them more in
depth than if each of us were bringing up like a thousand
individual points.
(03:02):
All right, so first chat was
Lauren, who went into her...
She touched on a, like, fear
of death freeze. But I want to wait until later to tie that
specific topic in because George also mentioned something about
that. But she did go into
that idea of finding what you don't get bored of
(03:24):
as a way to like, focus your energy on your
creative output or what you're trying to put your energy
towards. And that is an
interesting metric to test against
because I do know some people who could talk about anything without getting
bored. But I do know that there are some people who have
hyper fixations on things that aren't really
actionable. And I obviously have
(03:46):
things that I've found ways to monetize,
as a gross way to phrase that in the common linguistic of
our epoch. I'm trying to think of a way to make that
more actionable in like, a way it can be, how someone could
self identify.
Yeah, I think the term hyper fixations
always gives me pause because I
think a lot of people just use it to
(04:07):
mean being very interested in
something, and that's not the
actual meaning of the term. Like, it's a very specific
term for neurodiverse people.
But in terms of like, actual
hyperf fixations, they come and
go pretty much at their own whim.
So the danger with building
(04:29):
a brand or a
social media empire on something that
you are hyper fixated on is that one day
it's gonna stop.
Right
And then you will not be able to continue at all.
Because the creative manic energy
that was driving you to dedicate your entire life towards this
thing is gone.
(04:50):
Right.
You will not be able to keep going. Honestly, on
the subject of neurodiversity in,
like, creative fields, when I was
listening to Lauren, it reminded me a lot of a
creator... she's on Dimension 20. She's written for
a bunch of shows and stuff like that. Siobhan Thompson
you know of, her, right? - Yeah
(05:11):
Yeah. So in an interview that she did
promoting a Dimension 20 season, she said
something that's really stuck with me on being
a creator with specifically
adhd, that "because you get
bored so easily, if you're not boring yourself,
you're probably not boring other people"
Ooh, I like that as a more positive
(05:32):
angled way to filter this stuff. That's great.
Yeah. Another issue
with severe ADHD is
feeling very sensitive
towards other people not being
interested. So it was a very good
mindset shift to have of. Okay. My
metric for losing interest in something is way
(05:54):
lower than a lot of other people's. So if
I'm holding my own interest for this long,
chances are I'm holding theirs too.
Yeah, no, if you can get that self doubt voice to like dial
down while you're trying to create stuff and really
takes those speed bumps out which then you can actually build
some momentum with what you're trying to do.
Yeah.
Actually this project was born because I felt like I was doing
(06:16):
a bad job on a first version of this concept where
I was just trying to solo explain
creativity psychology concepts and post
those online. But like, man, I was
boring myself. Like I would listen back and be like this is really
dry. I didn't have
a lot of good examples because I only had my own angle which
(06:37):
there's maybe a dozen top things that like
I actually apply and use actively. So everything else was
very academic and that's not bad. But
it's... You can get that in a book.
Yeah.
Well, the other thing that I'm a little excited about is
Lauren had that next
project. The she mentioned, her upcoming book:
IN THIS FAIR CHASE which she's getting closer to
(07:00):
releasing. I got put on making the cover and I
had a very interesting moment where
she asked me if I wanted to do the cover She gave
me the concept and I did a
really rough... like thumbnail
with extra layers rough... digital sketch.
And I was like (07:18):
"Something like this?"
She's like (07:21):
"That's perfect!" and like as far as she was concerned it was done.
And I had this like, "Ohhh, OH NO.
no, no, no, no.
Give me that back. Give me that."
So I had to like nudge her to be like:
"No no, no, let me do one more pass."
It really wasn't print quality in terms of resolution.
Happy to say that, I kept the energy she was looking for
(07:42):
and got it to a quality that I'm not going to be horrified to have my
name attached to.
Yeah, that's always the thing about when you're working
with people you actually like that you're friends with
is sometimes they're very support
and they genuinely love
everything you do. So you
try to tell them (08:02):
"No, I don't like this
isn't the final draft for me. I wouldn't feel good about putting this
out there." And they don't... they're unwilling to
not like anything you do. So
they're like (08:14):
"No, this is perfect. This is great. Don't do any more."
When like... No, actually let me do more work because I
can do better and I dont want to put that out.
That's very much what just happened. But yeah, no,
I'm very happy to say that, we're at the phase where
like dimension edits are coming in of like the exact
size of the cover versus like the spine and stuff like that. So
like, I'm excited. I haven't done... I haven't gotten to do a book cover
(08:37):
in a while.
Very cool.
All right, next person was Lesley, who
had the, "Fish Queen of the Gowanus Canal" musical.
Yeah, it was really
cool not only to hear her
talk about that, but I kind of got to observe
it secondhand. I wasn't able to make it
to any of the shows, unfortunately. But I've heard
(08:59):
our mutual friend talk about it. I heard you talk about it after
you went to the shows. It's a great
experience seeing not only the
creator talk about her perspective
in making it, but independently
here, how positively other people were
affected and like having the full picture
of. Oh, everybody enjoyed this.
(09:21):
Everybody was benefited by this.
No, it's kind of neat. One of the things that I liked most about that
conversation was seeing similar community
based concepts pop up where the people are
collaborating. People are tying their own
creative passions together into other
visions. Performative or not is just
always my favorite thing. Watching peanut butter and chocolate try to
(09:44):
figure out the various iterations they can make of themselves.
...
That metaphor seems to have puzzled you.
By the time I got it, any reaction I would have
given would not have been, appropriate
anymore.
Entirely fair. But editing does
exist so that pause can be removed.
(10:06):
That was also part of the thoughts.
I've also been thinking more about the fact that that musical was
born out of work that wasn't intended to be used
together. So I recently
I had to do a lot of like cleaning and
reorganizing my space. And I found like
(10:27):
a couple of old projects that I had not
even remembered doing for years. A small
book called A Tourists Guide to Creativity,
which was like a little illustrated
advice guide on how to stimulate creativity
in one's life. That was literally written
as if a travel guide for going into an imaginary
(10:47):
land.
That's fun.
Yeah, I had like printed maybe 150
copies and I had like 2 left and then a little - I want one. -
I'll grab you one. I'll bring it on...
I'll bring it when I see you this weekend. And then I had another
one which was, The Misadventures of West.
I had this recoccurring character in some of my illustrations of a
(11:08):
fox with wings and a unicorn horn.
And I made a whole little like children's book
of West kind of going through a dreamscape
essentially. It's a very weird project, but
like, it's got legs to it, I think. But now
I'm like looking at everything I'm doing, trying to figure out like,
what else I can fit together with what to
make something that is greater than the sum of its
(11:31):
parts. Is there anything like that in
costuming?
Sometimes, yeah. Within like the
strict costuming classes,
not that much. But in
external stuff like designs for
shows, abstract designs that I've
done, just by way of turning final
(11:52):
projects into something that I can do easily and
instinctively instead of meeting to write a 15 page
paper about it. Yep, I've gone back and
been very self referential.
I did a final for a class last
semester where we had to do
a 15 page analysis of pretty much
(12:12):
any topic we wanted. So instead of
going through the text and spending hours upon
hours in the library, I decided I was going to do a
costume analysis. And I pulled
old designs a lot from the Royal Shakespeare Company. They have
great archives for costume designs. so I went back
into RSC archives and pulled a bunch of original
designs and did a full
(12:35):
analysis of the costume history of the three
main characters. And that was a way
to reference past costume
study that I had done, reference other
people's costume designs and
give a little:
Next on this show you'll see where I got to bring
(12:55):
it back into like. And here's how
my close study of these kinds of
designs informs what I do in the future.
Gotcha. It definitely sounds like you're stitching
things together, which is on theme.
I couldn't help it. I felt it, it was gonna happen.
Yeah, sorry. But
(13:15):
no, that's great. I have to assume that there's a
version of this in every type of creativity. I just, some of
the, the more tangible hands on ones, I'm
not always aware of how that
works in a
much more tangible way. I do go back
to old designs and old concepts, but I also go
back to old projects that I never finished.
(13:37):
like yesterday I was cleaning and I went through
my mending box and there's
like a couple of projects in there that still have pins in them that I
never finished, that I don't think
I ever will. But I can reuse the
fabric for Something gota. I can turn
a failed corset into a
(13:57):
frog.
What's... Wait, a frog? Is that a clothing
term?
No, it's not. So I
have a lot of free periods and they didn't want
me like on my phone in
classes and I was sitting in classrooms
for most of them. So I started just bringing a little plastic bag
with a needle, some thread, some stuffing and like some scrap
(14:19):
fabric and I made like 20 of these
things. Just tiny little frogs.
Can I have one? I. Yes,
thank you.
It's a pattern I found online. it's a
very basic three piece frog
pattern. My friend bird calls them the senior year
frogs despite the fact that I still make them.
(14:42):
But yeah, no, when I say I can turn a corset into a frog, I
mean I can reuse the fabric on a
frog. And
I've also been looking into those like smaller toy
type projects because I never make them for myself because why would
I? I have enough knick knacks in the house. but
as like some of my family members start to
look more seriously towards having kids, I
(15:05):
want to be the crazy aunt
who always has like a handmade toy for
them.
That's amazing. I love that.
Yeah.
So very topical for us given that
I get to go see her perform in
two days at time of this discussion...
and you're coming with...
(15:26):
Yes I am.
Maddie from Twenty Sided Tavern.
Yay.
The non-linear paths forward
concept and the I don't know mindset
have been floating around my head a
lot lately. I don't know many people
who have the capacity to approach
(15:50):
anything professional or
future with a... With trusting that "I don't know"
is an okay answer. Mmmm.
I think it's rare. I think it takes a lot of practice to get there.
Oh yeah. I've gone through a lot of religions, a lot of
philosophies and, and
(16:10):
I will say that going through Zen
practices they were... It was
a lot of the same thing I think I'm having now where
people would try to control the
outcome of uncontrolled outcomes.
Whereas like having an I don't know mindset...
I still feel myself trying to have a knowledgeable
(16:30):
approach to and "I don't know" approach.
That's always the trick is how much can
you pathologize your own process
and like how many layers of
self analysis can you sink into
before it becomes actively harmful?
Yeah.
And no longer helpful in the slightest.
(16:52):
It definitely feels like trying to chase a rabbit
into the briars sometimes where
it's just doing more harm.
You're not built for that. They are.
Yeah.
Ideas are built to escape you.
You are not built to catch every idea.
Yeah. I wonder if that's why
"genius" was originally concepted
(17:15):
as an entity outside of yourself, where, like, it
wasn't something you had any direct
ownership of. It was just something that visited you
if you were lucky enough to understand the moment.
I think that could be. That could also be
why, genius and madness always seemed to go hand
(17:35):
in hand is
both were things you were set upon
by an outside entity.
And honestly, if you are visited
by genius and try to catch it and miss, you can
drive yourself mad pretty easily.
I have a presentation due on that very
(17:55):
concept in - Amazing -
an hour and a half.
Oh, my God.
It's the last day of our, Hamlet as philosophy class,
and my friend Emily and I, were either
given the honor or the insurmountable task,
depending on your perspective,
of leading the class through the analysis of the very last scene.
(18:17):
So got we've got Act 5, Scene 2,
the big fight. and
because both of us have had massively busy weeks,
what we have done is each of us have gone through
individually and taken our own notes, and we're going to meet up like,
10 minutes before class, see how many of those notes match
up and play support on each other for the
(18:37):
other topics.
Yeah, it's kind of how I was trying to approach this.
That makes perfect sense.
I love that style.
That is effectively what we did for this as well. Yes.
And the interesting part about it is both of those were
suggested by each of you. I did not
suggest this technique in either of them.
(18:58):
The other one that I really like, that Maddie put the nail on the head...
or hit the nail on the head of. I know how phrases work.
...
Oh, yeah. Famously.
Famously.
The importance of hobbies outside of your
creative focus.
It's one of those things that I feel like a lot of people who
I know who are creators, a special profess-
(19:21):
especially Profess-
especially professional creatives have a
tendency to, like, over
control the environment and fail to, like, have
new input, ideas and energy coming in through other hobbies
and activities.
Yeah, I think I noticed that.
(19:43):
It's unfortunately, like, I'm not gonna
be enlightening anybody when I say that's a direct route to
burn out.
Yeah.
I can't remember if Maddie specifically touched on it, but it was
something that I was thinking about after re listening to your
conversation with her. I Feel very
grateful that I am not solely
responsible for making sure that I have other hobbies.
(20:04):
like other people in my life
bring me into other creative things
frequently enough that I am not the soul
arbiter of how I spend my
time outside of my
industry and my like academic life.
Gotcha, no, that's great. Yeah, no, I think it's one of
those vital concepts that a lot of people can,
(20:27):
especially because a lot of creators I know aren't as
extroverted as some of the other
professions, especially more like
corporate professions where like communication is the goal
most of the time. Like it can be tough for
people who aren't naturally
... egalitarian isn't the word
... gregarious! Who aren't naturally gregarious.
(20:53):
to. To be able to like
be folded into other people's plans like a D&D game as it
were... which needs to happen sooner rather than later when
you're not as busy. I'm working on it.
Okay. So finally
George, my dearest friend, probably one of the people
I've known the longest in my life.
(21:13):
He went back into something that Lauren had
gone into... the fear of death and its effect on
creativity and like how
being temporary beings. It can be
crippling thinking that you're putting energy towards something
that doesn't amount to anything if
you don't view your creativity as inherently
valuable. And how some people
(21:35):
freeze under that pressure and other people are freed by the
concept. And I'm definitely on the freed side,
but a lot of people I know are like (21:40):
"What's the point?"
Especially like when things aren't
going great in the world.
Mmm I honestly don't.
I haven't been able to figure out where I fall on it yet
because my
relationship to death for one has been an
interesting journey. And it's certainly not
(22:00):
over. You know,
I'm gonna have a weird relationship with death for my entire life.
That's a great quote. We're putting that somewhere
okay.
Because I have been in so many situations
as a young adult where I have been
forced to confront my relationship to
(22:22):
death earlier than I necessarily would have
liked - Yeah. - it has developed
into its own thing.
Like it is not that I have a
relationship to death within creativity, and a separate relationship to
death within academics and within industry and all of
those. I have one relationship
to death and
(22:46):
it is distinct and largely
unaffected by my separate
relationships to creativity, relationships to academics,
relationships to industry. Because I've
had to create such a strong
barrier there when death
comes knockin in my Life,
(23:06):
it eats everything. So
I had to get very good at building a wall
between it and everything
which has inadvertently led to
death being a constant figure, but
more an observer, not a contributor.
Interesting. So I
(23:27):
definitely have my own distinctly separate
relationship with death, but through very different
constructs of just a personal series of experiences when I was
very young that have made me...
it's why I'm so reckless. It's why I'm so
unstructured. It's why I don't worry
about not having a plan in a lot of ways
because I've always been of the mindset
(23:50):
that like that door is there and I have to go through it
eventually. I'm not worried about any other door
because nothing's going to be worse than that finality.
So like what am I afraid of here?
So experimenting or playing with information or trying new
ideas doesn't mess me up. Failure doesn't mess me up.
It's like none of those things faze me
because none of them seem real compared to that other
(24:13):
thing I know is eventually waiting.
I can't make value judgments... I do not
know what is better and what is worse.
But I think yours,
at least to me where I'm at, at this moment in my
life, yours sounds more helpful
than mine.
It definitely feels most times like
(24:35):
my relationship with it seems more helpful than a lot of the
ways my peers and friends and
loved ones are interacting with it.
Like mine definitely frees me from a lot of things
that it seems to
burden in others.
I like to think that death doesn't place
any more of a burden on me than anything else
(24:57):
does. Its
weight is not heavier than
the weight of graduating
or having
dreams not be achieved.
It is a friend in a
lineup of things
(25:17):
rather than something that looms way taller than the rest
of them.
That seems healthier than a lot of people I know.
But George and I did get to close out with
him citing what I had forgotten I really put the nail on
for him at some point. Apparently of my "be the pebble"
approach to a lot of things. Like when things aren't going
well and there's nothing I can do to fix
(25:38):
that exact thing...
Apparently it impressed upon him when
my instinct was to try to make other people around
me happier in a moment that I can't make myself
better off in because I can be made happy by
knowing that exchange happened, but I can't improve the
thing that was bothering me.
Yeah, I think the way I took
(26:00):
that in my head and I'm sorry
my Memory is a sieve, I cannot remember if it's something that was put
there by you or not, but -
We're not going with salad spinner anymore?
... sorry. Continue.
... is the other thing about being a pebble
is that you're being kicked along by
these other people along a path. And it's not
(26:20):
a bad thing. It's not a harmful or hurtful thing.
The people in your life are kicking you along the
path, and you're, you know, getting worn
down over time, and new
little nicks appear in your surface, and you
get smoothed down by some of them. And
it's another way of having everybody
in your life contribute to you as a creative. Even when
(26:43):
you're in stasis and not making moves, you are being
moved.
I love that. Well, in an
attempt to unpack concepts, we've definitely delved
into philosophy, and I don't hate it.
I'm looking for-
Oh no! Not the philosophy.
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing us do this again
in a little over two months with the next
(27:04):
four conversations.
Sounds good.
Neat. Well, I will see you in a couple of
days for showtime otherwise. Oh!
What?
Griffin!
One's for you, one's for me.
Okay.
I... You know, just the fact that I was able to
(27:24):
get them to...
I'm not gonna do this on the recording.
No, don't do that.
Do you think that is gonna get used?
No. Maybe.
(28:02):
How's the new noteberk working out? Are your arms and legs at
least pleased with the, ink poisoning not sinking in?
Was that worse?
Sorry, you said note-BERK.
Well, we have our comedy clip for the ending.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
Head over to shadedareries.com to learn more about the show.
(28:22):
Or head to patreon.com/createartrepeat
if you'd like to support the show and
maybe get some merch out of the deal. Until next time,
stay thoughtful, stay playful, and keep creating.
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