Rule number one of traveling to a new place is to visit its museums. I wish some museums offer lodging service, for example, one could happily spend three days and nights of a long weekend in Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rule No. 2 is its independent or secondhand bookstores. I have a very soft spot for secondhand book shops. Sadly it seems that I have not come across many of them outside London. Rule No. 3 is to see its cemeteries. One I visited recently is the Mountain Cemetery and its adjacent Veteran Memorial in Sonoma. I was struck by sadness when I saw the empty space left for future names on the memorial stone. It is indeed practical to plan for further additions, nevertheless upsetting to think about the inevitable. These are the rules to be exercised with flexibility and a priority ordering given the circumstances.
I wandered into Ben McNally Books in Toronto one late afternoon last week. The bookshop was beautiful and private. There were very few people there probably because it was a workday. Exploring its collections felt like being spoiled in a private library of one’s own, although I would remove probably three quarters of novels from the shelves and replace them with science and engineering books, but leave the other categories untouched, if it is my library. There I was browsing randomly. A small book with lemon yellow cover and neat design caught my eyes. Hegarty on Creativity – There are No Rules, I picked it up without any hesitation. Judge me if you wish. I cannot resist a book as elegantly presented as this and especially one with such a title. I must find out what is inside and who is Hegarty.
The interior design of this book is as beautiful as its cover, if not more so. Many drawings and compositions fit appropriately with the content. The writing itself is witty and humorous. A subject like creativity that could potentially be very dry and abstract is discussed in a delightful way.
The author states clearly at the beginning: this book is about how you get started, how you keep going. Not what you want to create. It contains 50 provocations on creativity, on nurturing it, sustaining it, and harnessing it. Hegarty gives the definition of creativity as: the expression of self. This is true in the art profession. Perhaps in the science and engineering world, it is the expression of self (into which the intuition acquired through experience falls into) and knowledge. I suppose having certain knowledge is a state of being, so it could be part of the self too. If we interpret self broadly, I would agree with this definition.
Whatever you’re creating, simplicity is the ultimate goal. The power of reduction, as we say in advertising, means taking a complex thought and reducing it down to a simple, powerful message.
Stop thinking. Start feeling. Creativity is an intellectual process, but it is also one driven by the heart. Irish writer James Stephens summed it up perfectly when he wrote: What the heart knows today, the head will understand tomorrow.
Words are a barrier to communication. If it’s a race to get into minds and stay there, then it’s the artists who make their points faster, smarter, and more thought-provoking that will be the ones to succeed. I particularly like the example Hegarty quoted to show the power of pithy phrases: Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
I like the visual simplicity and profound impact of the Levi ads that Hegarty and his team designed, with the phrase “when the world zigs, zag.” You must see the sheep visually yourself to see its beauty. Here it is in the BBH website. As Hegarty pointed out: that single line of text was added to reinforce the point made visually in this image.
Hegarty wrote about the relation of technology and creativity: Technology is not an idea. It’s the means to express an idea. So under no circumstances should you become overawed by it. No matter what piece of technology has been invented, from the camera to the computer, or will be invented, and no matter what value it claims to deliver, if it can’t in some shape or another deliver the full impact of a well-told story its worth will eventually diminish. I suspect there are not many computer scientists who are afraid of technology. On the other hand, would technologists be fearful of exploring art domains leveraging their technology expertise? My belief is that profession or expertise could be as fluid as we want it to be, or as rigid.
Hegarty’s writings on cynicism, collaboration, mixing with the best and respecting but not revering echos my experience at AMD Research. Creativity grows in a nurturing and positive environment. No idea is stupid, no question is silly. We can extend, build upon, mix with each other’s ideas. The complementary skillsets and diversified views allow us to bridge the gaps and generate the best as a team. Even someone like me raising far more questions than most people never felt that I have gone too far. In that kind of positive environment, creativity thrives organically. I cannot help sharing the quote by H. L. Mencken: A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. The contrary is true too, the right place for creativity is where we smell compost, we think how delightful and fragrant the roses will be, once we use the compost as fertilizer.
One more “provocation” from this book that I was drawn to: good is the enemy of great. Within this maelstrom of thoughts veering all over the place, it can be easy to settle on something that feels right. Something that seems to make sense of all the confusion. You’ll feel relief when you get to this point. You’ll think you’ve cracked it. You’ll feel good. But then you have to take a step back from what feels really good and ask: But is it great?…Park that good idea and keep going. Trust in inspiration to come up with a great idea – that idea that’s going to put everything else in the shade.
When Hegarty was in a life-drawing class at art school, his teacher pronounced: “When a drawing’s going wrong, what you don’t do is turn over the page and start again. You keep working on that drawing until it’s right. Only then do you turn the page over. That’s how you learn. I suppose I’m talking about life as well.” Never move on until you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve.
Without elaborating in length, a few more arguments I like in this book are common sense at the surface but great to be reminded of in an artistic and playful storytelling way by Hegarty:
- Keep your focus!
- Practice only makes perfect if you make progress.
- The importance of editing. In creative work it really is hard to be both subjective and objective. A great idea comes from a subjective point of view but then it has to be reviewed objectively to see whether or not it will work. This second objective stage is called editing.
- Creativity has to be nurtured, cared for, invested in. Money just wants to exploit your career, without any concern for its longevity or future.
At one point in the book, Hegarty wrote “Yes, we’re all artists. But some of us shouldn’t exhibit…Just because technology has made it easier to create and express yourself does not mean you’re any good at it. Every day I’m inundated with badly written, poorly structured, uninformed blogs. Please. STOP. Do us all a favor and find something useful to do.” What about this blog and all previous ones that I wrote? I wonder. On the bright side, at least the large amount of quotes that I relayed to you from the great works that I read are not badly written.
