

### Break the Rules

50 Smashing Ways To Be More Creative

James Hegarty

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 James Hegarty

TheCreativeEdgeBooks.com

Also by this author

The Inspiration Notebook: Over 100 Ways to Begin

Work of Art: The Craft of Creativity

Guts & Soul: Looking for Street Music and Finding Inspiration

To See: Tokyo Street Photography

New York 1979 1980: Street Photography Lost and Found

To the spirit of creativity in each of us

__________

### table of contents

Preface: This we must do

Part One: Discovery

1. Identity - the radical source of creativity

Break the mold

Go to the mountain

2. Vision - the soul of creativity

Really big

Finding sushi

3. Inspiration - the intersection of imagination and reality

Take risks, cause collisions

The legend of inspiration

Part Two: Action

4. Voice - the content and form of ideas

Crank it up

Where it's at

Sample this

5. Process - the system of development and implementation

This better work

Make some beats

Part Three: Freedom

6. Courage - the strength to succeed

The comfort of uncertainty

Time after time

7. Integrity – the foundation of freedom

The real reason for everything

A story of radical creativity

Afterword: Standing on the edge

A note of thanks

Bibliography
Preface

__________

### this we must do

We are creative. All of us. Creativity is part of us. It is basic to who we are, what we do, and why we are here. And like any human activity, creativity can be developed and expanded. We all can learn to be more creative and to express our creativity more directly.

I realize that might seem pretty radical, not least because a lot of people don't believe it.

So, how does creativity work?

Is there a flow chart, a theory, an instruction manual? Hundreds of books have been written to try to help people understand creativity. These books usually focus on ways to improve the search for ideas or refine decision-making. They often approach creativity from the notion that improved processes or methods can result in "better" creativity, more astounding ideas, more effective solutions. They make it seem like creativity is a machine that can be made more effective or efficient by adding new and improved parts, or an updated operating system.

In this book, I approach the development of creative ability from the standpoint of human expression. After decades of working with creative people as a music and communication professor, it is clear to me that the strength of creativity is rooted in the expression of our own identity. Creativity flows from what we value and what we strive to do. We need to get really good at expressing an understanding of our identity in ever more unique and original ways. That's being creative.

This book draws upon two decades of my own experiences that helped me learn how creativity works. It begins in 1981 when I became a freelance commercial music producer in Chicago and ends when I completed a National Endowment for the Arts grant to compose and produce a multimedia opera in New York. It is based on a decade of commercial music work followed by my transition to being a composer of concert music in the 1990s. Through these experiences I discovered an individual sense of creativity built on an awareness of my own identity.

Even now, I can hear echoes of all kinds of rotten advice that I've been given over the years. A lot of it centers around rules that need to be followed before a person is "ready" to get out there and do something. They're all stupid.

Instead, this book helps break all those lame and restricting rules with insights and experiences that are open-ended and designed to build up creative freedom.

Imagine if everyone knew how to be creative, knew how to draw upon inspiration to discover amazing ideas and turn them into powerful words and works. That would be the kind of world we need. A world filled with ideas that solve problems, that do fun and exciting things, or enable us to understand each other more deeply. Ideas that make this a better world in which to live.

Together we can develop a culture of creativity that can build on the power of individual identity. Everyone can learn to be more creative.

So grab this book, flip it open to any page at all, and check it out. You don't have to read this from front to back, page after page. There's nothing wrong with just grabbing an idea and working it. Come back again when you need another shot of inspiration or encouragement.

We all must do this. And keep doing it.

Be radical, be creative!

James Hegarty

July 2016
Part One

__________

### discovery

I think the challenge has always been to break rules, find something new, find something unexpected as a way of engaging people and telling the stories. – Lee Clow

The film frame opens to a futuristic blue-grey scene. Columns of men, heads shaven, are trudging forward like drones in a giant machine. Synthesizer music swells in a mournful, plaintive cry. The men are filing into a large dark hall, cavernous and crumbling. Their faces become riveted on a large projection screen, hypnotized by the faint outline of a man delivering a demonically rousing speech. "...we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives."

Then, suddenly far in the distance at the end of one of the corridors, a woman appears. She is wearing an orange and white athletic outfit that brightly contrasts against the monochromatic scene. She is running with all her might and carrying a sledgehammer.

The speaker intones, "Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth." Police in riot gear are chasing the woman.

Suddenly she enters the hall and runs up to the screen. "Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion." She spins around and throws the hammer through the screen!

There is an enormous explosion, a thunderous sound overcomes the synth track. The men's eyes open wider in shock and amazement.

A voice over enters and the text crawls across the screen, "On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.'"

Ridley Scott said, "I've always regarded commercials, in the entire time I've been doing commercials, I've always thought of them (because I didn't come from advertising, I came from BBC) so I've always come in to commercial advertising and looked at each commercial as a film. As a little filmlet, always have been and always will do, I guess. Too late to change now." (Apple)

That year, the commercial won a Clio award and the Grand Prix, at the 31st Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. In 1995 Advertising Age named the Apple "1984" television commercial #1 of the fifty greatest commercials of all time. In total it has won over 30 awards.

Creativity discovers new amazing ideas and turns them into something that we can all reach out and touch or experience. Creativity opens our eyes to new ideas, new opportunities, new ways to live that solve problems and meet challenges.

For a small group of people working in late 1983, the objective was to do nothing less than change the world. Isn't that what we're all trying to do?

Great ideas are cool. But, we need more than just intriguing ideas floating around in space somewhere. We need stuff that inspires us, teaches us, entertains us, solves problems, and maybe even makes us laugh or sing along. We need ideas that actually _do something_. The power of creativity is to change us. But how does this kind of creativity actually work? You have to break the rules.

Rule Breaker #1: Think for yourself, creativity is individual

I think most people would say that creativity begins with ideas. But where do ideas come from? Beginning creativity with an idea is like starting to read a novel from the fourth chapter. There's no way to know who the characters are, what they are doing, and even why they are here

If we fold back the pages, we'll see that ideas come from somewhere. So chapter three is inspiration, the place where ideas are formed. Ideas spring forth into our imagination and we examine them, turn them over, and begin to understand them. Inspiration generates ideas.

But if ideas are the characters in our story, what are they doing and why are they even here, anyway? Ideas do their thing for a reason. We provoke inspiration with the questions that haunt us, the problems that confound us, and even the hopes and dreams that we dare to think just might be possible.

If we turn back to chapter two, it is our vision that provides the answers. The unique insights and sparks of understanding that we alone have grasped come together, piece by piece and day by day, into a montage of what we know and value. In chapter two we learn that vision is the internal camera of our inspiration, the way things fold, morph, and superimpose inside our thought until they start to become a concept of the connections of the past to the present and a timeline that stretches out into the future. Vision explains those absurdly disjunct relationships we see across time and then somehow manages to project them into the future. Vision guides everything, it confronts the questions of "Where?" and "Why?" Vision is our ability to stand at the bow, look out into the fog, and figure out where we should go.

If vision connects our sense of direction and purpose with our inspiration, what is the nucleus, the underlying foundation of all of this?

Let me throw down a hypothesis: Identity. The place where all this begins, and the core of creativity itself, is our very identity. Turn the pages all the way back to the beginning, and the opening sentence reads something like, "The creativity you seek is in the fabric of your identity" or something equally philosophical. But the fact is, everything does start within our understanding of who we are and what we aspire to be. There really isn't anything deeper.

At its very heart, creativity is inherently individual – it is founded on our individual ability to see, understand, and do. Our creativity reflects our own identity, who we are and what we strive to be. Our ability to discover new ideas and express them in powerful words and works is, in every way, guided and shaped by our identity. Identity is the source, the foundation from which all aspects of creativity flow.

Creativity is discovery and action: the discovery of ideas and the action that makes those ideas tangible, functional, and awesome. In Part One, we will consider ways that the fabric of identity, vision, and inspiration come together to aid us in the discovery of compelling, original, creative ideas.

__________

1

### identity

The radical source of creativity
__________

### break the mold

Shape your own creative identity

Creativity is a myth. A story. Or so it seems. Unpredictable, out of control, mysterious, and beyond human reason.

And like all myths, the story serves a purpose for a time. A convenient way to rationalize something that's just too complicated or uncomfortable to confront head on. And so, beginning in the 19th century artists and creators became separate, different, special. That was the only explanation, considering the rise of democracy and the equality of all. Why can't I write a symphony like that, or paint, or compose a poem so deeply moving? Well, it was easy to conclude that creativity was like hair color, some of us are born blond and others aren't. A surface-level explanation for perceived human differences in a time of enlightened human equality. We're all supposed to be equal, at least under the law, but otherwise, maybe not?

Some people had abilities beyond the ordinary: designing, building, writing, making things that everyone else just didn't or couldn't do. It was convenient to explain it as the work of genius, unknowable and miraculous. Don't try this at home.

Rule Breaker #2: Everyone is creative

But eventually we grow up, and myths evaporate in the clear light of reason, experience, or new knowledge. Something that once seemed unfathomable, becomes knowable. Like creativity, now.

It's time to move beyond the gee-wiz assumptions of Romantic-era thinking and finally come to terms with it. Creativity never really was, and certainly shouldn't be any longer, a miracle, a quality of rare privilege, an asset held by only the chosen.

If I can do this, you can. I'm not saying it's easy. It is not. But I do know that creativity is universal. Everyone is creative. Everyone has a unique creative identity. Each one of us.

Through living and working with creative musicians for over three decades, the one commonality I've observed is that creativity is directly related to an understanding of individual identity. Identity shapes our discovery of powerful original ideas and guides our ability to express those ideas in meaningful and effective ways.

Step outside, move. It is the search itself that impels creativity. It is the unflinching commitment to discover what each of us can see from the vantage point of our own experience and intentions. The ways that we express our own individual creativity are as unique as identity itself. Find identity, really know it and understand it – honestly and thoroughly – and the source of ideas, innovation, and creative expression will become tangible and real.

Creativity begins as a journey, a search to know identity better, more thoroughly. We're going off-road. Without a map or even a flashlight. It is an adventure, this search for who we are and what we intend to be. While it is indeed our past and our present, what really matters most is the future. That's where the journey leads. The most important aspect of identity is what we will do from this moment forward. Identity is what we are willing to work hard for now and in the future. The past does not and cannot shape the future. The future – and our journey towards it – is shaped by our intent, our determination, our values, and our ability to express them.

Rule Breaker #3: Be creative now

Creativity starts here, now. In this very place, at this exact moment. And it stretches out before us over chasms of doubt and vast expanses of shear hard work to the infinite distance that lies ahead.

And so we set out. By foot or on a Harley – either way, it doesn't matter. It's the forward motion that counts; the act of reaching out, looking ahead, searching, exploring, doing whatever it takes to arrive somewhere new, a place unexplored. A place where no one has ever been before.

And then one day, something happens and we realize that creativity is not out there somewhere in the distance, just beyond the horizon, hidden and distant, out of reach. It has become, indeed has always been, with us; rooted in the very heart of our own existence – past and future, our own unique identity.

In that moment it becomes clear that in fact, we have always been standing here, upon the very edge, alone in our individuality, looking outward with our own eyes upon the vastness before us – seeing the promise of ideas yet to be discovered.

The place where creativity is born.

Creativity is the discovery and expression of inspiration. All creative work, whether it is a new dance composition, a novel, a start-up, or a rap album, is founded on these two primal elements. All creativity is the conscious synchronization of every aspect of discovery and expression to a thorough knowledge of our own individual identity.

Discovery is where voice and determination meet, where our vision is supported by an equal measure of bravery and commitment, where our inspiration is infused with the energy and resolve to fulfill the idea's fullest potential, and to where our ideas have the resources and technique to go out there and make a real impact.

Individual creativity is valuable. Maybe even priceless. The ideas we all have, if they could be made real, would propel us all into an entirely new world. A world that's far better for all the solutions, beauty, and opportunity it would contain. That's the kind of world we need.

Our individual creative ability is our uniqueness and our true mission. It's why we're here. In the end, what creativity is really about – and why it is so absolutely essential – is something much deeper than the work, the product, the story – no matter how cool or exciting or spectacular it is.

The work is only a tool, the messenger, the medium. It is the means through which our inspiration is expressed. It is the most direct way to express the message of our identity, the very idea itself that is ours alone – our insight – the singular underlying vision expressed through words or shapes or colors or sounds. A glimpse into a completely new world, never before seen.

And it's needed. Right now, everywhere. Creativity is hope realized, made certain and possible. And more. It is a real-world expression of a vision of life as it really should be, as it truly is, of what is really here, right now. This is definitely not abstract. Absolutely not a daydream. I'm talking about creativity and the real world, I'm talking about doing it now. All this is just way too important to let it go any longer.

Rule Breaker #4: Creativity is exploration and discovery

The search for creativity is the search for an ever broadening and deepening understanding of individual identity. It is the journey forward, the intent and determination to arrive somewhere new, a place never before seen.

As light passing through a prism, identity enters and infinite shades of color emerge as the components of individual creativity. Just as the various wavelengths of color are present in white light, the many aspects of creativity are always present in and sourced by our identity. The prism separates the component colors within the white light. So our ability and knowledge can reveal the inherent aspects of our identity as the source of creativity.

This is the discovery: the search for an enlarged and more highly developed – a more informed knowledge – of identity. The discovery is the exploration that expands the multiple dimensions of our identity; that acts as a prism to reveal the unlimited facets of our own creative ability.

Inspiration and vision flow from the depth and richness of our identity. Vision gives focus to inspiration, the ideals we hold within our identity gives significance to vision.

It's time to shatter the fable of old-school creative elitism. It's time to end the notion that creativity is an ability given to only a few. It is time to start a new kind of creativity that is a natural expression of our own being; that is the foundation of a world that understands how ideas are discovered and knows how to bring them into reality.

This is about each of us. One as important as another, reaching out, searching, seeking, discovering. Finding the power of our own creative identity, and applying it, being driven by it to discover and then implement ideas that can change even everything.

This needs to happen. It's time.
__________

go to the mountain

Go to the source, a hard and fast knowledge of our own identity

" _Can't see nothin' in front of me,_

Can't see nothin' coming up behind.

I make my way through this darkness,

I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me..."

Speak to me, intimately, as if the sound of your voice is already inside me. Look at me so deeply that you can describe what I'm thinking before I can verbalize it myself. Listen for the smallest, quietest voice and then recognize that it is the most powerful. Share the beauty of something no one else has ever seen before.

This is the kind of work I think we all want: Something that really connects with us one-on-one. Something that touches an ancient deep nerve that jolts us to attention. Something that resonates, vibrates in sympathy with the deepest fears and uncertainties of a mixed-up world and rises above them with an entirely new way of seeing and living.

That's powerful stuff. Vital to all of us, really. We need that kind of thing. Now. Anyone that can express even a fraction of any of that should be doing it non-stop.

But does that kind of expressivity, that level of communication, that degree of intimacy, that amount of personal insight come from logic and craft? No. It's not the numbers, the theory, the stats, the focus groups, or the formulas. They don't generate that kind of human intensity. Creativity is powerful when it is highly personal and highly individual. It becomes most powerful when it is rooted in the absolute deepest uniqueness of individuality we can express.

The circumstances and situations that make up our own experience are the source of what we are uniquely able to share. The more personal and unique our expressions, the more powerful the creative statements. So it makes a lot of sense to dig really deep into what is unique and important about who we are.

Rule Breaker #5: Expand the borders of your identity

Identity is not really the pluses and minuses of a random human experience. The identity I'm talking about is not the product of forces outside of our control. The identity that fuels powerful creativity is not the indeterminate victimization of what others have done to us.

Identity in the context of creativity is a knowledge of what we value, what we hold to be true about why we are here, and what we know is important for us to do. For identity to be the spark, the ignition of creativity, it needs to have a basis in something very deep and powerful. The random acts that have bumped into our human experience may have left a mark, and sometimes the scars are deep, but they are not as penetrating as a knowledge of what we believe is our own real mission and reason for being here.

" _Lost track of how far I've gone,_

How far I've gone, how high I've climbed.

On my back's a sixty pound stone,

On my shoulder a half mile line..."

The blues is a lot more than just hitting the notes, playing the changes. It takes two things to play the blues: Real living and selflessness.

The blues isn't music, really. It's a conversation. Collectively, the words and music are one side of a dialogue in which we get to hear the questions and it's up to us to fill in, imagine, discover, the answers. That's why the blues is so universal.

The message is fundamental, rooted in a life lived hard and close to the bone. It grows out of hope and sorrow, it grows out of trying and failing, and trying again. It is a plea for reason, for justice, for fairness, for honor, and for respect and dignity in a world that gives none of that away without a price. It is a recognition of obstacles and barriers, of limitations and borders, of restraints and bindings that keep us tied to one place and to one way of thinking and one way of acting. And then it strains against the chains that hold us down, that hold us back.

But even deeper, these words, experiences, and universal statements of passion open our hearts and give us the strength to reach out, to grab a hand, wipe a tear, and hold each other up.

Fundamentally, we all want this. So we question, we go to the mountain. We bring our offering. We sing or play the blues. And when we do it with the heart of real petition, with the heart of real experience, with the heart of having really been there, the answers come, and they will remain with us from that moment forward.

That's what makes the blues so extremely powerful. The blues is about listening – listening to ourselves. It provokes us to hear the answers we find in our own hearts – in our own individual expression of our identity – that solve the questions we are all asking.

The blues is the dialogue of the ages, the give and take between us all. It is the way we can understand our collective hopes and fears, and it is the framework where we can look into our own selves and find the answers. It implores us to be quiet, to shut out everything that isn't part of our true identity and really listen, listen, for the answers – for the inspiration that can change us.

" _Spirits above and behind me,_

Faces gone, black eyes burnin' bright.

May their precious blood forever bind me,

Lord as I stand before your fiery light..."

Identity is not fate. Identity is proactive, not reactive. It is not the burden of our past carried into the present. The past is not more real than the future. The past does not define the future.

What's important to you? Right now? Not when you're old, or when you're famous, or when you're good. Right now. What makes you angry, what gets you excited, what thrills you, what makes you stop and imagine, what makes you love, what makes you shout, what makes you curse, what makes you cry? Personal history has nothing to do with it. Ponder carefully what is really important, right now – in this moment. Don't go back over all the same old junk, rehashing what could have been or should have been. Start clean. And don't look back.

Identity is what we aspire to be, built on the foundation of our own unique experience. Identity is not limited by the past, what we were and where we've been. As important and foundational as our past experiences are, they are not the most important factor. They do not constitute the present or the future. Where we want to go, what we need to stand for, and what we will do with our lives – that's what really matters. Expanding and cultivating the potential of the future is what we really need to do.

The individuality of identity is its power and significance. Use it, exploit it. Expand its trajectory.

Rule Breaker #6: Value your unique identity

The point is to arrive at an awareness of our identity, a real appreciation for what we are today – and what we intend to be in the future. It is a conscious process to come to terms with the past – to arrive at an honest valuing of all of it, the good and the bad – and then recast it as a vocabulary that expresses the future in a way that is entirely individual. Turn the past into the foundation, not the barrier, of the future.

The understanding of our own identity is the core of everything. Everything flows from it. Who we are, each of us individually, is what propels everything else: our vision, inspiration, voice, process, strength, and our being.

Where do all these factors originate? What gives us strength? What ties all these things together in a way that has meaning and impact? What helps us stick to it even when the rest of the world doesn't care?

Identity. It's the rock.

" _Come on up for the rising,_

Come on up, lay your hands in mine.

Come on up for the rising,

Come on up for the rising tonight."

Let me put it another way. If identity is the source, doesn't it seem logical to make sure that what we're doing results in something that furthers our concept of who we want to be?

How do we know what's the right process for this work? How do we know what materials or structure to use, what tools to employ, what venue to associate with, what context to emphasize? Everything matters. It all says something. It all reflects who we are and what we value.

That's good. When all this stuff gets pretty heavy and it seems like every decision is the burden of a lifetime, we all need some help. Fortunately, our own individual identity gives us the means to make these hard decisions.

Consider this: How can these decisions be guided by an awareness of our own identity? What is it about who we are that gives us a reason to choose one particular fabric, for example, over all others? How can structure reflect the way we see relationships within the experience of our own identity? How does the intent of our work align with the guidance our identity provides? Much of this is natural, even subconscious. But when the decisions are flying hard and fast, and when the work needs to be very tight and direct, this kind of underlying foundation can provide consistency and stability.

For better or worse, everything matters. A lot. So it's absolutely essential to connect the work with something solid, like identity.

Rule Breaker #7: The passion of identity is compelling

Doing big things with a strong and coherent vision makes the work vital and powerful and commands attention. Great works, they change things. These changes come about from clear, concise, consistent, logical, and original statements. There's no reason to do something that has no impact. So do work that means something and do it in a way that commands attention and respect. Apply talent, skill, wisdom, and compassion to an idea and let identity guide its development and implementation.

Works that have a sharply focused intent, shaped and molded by the strength of identity and vision, will not fail to communicate. Even in this crowded world of multiple levels of networked messages, what stands out?

Powerful, clear, tightly conceived statements cut through. Expressions that have both the passion of soul and the finely wrought consistency of wisdom and total integrity leave a mark and make a statement. Works based in the complex environment of logic, truth, and our own unique human experience are powerful. They connect.

Identity: it speaks of who we are, what we value, what we really stand for. It is the core of our very being expressed in tangible, creative ways. It is our only guide forward across the vast plains of uncertainty and doubt, over the barriers of limitations, to the very edge – the place of our own creativity.

Tell us who you are. We want to know. Show us your passion, your depth of intensity. Let your work express your own unique journey. The past and the future. It will inspire us and raise us all higher.
__________

2

### vision

The soul of creativity
__________

really big

Think big and then think even bigger

Crack open the case of the original Macintosh and what do you see? Well, first of all, it takes a special screwdriver to even reach the screws. Back in the day, you could buy one, from a catalog, mail order. The web was not quite available, yet, sorry.

Once the screws are out, pull off the case and inside there's a lot of really vintage electronic bits. There's the tiny CRT screen, the motherboard, memory cards, and the floppy drive. But what's most interesting now, as it was even then I think, was the inside surface of the case itself. Engraved in the mold are all the signatures of the people that worked on designing the Macintosh. The inside is just completely covered with the smooth, shaky, scratchy, artsy or indecipherable fragments of real personal individuality – an homage to the hundreds of layers of creativity that went into making one of the most innovative ideas of all time. It took the team a remarkably short two years to design and build it. And overnight on January 22, during the third quarter of the CBS broadcast of Super Bowl XVIII (between the Redskins and Raiders in Tampa Bay), the "1984" ad showed us all how the would was going to change.

At the time, working with a computer required typing cryptic codes into the keyboard. On the screen, a prompt blinked at you, annoyingly prodding you to figure out what combination of keystrokes would result in some kind of positive result. The learning curve was beyond measure and most people never even attempted it. Computers were specialized things for specialists. And they costs lots and lots of money. So don't touch.

The "1984" spot was lead by Chiat/Day advertising VP, Steve Hayden. He recounted that Steve Jobs told him, "This is the computer that will change everything. You can sit your grandmother in front of this computer and she'll figure out how it works." (St. John)

The mouse and the graphic operating system changed human-machine interaction in one enormous leap. As Steve Jobs says in the official introduction on January 24, "The telephone was the first and only really desktop appliance. And we think Macintosh can become the second desktop appliance. Because, of the 235 [million] people in America, only a fraction know how to use a computer. Macintosh is for the rest of us." Vision, it's big.

Rule Breaker #8: Big is reality, multiplied

I'm sitting at the lower end of Times Square today, looking up Broadway, thinking back to the first time I realized just how many people could jam into this place.

The ABC studio above 43rd is now closed. But I remember looking up into those darkened windows from the street below and seeing Peter Jennings report the evening news. The studio's physical position overlooking Times Square – above the thousands of people gathered in that place every night – represented the program's concept of reach, of scope, of dimensionality, of embrace, of inclusion, and of vision.

The ABC Nightly News spoke, symbolically and literally, to not only Times Square but also the entire country and even the world. It was a powerful and brilliant metaphor of big communication and big engagement. It blew the walls out of the concept of place as a physical location and radically illustrated the potential of media over face-to-face communication. It was, at least to me, an arresting symbol of how big communication is, of how big performance is. A symbol of how really big vision needs to be.

It's huge. It's the power to see far beyond physical limitation.

When I first started doing stuff, I just did it, whatever. I really didn't know why. And I really didn't even know enough to care. Doing stuff was cool. Doing stuff was exciting and doing stuff seemed like a good idea at the time. Fun. I wanted the stuff to be strong and meaningful. I wanted to do good work. I wanted to be sure that the work I did hit a certain level of quality. I wanted people to know that I could deliver and that I had skills. I wanted to know within myself that my work had some substance, some value.

But did I care if it had any real underlying reason or intent? Did it ever enter my mind that the stuff could – or maybe even _should_ – mean something? No. In retrospect, I didn't care about any of that. For better or worse, for whatever the outcome may have been, I will admit that things were very simple at first. Cool idea. Do it. That works. Stuff gets done, cool stuff gets made. And people dig it.

At least that was a place to start. But eventually everything gets more complicated. Time and resources become more precious. Success brings more opportunities and it becomes harder and harder to know what to accept and what to turn down. Then, all of a sudden the inefficiency of a shotgun theory seems a liability rather than a liberating freedom.

One day, someone says something like, "Why do you always try to do stuff that's so, um, colorful/dark/loud/soft/ugly/beautiful?" And it's a friend, who really cares. Someone who's listened to way too much Mozart or whatever's on the radio. Someone who really wants to know because she really likes you but just can't understand your stuff at all.

What do you say? How do you answer?

I like it? I wanted to do it that way? Or maybe, "Um...I just didn't think of that." So you make up something. And it sounds pretty stupid or doesn't make any sense or doesn't really explain anything.

And she walks away.

Ouch.

Or worse. It's a producer, or a curator, or a potential collaborator you really admire, or a sponsor, or an investor, or an agent (as it was in my case) – someone who is really interested and has a lot of hope that your stuff could be the next big thing. But, see, in this world of reality we find ourselves in today, that person needs more than hope.

She needs a real reason. She is going to jump out of the window with you. This agent, this producer, this whatever needs to feel like the decision to devote time, commitment, and resources in your direction has at least some logic to it. She needs to feel like it's going to be a good thing to fall through the sky with you. She needs to be pretty sure the landing's not going to be so rough it pulls down her mortgage payments and the lease payments on the Maserati. Not to mention her kid's school bills.

Good work counts. Good work starts the conversation. Without good work, nothing's going to happen. Without good work, no one's even going to make a pass at you. But if they do, eventually there is some talk. And what do you say? There's got to be a strong and identifiable sense of an underlying foundation to the work or there really isn't anything to talk about. There needs to be something to hang a relationship on. A vision.

"Cool" only gets you so far.

To some extent it has to do with that crummy R word.

Responsibility.

Or maybe it's accountability.

Rule Breaker #9: Vision makes us true believers

The fact is, creative work is demanding. It demands the user to expend effort, time, or money to engage with the work. And it demands extraordinary sacrifices from everyone connected with making the project.

It's one thing to drag ourselves over every shard of broken glass on the sidewalk, but to do it to others is another story. That's asking a lot. That's asking people to give up their own set of priorities and accept ours, instead. Even if money is involved, their willingness to follow us over the edge in pursuit of _our_ idea is going to need more than a few tokens of expendable currency.

See, we're all jumping out the window, together. And all these people are helping to drag the audience, the market, the users, the viewers along for the ride, too. We're all free falling. And we're doing this because...? Because of this idea? Because of something that seemed cool one night? Because of something that just seems like it might be a good idea?

Sorry, they're going to need more than that.

After having landed hard on the pavement a few times, just about anyone is going to be a little shy about stepping out on the ledge again. Taking the leap starts to seem like a lot bigger decision the second or third or fourth or fifth time around. And all these people, these talented performers, stitchers, painters, actors, dancers, craftspeople, and devoted investors honestly want to be true believers. But they need something that will convince them it's going to be OK, this time.

And then, what if it gets bumpy along the way? We all want to hear the captain come on the microphone and sound like Chuck Yeager. We want to hear from someone who can see what's ahead, who can see out the _front_ window and tell us what all this turbulence is really about. We want to hear from someone who can keep us focused so that we can ignore our own fears and distractions, and the rough ride, and get back at it.

The voice on the microphone expresses the vision. The vision that will get us over the bumps. The vision that will guide the hard or impossible decisions that must be made. The vision that will keep the project moving in the direction intended, even when there's a 50 knot side wind or an unexpected new product on the market that's trying to push us off the road, or turn us into road kill.

Vision keeps us looking ahead. Vision keeps us looking outward. Vision keeps us from getting distracted and turning the wrong corner just because there was a cute blonde down that street.

Look up vision in the dictionary and it turns out to have evolved from two early origins. To see. To know. Knowing everything means knowing a lot. More than most people can ever accomplish. More than I will ever know. I'm acquainted with some real geniuses that know everything. But I'm not one of them. The best I can hope for is to know as much as I can. To constantly strive to know more. About what? The barrio, the community, the competition, the past, the future, the technology, the philosophies, and imaginings that drive people, the expectations of the market, and the successes and accomplishments of others. And as difficult as it is, to know about myself.

As much as vision is about looking out and seeing more and more all the time – the details and color and light and knowledge – it is also an awful lot about looking in. It is about seeing ourselves with accuracy – our strengths and opportunities, where we fit in, what we're really doing, what we should be doing. It is an almost detached observation of ourselves as we work and function. What's good for us, what suits us? What jacket feels right and doesn't make us look too fat or too skinny? What vocabulary, what set of initiatives, what collection of references and associations work best to achieve a more full representation of who we are and what we hope to accomplish?

What should we be doing? Right now? Look out the window, think about it. Ponder the potentials and the realities. What can each of us do – that no one else could ever do? There's something there. Look again. That's the core, the focal point, the target of what we should be looking at. Don't get distracted, don't look away. We need to aim our vision intently on this and lock it down. Seriously know this.

Rule Breaker #10: Vision is the measure of direction and purpose

Vision guides the decisions that have to be made, makes sure the hard decisions don't get ignored, sets priorities for what needs to be done first. Vision gives us the freedom to let go of things that don't matter, that won't move the enterprise forward. Vision motivates, it gives us all a sense that on a day-to-day basis this thing is going somewhere. And that means it's worth hanging in there, it's worth staying committed, it's worth a continued modulation of personal priorities for the good of the project. The vision overrides personal concerns or personal fears or personal doubts.

How can we keep going? How can we make the tough commitments, how can we do the hard work that needs to be done?

Great work captivates. It inspires, commands attention, seduces involvement. But when there are bills to be paid, or the work gets dirty or scary – like risking one's career, reputation, friendships, family, or living accommodations – personal commitment alone usually isn't enough.

We need insights and knowledge – a vision – that can withstand the hard tests of real world necessities. We need some logic, we need some confidence, we need some faith to make a big leap. We need to understand the real reason why we're all hanging here in mid-air together. We need some kind of foundation for this jam session we call creativity. We need something that will make us believe this crazy notion is actually a really good idea.

We need some leadership. We need vision.

__________

finding sushi

Provoking a vision beyond the borders of meatloaf

What ever happened to superficiality? What happened to something like a plate of ordinary mac and cheese? It's a sushi world now.

Not that I don't dig it. There's something logically beautiful about sushi. And it tastes supremely delicious, looks amazingly cool, and the materials are impeccable. Fine sushi truly represents high production values. Detailed, refined, and developed to perfection.

Small pieces of intimacy. And there's more. Lots more. Variety, I mean. There's a multitude of shapes and colors – a thoroughly integrated design collection. Variations on the use of materials. New combinations, new relationships, new connections. The blending of references and the juxtaposition of familiar and unknown. A full spectrum of values, tones, shades, realized. Colorful, unique shapes that inspire me to want to pick them up and hold them. They work. They whisper, "I'm irresistible." Enticing. Engaging. Tempting.

How could I have been missing this all these years? It was out there all the time, waiting. But did I notice? Naw.

Why? I wasn't looking. Just not bothering to pay attention. Too self-satisfied to care. To ignorant to know better. Narrow vision. I was missing it.

It took a trip to Tokyo to get me to wake up, stretch my boundaries, move outside my comfort zone. To try something unheard of, something uncooked. I got it. First time. Instantly, my vision blew open, I saw into whole new areas of possibility that had never even occurred to me before. My perceptions became far more diverse. And all of a sudden I was searching for more, wanting more.

Sushi reflects a vision that is extremely nuanced, highly developed, captivating, and spectacular. Isn't this the vision we're all looking for? Isn't this the vision we really need? Sushi is life, fully realized. Sushi is vision, expanded. Serious ingredients. No corn syrup, no filler, nothing preprocessed. But the content is deeper and richer than simply raw and natural. It is exotic and fantastic. Impeccably preserved fragments of extraordinary creatures. The materials express the immense diversity and beauty of infinity. There is just so much substance in this stuff it is impossible not to respect it. If food can have gravitas, this is it.

Impact. The tastes, shapes, textures all hit us. Grab us. Unforgettable. Heavy, serious stuff.

Rule Breaker #11: Don't stop asking for more

The materials? Let's face it, they're rare, highly prized, valuable. Can you go down to the local grocery and pick up fresh eel? Live? I can't. And is that grocery counter fish that they're selling really fresh enough to eat – raw? I'm not really convinced it is.

It's just not good enough to limit our vision to ordinary stuff, any more. The content and materials have to be heavy, rare, expensive, exotic, highly complex, absurdly technical, insanely detailed, minutely precise, big, and yes, AWESOME – in the true and complete meaning of that word.

Meaning, that the work inspires awe. "Awe" in fact refers to something very deep and profound. An overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear. When the stuff we make causes the users to be awestruck, we're doing something that hasn't happen to them for a while. It is the overwhelming part that is where the gravity kicks in.

A vision of the extraordinary: To inspire awe, the work has to contain a sense of mystery or wonder. It's really hard to be awestruck at something that is common or familiar. In sushi, even the rice is amazing. The materials, the content, the design, and the execution all come together in a form that represents extreme vision.

When creativity flows from a vision this immense, it's arresting. Captivating. I'm paying close attention.

I really do need to pay attention, because I don't want to get run over! I'm walking through the aisles of Tsukiji, the great fish market in Tokyo. And my eyes are completely wide open. I'm taking it all in. And I'm looking both ways every time I move.

Hundreds of little pink and blue and green Honda and Toyota motorized carts are darting in and out of the stalls. Each cart carries stacks of Styrofoam boxes filled with seafood. Very fresh seafood. Some of it still alive and wiggling and looking around for something to grab on to. You've got to pay attention because billions of yen are being traded here and it may look like some kind of medieval fisherman's wharf but it is in fact a huge business and these people are working seriously hard.

Beyond self-preservation, it just seemed important to stay out of their way. Gaijin or not, I'm on the work floor and I don't want to make someone's day harder than it is already by standing around like a deer in the headlights.

Respect. It hangs in the air. I can literally feel it. Amid the chaos of activity in the predictably small spaces, the climate and facial expressions are the same as I'd seen at CSO television shoots and my own recording sessions. Intense concentration, and some kind of inner satisfaction that is impossible to put words on except to say that something was going on inside that was far from ordinary.

This work means something. Something deep. Dedication, sincerity, honesty, commitment, selfless-ness. It was communicated without words through the way people looked at each other, the way the fish were displayed, the way the creatures were handled and cared for, the way everyone was calm and deeply focused. Serious work was going on here. And it drew me in.

I'm always pulled in by the power of individual expression. When someone is speaking to me, directly, intimately, with passion and an open heart, I'm listening. I'm not blinking. I'm not slipping out at intermission.

Chaos? Disorder? It turns out there are formulas to mathematically model that stuff. It's not random; it's not out of control at all. It's just wildly complicated, way highly developed. Maybe too complicated to understand superficially.

Tsukiji, Stravinsky, Xenakis. Intuitively, I see it. I feel it. I feel the depth and order and integrity and impact. I respect that. Serious vision indeed.

Rule Breaker #12: Change the world

Like sushi, vision is deep, detailed, beautiful, exotic, and amazing. And like sushi was for me, vision can be life changing. For the people developing "1984" they were given little else to go on. Steve Job's brief for the spot was simple and direct, "I want to stop the world in its tracks." (Hayden)

Brent Thomas, the art director on the project, was keenly interested in politics and foreign policy. And the world, as it is now, was then a complicated and changing place. As many did, Thomas saw the mouse-driven interface as a means for broad accessibility. However, he saw it in practical terms rooted in deeper, underlying creative values and ideals. User-friendly access allowed anyone with the drive to communicate, the ability to distribute ideas. Thomas saw the power of vision when he recognized the interface's practical potential in political terms.

Steve Hayden recalls that "it occurred to us that the advent of Xerography had a tremendous impact on closed societies like the Soviet Union. The Samizdat, the underground press where people were passing around manuscripts, all that was made possible by the Xerox machine. Imagine what a computer that everyone could use would do? It's going to change the world in ways we don't know." (St. John)

"We knew that if fax machines could bring down dictatorships, personal computers could do infinitely more," Hayden later added. (Hayden)

When the underlying vision is so intense and driven by clear identity, the outcome will be powerful and compelling. It is vision that provides the power of our creativity and when we focus it on our imagination and allow it to guide our inspiration, our ideas will be deeply rooted and powerful. They will captivate us, invigorate us, and maybe even change the world.

Rule Breaker #13: Get intense, sometimes

Sushi is powerful. It provokes a vision that is thoroughly stimulating. Its intensity is not founded upon its size or weight. Sushi is powerful because it is extremely intense and massively captivating, deeply significant culturally, and profoundly sensual and personal. It is the product of elaborately complex processes of procurement and delivery, the result of supremely skilled makers, and it carries the reference of exotic materials from mysterious and unfathomable places. Sushi captivates with its infinite variety, highly refined sense of style, shape, and use of color, and makes tangible connections to sight and touch and taste and smell.

Sushi is about as individually provocative and sensuous as nearly anything can be. Touching it, measuring the precise moment to put it in your mouth is a ritual of deep reverence and heightened consciousness.

It is as if in a single moment the majesty of the ages and the wisdom of the world have all come together in one glorious instant of insight and transcendence. One magnified moment of intimate passion and release. Beyond extraordinary. A vision all encompassing. The true rush.

Can I have some more, please?

So I'm making sushi now. My vision is not restrained, not held in by the borders of my geography, not measured by the limits of my familiarity. Not constrained by a need for ground beef. I'm reaching for a vision of sushi dimensions – overwhelming intensity, powerful energy. I'm down for serious materials, respect for the process and the work, turning up the temp on sensory overload and intimate personal connections. I'm delving into the details of technique and execution. And I'm going after intensity rather than simply something big. Size really isn't where the power comes from. It's from the burn. The sensations. The rich dark flavor.

Vision embodies elegance, detail, nuance, exceptional materials, craft of execution, and excellence. When they all come together, it gives us a feeling of being awestruck, of being completely overwhelmed. It's the experience of being captivated and transported, of being dragged into a new consciousness that leaves the ordinary and the jaded expectations lying in a pile of discarded litter on the floor. It literally blows everything away.

Like the first time. The first exposure to just about anything intense. First touch, the first night together, the first performance, the first airplane flight, the first time I spun out. The first time I saw Monet's water lilies, the first time I saw a Macintosh, the first time I sailed. That stuff sticks and sticks.

So keep searching, keep looking. Vision moves, vision grows, vision expands. Vision is infinite. It's that simple and that complex.

__________

3

### inspiration

The intersection of imagination and reality
__________

take risks, cause collisions

Feed inspiration, poke it, shake it, give it a good shove

" _Get your motor runnin',_

Head out on the highway.

Lookin' for adventure,

And whatever comes our way..."

Inspiration is a flash, a spark, a vision of something never before seen. A point of departure.

I am convinced that magic, the supernatural, a miracle, smoke and mirrors, chance, or even luck have nothing to do with it. Inspiration comes from somewhere else. Someplace very real. As real as the faces darting past me as I stand in the middle of Shibuya Crossing. As real as the sounds of Coltrane, the colors of Georgia O'Keefe, the passion of Paul Taylor. And as tangible, powerful, and penetrating as the January wind hitting me hard in the face as it roars in off Oak Street Beach.

Rule Breaker #14: Nurture Inspiration

Inspiration is the spark that ignites the whole process. Somewhere at the intersection of imagination and reality an idea is discovered. Ideas are the spontaneous combustion of our identity and our vision. Ideas form from a vision clearly focused on our values and ideals. We examine and parse them in thought as we evaluate their potential and suitability.

This is how the "1984" spot began. Hayden and Thomas were looking for an idea. Brainstorming began by collecting all the agency's existing proposals and copy into what they referred to as a "shuffle pile," an unstructured collection of bits and pieces of concepts.

One piece stood out, a piece from San Francisco copywriter, Gary Gusick. The layout contained a simple image of an Apple computer with the headline, "Why 1984 won't be like '1984.'" Hayden recounted, "Brent Thomas and I found it in a pile of layouts from Chiat/Day, San Francisco, and thought we could make a spot out of it." (Hayden)

Inspiration is not simply hoping to be in the right place at the right time. Finding inspiration is about knowing what to look for. And that's where vision comes in.

Ideas are everywhere. What gets tricky is picking through the ideas and arriving at a set of possibilities that are the right ones to go for. It is vision that guides our inspiration.

" _Yeah Darlin' go make it happen,_

Take the world in a love embrace.

Fire all of your guns at once,

And explode into space..."

Explore your own individual inspiration. Figure out what sparks your own inspiration. Maybe it comes from connecting with people, being in exciting places, or doing something like climbing, running, or even just hanging out. The part of us that discovers new ideas needs refreshment – new insights, new impressions, new flavors, new perspectives. We need to feed and expand our inspiration. Our creative vision can give our search direction.

And we need to push it. Inspiration is happening all around us, but the best ideas are full of energy and originality. We've got to reach a little harder to discover the really good ones. For me, that means reaching for the edge and even hanging my toes over the side just a little bit. It's somewhat disturbing watching the loose gravel fall away, but the best ideas are going to require us to go somewhere we've never been before. It might be scary, but it's worth it.

So don't hold back. Search for the unexpected, the unconventional, the jarring and unfamiliar. Feed your soul and ignite your passion, explode the boundaries of perception, and elevate possibility way beyond the confines of the ordinary. There is no idea that is inherently impossible. If it's worth doing, there's a way to make it happen.

Rule Breaker #15: Chase inspiration

I got hooked really early. I was just a kid. I didn't know better. For me the coolest place to be, when I was young, was the local teen dance club. It was a high school-only place and a lot of kids hung out there every weekend. It was the scene; totally packed and totally alive. But the coolest thing for me was the real live bands that played there every Friday and Saturday night. Rock and R&B. It was the 60's; that pretty much covers it.

When I was 12, I started hanging around the stage door so I could hear the bands and maybe get a peek inside. After awhile the teacher that ran the snack bar realized that I was too young to be there and asked me what I was up to – "Why are you out so late?"

I told him I played guitar and that I just wanted to hear the music.

"OK, you can come in for a few minutes. Stand here, don't touch anything." Sometimes he would sneak me in backstage so I could actually see what was going on. And it just blew me away. Getting to hear the music from the band's perspective was about as amazing as it could get. And looking at all those instruments, amps, and a real PA system was pure nirvana.

To my surprise, after a couple of months the student that worked the snack bar quit and the teacher offered me the job. So I was in. All the way in. And it was just unbelievable. I always arrived really early so I could watch the bands set up their instruments and listen to the sound checks. I hung around afterwards and took in the whole band scene, learned about the gear and heard the band members talking about their music.

I was in way deep by that point.

" _I like smoke and lightning,_

Heavy metal thunder.

Racin' with the wind,

And the feelin' that I'm under..."

Once I was actually in high school and old enough to meet the age requirement, I left the snack bar gig and hung around the stage all the time. I would watch the guitar players' hands and cop as many chords and licks as I could. There was a lot of great music coming out then, a lot of great songs to learn.

But the thing that always bugged me was that most people didn't pay any attention to the music, even when the bands were really good. They danced, hung out at the snack bar, or stood around trying to have conversations by shouting into each other's ears.

I had played in a rock band since fourth grade. Those first years were pretty minimal – we started with one-string versions of _Louie, Louie_ and progressed up to three chord rock tunes such as _Wild Thing_. Serious, heavy stuff.

Over the years, the bands that I played in moved through various styles and periods: Beatles to Stones to psychedelic stuff like The Airplane and The Doors. In high school, we were into jazz-rock and playing the music of Chicago (no surprise there), Steve Winwood, and BS&T. At this point I was now playing Hammond organ and piano. The band had become really focused on the music and everyone could really play.

When it came to be our turn to do a gig at the center, we came in and set up our instruments and started to play. About halfway through the first set, that's when it happened: People began to sit down on the dance floor around the stage. No one was talking.

In all the five years that I had been going there, both working the counter and as a student, this had never happened before. Everyone in the place just came over and sat down – to listen.

My mission was inked into me that day. Even without being able to articulate it at the time, I somehow realized that this kind of stuff can hit people hard. And I knew I wanted to do that some more. I wanted to get out there and say something.

It seems simplistic but in a lot of ways, I'm still just trying to achieve that same thing. Trying to put on a good enough performance that people stop what they're doing, pay attention for a few minutes, and leave with the feeling that there is something good, something peaceful, something beautiful still in the world.

Good work can reach out and grab people and sit them down and make them want to pay attention. This stuff really does communicate, really does command attention. This stuff can really work. That's the core, the main vein. The fiber-optic trunk line. That's the spark that makes it all seem worth it.

Rule Breaker #16: Jolt inspiration, high voltage optional

"It's the guitars' turn!!!!" – Guitar Center, 1981, North Western Avenue, Chicago. An old worn-down grocery store. Probably an old A&P or Kroger's. Used to be lots of those around. Plenty big enough for all the gear. One big room.

It was overwhelmingly deafening. Incredibly distorted. Guitars blasting all kinds of riffs – Rock, Blues, and way too many truly special versions of "Stairway to Heaven."

About 10 minutes later a voice comes on the PA and shouts over the din, "It's the drums' turn!" Instantly the gale force of a dozen drummers kicks in and slowly the sound of guitar playing fades into a distant memory. The solo from _In-a-Gadda-da-Vida_ in four in five different tempos – all at the same time.

Finally, it's the keyboard's turn. But nobody pays any attention. And then the cycle starts all over again.

This is what my wife and I did on Saturday afternoons. Hanging out there was always a blast of inspiration.

"Let's go to Guitar Center, yeah!" Cool.

Inspiration comes from the part inside that is willing to crank up all the knobs, yank the mask off of conventionality, kick tradition to the curb, and throw the ordinary and predictable down the back stairs. It's the part that generates the electricity that powers the whole system. It is the part that is at once deep down inside and simultaneously filling all space.

It's our center. Our core. It's electric.

" _Like a true nature's child,_

We were born, born to be wild.

We can climb so high,

I never wanna die.

Born to be wild,

Born to be wild..."
__________

the legend of inspiration

Ideas are the cowboys of the modern world

Inspiration can seem like a dark, mysterious antihero. Be careful 'cause he's gonna break your heart. One day you'll be stuck at home doing the dishes, when inspiration is out at the bar, having a great time.

Inspiration may even be one of those bad guys from a Western drama, I don't know which one. What I do know is that there is a legend about inspiration that makes everyone in town run and hide, or stand back in awe. Inspiration seems to have the power to put a brick on everything. Am I feeling inspired today? Oh no! Maybe I'm not.

Is there a big red button somewhere that needs to be pushed; I'm looking. Why does it always seem like Clint Eastwood would be useful in times like this?

" _Where is my John Wayne,_

Where is my prairie song,

Where is my happy ending,

Where have all the cowboys gone?"

Ideas are the source. The wellspring. The center. Ideas are tangible expressions of our inspiration. Ideas are messy, born of the mash-up of chaos and order; founded on the melding of spontaneity and deliberation, of wisdom and intuition. They are found within us upon the edge of imagination, the place where the known meets the unknown, where reality glimpses the potential of that which might be.

Ideas are simultaneously in the moment and infused with the richness of the ages. Ideas embrace what's happening on the ground in cultures, venues, and communities; they are as wide as our vision can reach. Great ideas come from the synthesis of individual vision and imagination, the freedom to transcend self-imposed and external limits, and a deep and honest attachment to the world and the people that fill it.

Rule Breaker #17: We really are all in this together

Ideas are about us. All of us. Ideas are about humanity, reaching forward, asking for and seeking a new way to understand what's going on. Pure, raw ideas are at the heart of brother- and sister-hood; selflessly at the core of unity and oneness. They are ripe with potential and hope. Ideas want to join us all together, lead us into new directions. They make us all look outward and see something that we've never seen before. They make us realize something new. Something we need to know, something we want to know. Something that promises to make all of our lives better. Something that hopes to make us all understand a little more about whatever it is that's going on here.

Ideas are expressions of the human condition. They are the way that we figure out who we are, where we want to go, and why we do what we do. New ideas are the way we look ahead, look into the future, grasp our destiny, and collectively move forward.

Ideas change us.

" _Where is my happy ending,_

Where have all the cowboys gone?

Where have all the cowboys gone?"

Look outside of yourself. Look hard. Keep looking. Ideas are not about "me, me, me." Ideas are about everyone else. It is all about a deeper sense of humanity, a more embracing sense of community, a heartfelt connection to the world as a vast multifaceted village of individuals. Ideas are about embracing all of it and speaking to everyone. Ideas are about reaching out instead of holding anything back. It is completely self-less, open, and giving.

Rule Breaker #18: Stretch vision, it's elastic

If all this is true, the best way I have found to expand my ideas is to be a part of a community, contribute to it, explore it, be fascinated by it, be immersed in it. Spend time with people. Discuss and debate. Ponder common or contrary ideas. Fascinate each other. Explore the world near and far. Make discoveries. Find out what new thing just happened yesterday. Or is happening today – just down the street or on the other side of the world. Taste new flavors, ride a different bus, walk through someone else's neighborhood.

Study new techniques, learn stuff. Read, attend performances or lectures, go to an art gallery, see a film. Load that personal database with new experiences from every direction. I'm a musician. I should learn calculus. Scary as that is, it would be good for me.

Move outside the safe zone. Ideas are everywhere but the really cool ones, the ones that are going to do something really interesting are not within arm's reach. They take a little more effort than that. Finding them – and understanding their potential – requires a broader perception, a wider vision, and a deep personal awareness of what it is like outside the envelope of our initial experience.

Move faster, farther, and look with deeper and more acute perception. Notice the details, the inflections, the dialects, and the nuances. Seek answers. Ask questions, and yes, even ask for directions. Jump in, initiate interaction, uncover the meaning of everything. Know as much of the world, as many of its peoples as you can, in any way possible. Travel or not, at least read, look, listen, and feel.

The breadth and scope of our experience, the expansiveness of our vision, is the realm of our ideas. Vision is filled with great ideas waiting to be discovered.

Ideas are the result of inspiration; inspiration is the process that reveals ideas. This process begins in an awareness of our identity. It is our experience, our individual set of skills and circumstances combined with our hopes and aspirations that provides the underlying framework of inspiration.

Inspiration is guided by vision, what we see, what we can discover, and what we want to bring to the world. Vision is our embrace of the entire human condition as we see it from the basis of our own individual experience, our identity. The more we can make our vision individual and unique – founded on the true individuality of our identity – the more useful our vision will be to the process of inspiration. Additionally, the more we work to enhance the individuality of our identity and to expand the reach of our vision, the more refined and efficient our inspiration process will become.

Being inspired is reliable and immediate when the materials we provide as input are rich in potential – when inspiration is infused with strong connections to community and rooted in the real experience of ourselves and others.

Ideas follow the trace of a circle; rooted in our connection with community we filter experience, recast it in new forms, and our ideas return to the world – touching, and embracing all. This is the source, the place where ideas happen: outside, in the real world. In the depths of history, in the colors and textures and sounds of cultures near and far, in the voices and words of real people that touch us and connect with us.

That's the place to look. That's the place to be. The place where inspiration is found is broad and rich and wide and ever expanding. Start in this place, here, right now. And reach out, again and again, each time further than the last. Then, our ideas, our work, our projects, our creativity will intrinsically embrace wider audiences, captivate diverse communities, and foster significant change.

Rule Breaker #19: Inspiration is imagination focused by our vision

Inspiration is the desire to search, to move farther and to look harder. It is the result of a vision broad and deep, and a commitment to enter in and be a part of it all. Inspiration is not passive, and it is not illusive. It is the result of a thorough engagement with every fragment of our vision and an active embrace of every aspect of the world it touches.

Inspiration is unfailing. Ideas are out there ready to be discovered, awaiting our willingness to see them through the eyes of new potential. Inspiration is the engine that drives our work. It is the moment of intense awareness that there is an idea, a new direction, a solution that meets the needs of real people. It is the thrill of discovery and the solemn commitment to make it happen.

Inspiration is the conviction that change is possible.
Part Two

__________

### action

If creativity were a science, this would be its laboratory. It is here that artistic and creative ideas are refined and developed through our systems of implementation until they are a complete expression of the idea's potential. It is here that our methods and processes are tested, tweaked, and redesigned, and our skills and abilities are expanded. It is in this real-world domain of artistic and creative expression that the strength of our resolve, and power of our statement, are forged upon the basis of our own identity.

This is where ideas become very real. Creativity is the result of inspiration and action – working in unity and synchronization. Creativity is the _fulfillment_ of ideas, the product of imagination made real and useful.

Rule Breaker #20: Making ideas work is the cool part

To briefly recap, identity is the core of the creative spirit, the starting point from which all our creative ability flows. Vision is where the scope and potential of our identity is held within the borders of our perception. The more expansive and all embracing our vision, the more far-reaching becomes the potential of our ideas.

Ideas need direction and substance, they need the force of a solid intent. This is creative vision, the inner force that compels us to write, compose, sing, dance, make new, and build higher. Vision is also the touchstone, the guiding light that keeps our work moving forward to an intended completion.

Inspiration is the source of our ideas. However, this inspiration is not the variable and unpredictable whispers of a romanticized muse. Inspiration is founded upon the ideals and intent we hold in the depths of our identity.

Creative action is where ideas meet the real world, where inspiration and vision reach out and touch the hearts and minds of us all. Within our own identity lies the unique abilities, talents, skills, and technique to execute our vision and bring inspiration into reality.

This is where it gets gritty, messy, imprecise. It takes hard work – intense struggle, practice, a determination to keep going – to find the richness of expression that fulfills the potential and vision of great ideas. It is here, in the realm of expression that all kinds of stuff tries to limit our ability to fully achieve our inspiration, to fully manifest our identity. It is here, that the imagination comes down to street level and gets dirty, gets real.

Resources, opportunities, access, training, are all elements of the real world that appear beyond our control, outside the reaches of our own identity, beyond the scope of our own volition. It can all seem insurmountable. It can get discouraging.

If action is nothing more than voice and process, these challenges can seem real and unsolvable. But again, within the prism, the white light of our identity is expanded and magnified. Reach deeper into identity and find strength and conviction. This strength is the force that guides our resilience, the elasticity that overcomes the unexpected and rises above the obstacles that seem to prevent the full expression of inspiration. Strength is the courage and conviction that achieves the never-before-seen, that opens all our eyes to a world that is new, that is better, that gives us hope based on something more secure than simply a dream.

At its very foundation, creativity is our identity expressed. As we move through the layers of discovery and action, ideas become real and tangible. Vision ignites our inspiration, voice and process undergird the strength of our ability and conviction.

Rule Breaker #21: Ideas are energy in motion

Ultimately, ideas move out into the world and live among us, benefiting us according to their purpose. Is creativity then, a circle, to start again, a never-ending pipeline of ideas awaiting development and action? Yes. But there is more, too.

Creative freedom is the overarching line itself. The unseen character that gives us the ability to be undaunted by the variables of external forces. Freedom is exactly this, the wisdom to act with complete independence and confidence. Creative freedom is the authority and power to do this. It is mastery, the high goal, the solid ground, the unfaltering motion forward. It is the understanding that within a solid identity lies the ability to do whatever needs to be done to bring an idea to life.

Freedom is the unrestrained ability to create – to discover and act with the ability and conviction that this whole crazy enchilada of uncertainties will come together and actually work. Freedom is our ability to create, fearlessly.

__________

4

### voice

The content and form of ideas
__________

crank it up

Warning: dangerously high levels of intensity

The subway door opens, the platform is jammed. No room. We squeeze in somehow. This could be just about any big city, Saturday night. The bump and grind of people living hard and fast. But this particular time, it is Tokyo and I'm riding the wave of humanity up the stairs and through the labyrinth of passageways and platforms. I don't need to know where I'm going, I'm being pulled ahead by the flow. And then suddenly it's the exit and I step outside into Shibuya Crossing.

Rule Breaker #22: Strive for awesome, settle for intense

This is the street corner where more people meet each day than anywhere else. The legendary crossroad of cars and people, day and night, thousands in one place, an unending current of individuality. But it is most amazing at night. High above, in a surrounding arc are giant video screens playing music videos and commercials in ultra-bright high definition. Dance moves, Anime, cool stuff all flying overhead in a dream-like futuristic pop culture cloud stream. At times, all the media locks into sync and the buildings and technology become one enormous multimedia display.

Moving forward, past countless groups of people hanging out, talking, laughing, smiling, digging everything. Is this a party or is it real life? Is it the same thing?

I'm standing at the edge, waiting. Cars creep past, taxi doors open and men and women step out, step in. And then the lights change and the street is empty, for an instant. No cars, no people – a vast openness of pavement and opportunity. And I look across, as if I were searching for something, someone, on a far riverbank, and suddenly a mass of people surges around me. On all sides, in response to one magnificent cue from an unseen stage director, the choreography begins.

In the halogen-cool spotlights of the video, the intersection becomes an enormous stage filled with the movement of a thousand or more real performers. Immediately, it seems unreal, like those scenes in films with legions of warriors generated by algorithmic duplication and rendered in the mainframe of a movie studio. But it's not CG. This is for real. This is something else, real people, and this is my own experience – my own real life, now, and forever it will be.

Real intensity, surrounding me, electrifying me, and pulling me forward.

It is ballet, opera, music video, technology all at once. But it is also love and life and joy and excitement and real intensity like nothing else could be.

Sharply recalibrated perceptions. Intense experiences, the kind that completely obliterate everything else that is happening in the world at that moment. There's real energy in all that. There's a lot of complexity, a lot of layers of living going on. It commands our full attention. We're listening, we're paying attention, we're reaching out to grab on for the ride. We're in hyper-mode where nothing else even exists. We're captivated, plugged in, and locked on.

Riveted. That's the kind of impact I want my work to have. I want people to feel it, taste it, hear it. Flavors. Scents. Sounds.

Intensity. Whatever we're saying has to connect and really lock down hard. The work has to grab on and not let go. It's got to bite really deep. Sometimes it's going to have to draw some blood. The work simply has to rise to a higher level, cut through the noise, command attention; be radically intense.

Rule Breaker #23: Shatter expectations

When Steve Hayden and Brent Thomas discovered Gary Gusick's tag line, "Why 1984 won't be like '1984,'" it was only the beginning, the flash of initial inspiration. The next step was to give depth and content – voice – to the idea.

Gusick's initial layout with the simple computer photo needed more energy and in the language of creativity, it needed a more highly defined identity. Hayden and Thomas showed the concept to creative director, Lee Clow, who responded "It's not enough to just say that. You have to shatter the image that's in people's minds." (Heisler)

It was Clow that came up with the concept of a young woman running into the hall and throwing a baseball bat at the man on the screen, at Big Brother.

Shortly after the meeting with Clow, Hayden and Thomas met with director Ridley Scott, who was in LA for the filming of _Blade Runner_. Scott took one look at the story boards and said, " **'** A baseball bat is far too American. If you gave her a sledgehammer to throw at the screen, it would be a more universal symbol." (Heisler)

In a 2011 article in Advertising Age, Hayden elaborates, "Director Ridley Scott had everything to do with making "1984" great. Lee Clow had suggested that the heroine who runs in and smashes the screen with Big Brother haranguing the masses should carry a baseball bat. But Ridley insisted that a far better symbol would be a hammer. He was right, of course, and, as a result, the spot actually foreshadowed the fall of the Iron Curtain." (Hayden)

Hayden recalls that "The first version of the spot was more Jetsons than Metropolis." (Hayden) Again, it was Ridley Scott that refined the voice and clarified the message. It was Scott's reference to Fritz Lang's 1927 film, _Metropolis_ , that gave the spot its dystopian look and feel. At 4:01 in the opening of the restored version of the film, columns of workers standing shoulder to shoulder march, tired and downtrodden, into darkened tunnels at "shift change." The title cards read, "Deep beneath the earth lay the City of the Workers." (Tief unter / der Erde lag die / Stadt der Arbeuter.) (Lang)

The nuance of voice frames the entire statement and gives the concepts and messages their ultimate impact. Even amazing ideas need refinement and development. Inspiration triggers ideas but it is our ability, knowledge, insight, and humanity that give them shape and substance. Vision is content in a context, a combination of practical details that stand in the light of significance and meaning. Voice throws character, darkness and light, and energy upon our ideas and gives them the means to communicate with power and authority.

Rule Breaker #24: Conform to nothing but originality

The reason I'm here today, doing what I'm doing – all of it, all the many dead ends and successes – is to a large extent the result of one night at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I was in college, sitting in the gallery, the cheap seats in the highest level of Orchestra Hall that have a rake about equivalent to the angle of a stepladder. That is to say I was sitting right over the top of the orchestra and looking down on the whole concert as if it were a chess board playing out a fantastically new and exciting game right before my eyes. Looking down, watching the orchestration of each composition in top-down realism was seriously mind-expanding as few other things have ever been.

But the single most incredible factor in that experience was the music, Bartok's _Concerto for Orchestra_. This work is on just about everyone's short list of the top five masterpieces of the 20th century – for good reason. It is completely unbelievable in every respect – highly original themes, stunning orchestration, exciting rhythms, and the piece rocks.

At least it does for me – that time and every time I've heard it over all these years.

At that moment in time I had played rock music since I was 9 years old. Played guitar, piano, and Hammond organ in garage bands and basement bands since before my voice changed. Soon, I became fascinated with jazz because I heard it as a more musically sophisticated expression of the excitement and drive of rock. At the time, the cultural significance of jazz just hadn't sunk in to me yet. But even though I was too naive to fully comprehend the reason, I was fully aware that jazz was able to generate a palpable level of intensity. All I cared about was turning it up, way up.

But I had never been to a symphony concert. Never. And this was the first one.

So when Bartok's _Concerto for Orchestra_ began with its low, mysterious bass line melody growing out of nowhere and building into a blasting full orchestral statement, I really just read it as cranking the knob past 10. It was all the power of everything I was already into, but pushed even higher. It showed me an entirely new level of intensity and I was blown away.

Rule Breaker #25: Shouting works

Voice is the language and materials that form the work itself. The content. Voice is the actual "stuff" that makes the idea real – the sounds, shapes, colors, textures, and forms. Shibuya Crossing, or the Bartok – what makes those experiences so intense? Layers and layers of really awesome content.

The expression of ideas is the result of interconnected layers of elements, detail, scope, passion, resolve, far reaching insight, a clear and direct application of identity and an all-embracing vision. The fundamental factor in the intensity of these experiences is the energy expressed through the materials. In the Bartok, energy is expressed in the highly focused unified effort of 120 musicians. The energy of unified human endeavor is the core of the intensity in both of these situations.

There's the energy of compound layers interacting, of the bigness and the details. In the Bartok, the intensity is found in the logic and coherence of the artistic statement. Study the score and it becomes obvious. There's a lot more depth of meaning and sheer human insight going on than just some rocking brass parts and bass lines. The thing that makes the Bartok a masterpiece is the way the music, the content, is such a tightly focused and direct expression of the vision. In this case the vision is structural, the concept of a concerto for the whole orchestra, each section one at a time. Fundamentally, that's powerful because it draws upon both levels of intensity – the energy of a unified collective human endeavor and the intimacy and nuance of individual expression. The work pulls us in from both levels of the human scale – big and powerful, quiet and highly subtle. Energy is not just wattage, horsepower, volume. It is the directness of the communication.

In the case of Shibuya Crossing, the drama of the space – the lighting, the size of the street, the panoramic sweep of the buildings, the hyper-bright lighting of the video screens – combine into layers of energy that complement and reinforce their effect. Shibuya Crossing is not an artistic statement, but what makes it such a highly compelling place, and the reason why so many young people hang out there, is that it expresses the intensity of voice through its various elements in a way that has the impact and force of a masterpiece. That level of intensity, whether it is a work of art, or not, rises above the level of distraction and draws us all in, and holds us there, wanting more and more.

But no matter how accurately the content expresses the intent, it's not enough to just put an idea out there. It's going to get run over in the street while it sits there waiting for someone to notice.

Standing in the midst of thousands of people in a place like Times Square or Shibuya Crossing is a glimpse into the intensity that's going on right now in the bandwidth of our collective lives. And the hard fact is, the world today is one gigantic mix of intensity, layers upon layers of energy interconnected and interacting.

How can any work, perhaps even a small indie project with no budget and no backers even have a chance of being seen or heard? Energy and intensity is propelled by vision. A strong, powerful, compelling vision is going to foster ideas and works that reflect that intensity. But that's not enough, anymore. There's way too many distractions going on. The reality is that great ideas, expressed with intensity is not all it takes. There are connections to be made and communities to be developed.

Voice starts with the craft, the skills and the technique to forge statements that accurately state our intent, our vision. Voice plugs in the energy, frames our statements in ways that contend with the currents and crosswinds that exist in the world today.

Our work is swimming hard against the current of everything else that's going on right now in this hugely interconnected mental and physical consciousness we call our daily lives. It's one big phat mix and it's where our ideas will invariably end up. We've got to pump out the beats, get more and more thump in the kik, and hit people hard – indeed harder than they're bein' hit by everything else.

It takes a lot of energy to grab some attention and it's voice that needs to do it. Amplify the content, the color, the language. Shout if necessary, or whisper. Just don't hold back.

Crank it up. Hit me.
__________

where it's at

I got two turntables and a microphone

New Orleans is the center of the cosmos. At least the way I see it at this moment. I'm sitting in Jackson Square at two in the morning eating beignets and drinking coffee and I know this is about as close to enlightenment as it gets. OK, maybe I've had too much powered sugar.

Less than an hour ago, I stepped out of my car after driving for 11 hours. I'm escaping. Left about noon. Had to get away.

I feel guilty. Just a little. It's February and there's something blatantly unfair about sitting here in shirtsleeves under palm trees while my northern brothers are back at home getting flash frozen. But that's not gonna distract me. There's just too much good stuff jammed into this place to think about anything else.

Just knowing there's music happening all around, people out all night checking it out, and a lot of great playing – a lot of the real thing. That's what I'm looking for. The warm night air, the delicious smell of what's cooking in three or four kitchens nearby, the melody of voices flirting and enjoying it, the wispy suggestion of a beat somewhere; bodies moving.

Rule Breaker #26: Creativity is not about ordinary

I play the blues. I want to play the blues like this. Like it's inside me. Like I'm floating in it.

Been there? Then you know what I mean. I'm talking about the kind of real sensations you get when you touch the right places, feel some heat on your lips and take a taste. It could be the transparency of the fabric, the way a skirt ripples in the night air. A warm breeze blowing gently through long dark hair. And imagination gets carried away.

It could be the cadences; the way sentences trail off into questions that are only half-voiced but you both know what they are really asking. It could be the wondering, or the knowing, that this is life as a jam session and what happens next really is a mystery to all of us.

I don't want to look away. I don't want to think about anything else. I don't want to miss a drop. For me, everything comes together here. It's my scene, man. It's the vibe, the feel. It's where I want to be.

Ok, I admit, it's all a mirage, an oasis in my mind. I'm willingly delusional. The NOLA that I'm so hopelessly in love with is only partly substantiated by the reality today. I remember it from before and I'm filling in the blanks. I know I'm doing it, and I don't care. I'm digging this way too much. Don't distract me with ordinary reality. This is something else, something better, more permanent, more important. Way more interesting than anything in the real world.

Frenchman Street. Midnight. People are literally spilling out of the clubs, dancing in the street. Living. Loving. Moving together. It's some kind of beautiful imaginary reality that everything – and everyone – is collectively dreaming. I want to be a part of it. I want to be inside this illusion. I want more of this. It's captivating and powerful.

This is venue.

" _There's a destination a little up the road,_

From the habitations and the towns we know.

A place we saw the lights turn low,

Jig-saw jazz and the get-fresh flow..."

Venue pulls voice into focus and magnifies it, makes it more intense and compelling. Ideas are made real enough to touch, taste, and feel.

Like living and loving and just about anything that's really interesting, it's a mutually intimate relationship: venue and inspiration, voice and message. Venue magnifies the dialogue of voice – it provokes communication on a level that is at once more abstract and more tangible than conventional language. They make statements that carry the deep relevance of mutually shared references. Communication is direct and immediate because it's the result of shared language and vocabulary – the image matches the frame; a product, a work, a statement is rendered more meaningful, more immediate, by venue.

When voice meets the expectations of the scene, it's in. Associations fulfilled. Connections made. And once inside, there's a pervasive eagerness to plug into it, to adopt it as contextual.

There's a big green X scrawled on the back of my hand. It's the mark tonight. I've paid. I'm in. Free to come and go for the evening. We all have one. It's the sign. The line between being either in or out. We're connected, associated. Tonight, here, in this place – we're all one great big simpatico. And we're playing the blues like blood sisters and brothers.

Rule Breaker #27: Be careful who you associate with

My opera, _The Soul of the Rock_ , was once performed at a college outside Chicago. I'm standing in the orchestra pit waiting for the performance to begin. The audience is coming in, the room is filling. That's a good thing. The theatre is the shiny new performing arts center of a suburban community college. At nearly the last minute an elderly couple, elegantly dressed – a fur cape and a Brooks Brothers suit (seriously) – slowly shuffle down the aisle. They take a seat in the center of the very first row.

I'm guessing they didn't notice my '78 Fender Strat as I give it one final tuning check. But when the overture starts and the first chords from the guitar kick in, they immediately stand up and trundle their way back up to the exits. All eyes are riveted on their slow, painful, indignant departure. Completely ruined the overture – no one even noticed the music.

That's the down side of the relationship between voice and venue. Mismatched associations. No connections happening that time. Presenting in the wrong venue can tank the idea before it even has a chance.

It's ugly. And it's happened to me more than once. For a long time I was more than willing to accept any offer of a free space. Give me a place to work, a place to present, and I'm going to grab it. I just never realized the connection of the underlying vision with voice and its venue was so integral to achieving a coherent message.

Expressing inspiration in the wrong place, with the wrong voice in the wrong venue, leads to mixed-up associations – missed communication of vision and disconnected relationships that cloud the achievement of the idea. It's confusing, at best, as we're all totally not on the same page. And it's painfully obvious to everyone.

Each venue comes with its own set of identifying factors. Do these factors match and reflect vision, do they have anything to do with identity? In a perfect situation, these built-in factors enhance the impact and communication of the inspiration, reflect favorably on it, and give it a depth that the idea cannot achieve on its own.

Performing in "Symphony Hall" is serious, heavy, right? Classical venues suggest a level of significance. That's good, isn't it? Yeah, maybe. Depends on the idea's meaning and message. An experimental work can be perceived as simply not "innovative" if it is presented in a traditional setting. Perhaps even more importantly, the audience for truly experimental ideas, the early adopters, wouldn't be caught dead in a traditional venue; they're just too hip for that sort of thing – it's absolutely not their scene. To add insult to injury, the audience that will come to a traditional venue will walk out on something experimental once they realize it doesn't fit their "expectations." They simply have no desire to connect with it. They won't even give it a chance.

Wrong venue? The appropriate audience won't be there and the audience that does show up, is there for the wrong reasons. Ouch.

Rule Breaker #28: The message is the message

A couple of days later the dean called me. She wanted to talk. When I arrived at her office she was clearly very angry. Actually, she was livid and she was barely keeping a lid on it.

"Why did the woman have sequins on her shoes!" she demanded.

Not a single pleasantry about "nice performance, thank you very much." Or even, "nice day, thank you for coming in." Immediately, she jumped into this thing about the shoes. She wanted to know what the sequins meant.

I couldn't figure it out. After experiencing a 90-minute work on the struggles and ultimate triumphs of some of the 20th century's most profound thinkers, all she wanted to talk about was the shoes?

The production had been done completely on the cheap. We didn't have a budget for costumes. Everyone wore clothing they had. In that version of the production, the soprano served as a narrator who helped to tell the story but never held any character or role. She wore a simple black dress suitable for a concert performance to indicate that she was not part of the scene, not a character in the story. She wore the only black dress she owned. And her shoes were the only black ones she had. They happened to have a few sequins around the toes.

Although entirely dumfounded, I explained in all seriousness that those were the only black heels that the singer owned and that we didn't have a budget to buy costumes.

The sequins meant nothing. End of conversation; thank you for coming in. I was out of her office in about one minute. It was one of those weird space-age moments for which academia is justly famous.

I'm not making any of this up. This was for real, I swear. But it taught me an important lesson: Everything means something. Even stuff that shouldn't. Even stuff that you haven't ever thought about and even stuff that is completely insignificant, unrelated, or completely incidental. Even stuff that you aught to be able to expect a everyone will realize doesn't matter. Someone's going to notice it.

In every creative project there are always two things happening at the same time. First there's the work itself, the content, the materials. And then there's the real connection, the message. It's tempting to think the content and the materials, the surface of the work, is the interesting part, the part that people dig. But what really captivates and connects is something deeper, more profound than the sound of a new chord or a fast combination of gestures, no matter how cool they may be.

Yes, engaging the audience and users with the work's content is part of the purpose of any project. Make the music enjoyable and satisfying, the film gripping and exciting, the game fun and challenging and people will dig the content and connect. Well-executed content is captivating and engaging.

But the project, the work is more than the content alone. The work is a conduit that connects inspiration with the users. Neither the medium nor the content is the message. The truth is, the product, the work, the object is not the message, either. None of the stuff that we sweat bullets over to make perfect and cool and exciting and thoughtful and brilliant is the message. It's all just bait. It's all just engaging conversation and a nice dinner.

What really matters is what happens later, in the dark – when the meaning and the message start to sink in. That's when the real communication happens. That's when what we're really trying to say starts to seep in around the edges of a really awesome performance or a really amazing new product. It's more than amazing playing, fantastic performances, brilliant design.

It's the message. That's really why we're here. That's the real reason phenomenal work blows us away. It kicks us in the gut and at the same time touches our hearts and minds. It picks us up and turns us around so we can look in a completely new direction. Voice grabs onto us and doesn't let go; voice speaks to us, it communicates – directly, poignantly, and intensely.

Rule Breaker #29: Yes, let your imagination run wild

Could I present this on the steps of the TKTS booth in Times Square? Would anyone pay attention if I were performing in the middle of Shibuya Crossing?

Stretching the concept of venue beyond the familiar four walls, beyond a local perspective of space and context, pushes the work into an expanded perception of relevance. It pushes us to recognize and demand an awareness of big and bigger potential. In a world filled with connectivity and new methods of delivery, there's always going to be more ways to connect.

" _Pick yourself up off the side of the road,_

With your elevator bones and your whip-flash tones.

Members only, hypnotizers,

Move through the room like ambulance drivers..."

Venue: it's a good time. But don't spend the night until you find out what high school he went to. And maybe something about where he's been sleeping all these years.

All of that nonsense? It's completely out of our control. The past, the context – can't change that. So don't even try. The references are there whether we know it or not. So we better know it.

New Orleans, just about any Saturday night will do. Take a walk down Frenchman Street. In fact, take a walk down just about any street, anywhere in the world, and take it all in – the nuances, the hidden variables, the subtle shadings of inflection that express a whole world of vocabulary to those who get it.

It's an unavoidable fact that venue always carries significance, always expresses a specific reference. The baggage of venue has to match the core of inspiration, it has to match vision and identity. And the only control we have about that is the choice of where to be: Here? Or somewhere else.

Catch the reference? Catch the look, the raised eyebrow, the slightest inflection? Entire non-verbal dialogues? We're constantly checking it all out, right? The shared experiences, the shared artifacts, the shared points of engagement. Carried forward. The past and the present. Surrounding the inspiration, now. Becoming the context.

Venue is the strongest factor in the perception of an idea as in or out, real or pretend, quality or trash, serious or stupid. When the connections work, when the shared references match the vision, when the associations of the inspiration align authentically with the venue, there's a synergy that propels it forward into the collective awareness of the scene, the community.

Venue, it's the wrapper. But it's integral to the work. The wrapper is the handle, the tool that everyone uses to hold on – or let it slip away.

" _Where it's at,_

I got two turntables and a microphone.

Where it's at,

I got two turntables and a microphone."

So this is how it works, my NOLA fixation:

Impressions, illusions, the intangible stuff? They come from the unreal reality that we all somehow willing accept – that this particular random place is just inherently different and special compared to all other random places. A collective crazy and irrational belief develops that we all adopt as completely true. Does it make sense? No. But unquestionably, that doesn't matter. It's an unavoidable fact that the concept of venue is hugely important. We fully believe that the vibe that's happening here is entirely distinct and better than the vibe that's happening just about anywhere else. Isn't that what a scene is, anyway?

New Orleans, it's just cool. Everyone knows that. This is a cool place because we think it's cool. Cool people think it's cool. And stuff that happens here is always cool. By association. Cool place, cool scene. Cool people. Cool stuff. It's all cool. And the vibe, the coolness, rubs off, gets spattered on everything and everyone in the room. Maybe even I'm a little cooler, just by being here. It's that solid, that indelible. Cool is just cool, man. That's what I'm saying.

Why are those beignets so tempting, the coffee so rich, why do the palm trees seem so inexplicably beautiful – even now, several years later? Why is that moment so captivating? Time really doesn't exist for moments like that – moments jammed with emotions and hyped-up sensations of touching and hearing – the kind of high voltage that happens the first time with someone new. It's a vivid and powerful experience that's imprinted with the context, the environment, and the place where it all came together.

Venue is the catalyst. The spark. Spontaneous combustion happened there, then.

Yes, I remember it well.

__________

sample this

Exploit the references

On the table, in a quiet room, a small book, open. Its purpose, to foil the plots of kings and priests, to render the fates of love and war, and to stand unbending before the winds of all time.

It lies on the table, still, quiet. Scarred, discolored, bearing the marks of a journey across the unknowable currents of continents and centuries yet to remain preserved, intact.

Here, now, before me. Small enough to hide away under gown or jacket, small to grasp in one hand to be held near candlelight in the dark of the night when no other eyes may see. Ordinary, without brilliant color or gold decoration, easy to lie hidden unnoticed, left behind or forgotten.

The printing was dark, bold, still clearly legible after years of use. Pages worn, discolored, corners frayed and bent from turning, a crease crosses a page.

For whom was this book made, who owned it, stole it, treasured it, smuggled it across borders, kept it hidden away out of reach of foe and mistress? Whose chambers has it occupied, carriages it rode, what bundles of prized possessions or heaps of discard did it fall into? What roads has it traveled, oceans sailed, rivers forded, continents explored, and mountains crossed?

Whose hands have held it in years long past? Was she beautiful?

And ruthless?

Rule Breaker #30: Everything needs a hook

I needed a powerful hook. When I began to write a follow-up work to one of my most successful compositions, _Euridice Remix_ , I knew it had to have a historical context. _Remix_ had been the first work where I intentionally mined the storehouses of historical reference and I had jumped in with both feet – applying the contemporary concept of remix to history's first opera.

Now, I knew I needed to come up with something that had an equally compelling vision. I needed to come up with a composition that could succeed in communicating an equal measure of richness and substance but in a way that didn't directly adopt existing material. I wanted to write a completely original work that drew upon historical reference as its base.

I was searching for a historical artifact that expressed mystery, suspense, and the potential to be relevant to contemporary issues of technology. I found _Polygraphiae_ , a medieval book of secret codes written by the mathematician Johannes Trithemius in 1518. Today it is considered a landmark work in cryptography and continues to be the basis for some current methods of encryption.

This was exactly what I was looking for. Mystery, suspense, and historical /cultural credence. But I needed to find a way to encode my original text with the codes in the book and I could only find one page on the Internet. For the project to succeed, I needed to locate the real thing. A real five-hundred-year-old book.

Yeah, right.

The idea had seemed so perfect at first but now it seemed entirely impossible.

I spent a few days searching the Internet for a facsimile that I could purchase, but nothing was available at the time. Then one night, a reference to a holding at an academic library came up in a search. But it was in England and completely beyond reach.

Then something entirely unexpected and amazing happened.

One week later, I push open a massive glass and steel door and step into a white marble room with paneled walls. The sunlight is streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows that open on a tree-lined quad. I walk to the desk and fill out a form. The woman quietly tells me to have a seat at one of the tables for a moment. I am now completely alone in the most silent place I have ever experienced. And I'm waiting.

In a few moments she returns. With white cotton gloves she places four small books in reading cradles before me. Four original editions of _Polygraphiae_ lie before me upon the table.

I am in the special collections library of Washington University, ten miles from home. Over the course of several weeks, I encrypted my libretto directly from the original pages.

The experience of working with something that old, page after page, is impossible to describe in words. From that first moment of seeing the actual book before me on the table, the entire composition changed in my mind. It became an expression of something timeless.

It became huge. 500 years huge. How long is that? I really can't tell you. Having lived half a century doesn't really help. All the changes I've witnessed in my lifetime only make a period ten times longer seem even more vast and unfathomable.

But the hugeness was also deeply human. It was the hugeness of imagining all the people who held this book before me, of the multitude of personal reasons that occasioned those contacts. What deeply held secrets had been hidden by these codes? Personal hopes, dreams, loves?

As I pondered the expansiveness of this historical impression, a tangible feeling of direct connection with those real people came over me. It was like a time portal in a fantasy novel. Through it, I felt connected and transported to individual personal moments that happened centuries in the past.

My perception of history changed. Instead of an abstract and removed sense of impersonal dates and historical figures, the continuum of time became a sort of fast zoom, a dolly shot, a roll focus across the imagined faces of real people, individuals with real lives and real dreams.

The work became a very personal vision of my own sense of the vastness of human relationships. My identity, my vision expanded across time and space in ways that it never would have any other way.

Rule Breaker #31: Exploit the artifacts of culture

The "Amen" break.

In one dimension, it's simply a six-second fragment of the song, "Amen My Brother." It's a funk track by The Winstons recorded in 1969.

But there's a lot more to it. This musical fragment has been called the most sampled drum beat of all time. Fact or not, it has become one of the legends of popular and Internet culture, the kind of thing that inspires people to blog and post on the far-reaching cultural implications of six-seconds of music.

Documentaries have been made, much has been written. Many music tracks have been produced.

Why does it work? Because it's cool. From a technical perspective, Gregory Cylvester "G. C." Coleman happened to perform the drum beat in a way that is very functional as a sample. In sampling, the original recording is copied by playing the vinyl into a computer or electronic sampling instrument. While external processing may be used, it is often preferable to preserve the natural sound of the original recording as much as possible. So it is important that the quality of the original recording is clear, punchy, and exciting. And this recording sounds great.

Regardless of taste or aesthetics, the primary criteria for a drum sample is that the beat must be completely exposed in the original recording. It must be a passage when no other instruments are playing. The drums need to be playing entirely alone.

Musically, this four-bar pattern is particularly good as a sample because the first two measures are a repeating one-bar pattern in a rather conventional background-type riff. The first two measures can be sampled separately and used behind the verse or chorus or as the main beat in rap. The last two bars are two distinct and unique patterns that provide variations or breaks on the previously established pattern. They can be used separately or in combination to enhance the activity and interest of the sampled drum part.

Beginning in the 1980s with the availability of affordable digital sampling equipment, the vinyl of previous eras became the genesis of numerous styles of electronica such as jungle, drum and bass, and early hip hop. Eventually other musicians copied and recorded variations on the beat leading to multiple iterations of reference upon reference.

Rule Breaker #32: Only steal good stuff

So much of the raw connection of sample-based music like rap and hip hop is rooted in the two-part value of the sample. First, the sample is musically awesome – why choose to sample something lame? Samples infuse the new music track with the absolute primo moments of all recorded music. Naturally, the new track is going to start out sounding great.

Secondly, the sample carries an enormous weight of cultural reference. The fact that it is sampled from vinyl draws the historical and cultural reference forward into the new context, the new setting. Plus, exploiting the sample's recognizable aura of cultural significance gives the new work an immediate bump. Rather than having to develop it's own basis for cultural recognition, the work hits the ground with a built-in advantage, a jump-start.

The "Amen" break quickly became an icon, a coded message that communicated directly and clearly. Historical artifacts give new works a running start because they carry instant recognition and familiarity, time-proven effectiveness, irrefutable authenticity, and a large measure of built-in substantiality and familiarity that engages from the outset.

Part of what fueled the rapid rise of rap and hip hop was the instant familiarity and established cultural reference of easily recognized samples. James Brown hits and breaks, beats from disco hits from the 70's, and rock riffs all established an instant recognition factor and gave the new works a higher starting point from which to begin their trajectory.

Sampling, or the exploitation of cultural artifacts for their style, meaning, or inherent recognition is not new. Artists and inventors through all time have "borrowed" from themselves and others. Often, excellence can be enhanced by the preexisting cultural recognition present in deliberate use of tropes and cultural references. And the benefits of drawing upon cultural artifacts for their inherent connections is unlimited in size and scope. The strength of artifacts works no matter what the scale of the project.

Chiat/Day advertising VP, Steve Hayden said that in the Apple 1984 commercial, "they used a Vulcan nuclear bomber as set decoration." (St. John)

Ridley Scott explained how this large-scale artifact entered the mix: "In the whole process of _Alien_ on the Nostromo (the spaceship, the ship itself, not the alien ship) was it became a sculptural problem – how do you make those corridors look business-like and real. And so what we did very simply, finally, is, in frustration we bought three aircraft and dismantled them. And those three big jet bombers actually were then assembled in the corridors in the sculptural process, that's why it looked very business-like. Now, those two big blank walls at the back of the main auditorium in '1984,' we hauled in those huge 747 engines and just hung them on the wall and they looked like – what did they look like? I don't know, they looked like ventilation ducts." (Apple)

The Avro Vulcan was a jet-powered high-altitude strategic bomber operated by the Royal Air Force from 1956 until 1984. Check it out on the web and it's a pretty mean looking thing, even today. Surprisingly, buying one isn't as impossible as it might sound. According to a BBC news report from January 17, 2005, Chris Ollerenshaw, a pub owner from Dukinfield, England bought one for £15,102.03 on eBay. He wanted it as an attraction at his pub, The Snipe Inn.

Sample this, amigo.

Look beyond the ordinary spaces to expand the resources of content and voice. Explore world culture, history, the challenges and intriguing inconsistencies of this vast social network we call real life. Push the boundaries of possibility by mining culture for anything that has the power to connect.

There's an enormous amount of energy in the references. Find something fascinating. And plug it in

References work. Maybe it's cheating. About that, I don't care.
__________

5

### process

The system of development and implementation

__________

this better work

Flip the switch and stand back

When Ridley Scott came up with the brilliant concept that the heroine of Apple's "1984" spot should throw a sledgehammer instead of a baseball bat at the screen, the ability to cast the role became significantly more difficult. He explained, "One of the main problems was actually funny, it was finding a girl that could throw a hammer and look business-like. And so that immediately narrowed down the field apart from the fact that she had to look great. It narrowed down the field I think almost immediately to athletes. We went through the whole process of having, you know, models come in and actresses come in."

Auditions were held in London's Hyde Park and the original call included professional fashion models and actresses who, it turned out, were unable to handle the heavy sledgehammer. Most couldn't throw it at all and one attempted throw was so out of control it nearly hit an old lady walking down a path nearby.

Anya Major auditioned that day. She had been discovered at a local health club and was an experienced discus thrower. "But we finally narrowed it to actually seeing athletes, discus throwers, hammer throwers and she really was, I think out of everybody we saw, was really the only one" (Apple)

Major won the role with her ability to handle the hammer convincingly. In the video, "The Making of Apple's '1984' Ad," she can be seen rehearsing the spin, the throw, and the filming of the final take in real-time. There's no CG, no special effects. She's really doing it.

Process is not about the easy way. It is about finding solutions that achieve the vision and fulfill the inspiration. Scott's vision of a sledgehammer flying through the air and shattering the projected image of Big Brother has become iconic. Following through on the steps necessary to achieve that vision is part of what we all do to make creativity happen. Process achieves the implementation of inspiration through management of resources including the discovery or development of highly specialized talent. In this case, and in every case, process is the way we meet the production criteria that has been inspired by our vision, and render the idea in a tangible, real-world form.

" _Well my temperature's rising and my feet are on the floor._

Twenty people knocking 'cos they're wanting some more.

Let me in baby, I don't know what you've got,

But you'd better take it easy, this place is hot..."

Process is the implementation of inspiration. Process brings great stuff out into the light of day. It is how the book, the music, the photographs, the play, the dance, or the business plan are actually made. It's the grit, the stay-up-all-night hard work that makes this stuff happen

Process is the management of resources that make us able to actually do the work that turns an idea into something tangible, useful, and amazing. Look up "schedule" in the dictionary and that's probably it. But that's way too rigid for my version of reality. My life has always been one gigantic variable. I wish I could work for four hours each morning. But that's never happened for me and probably never will.

Process is the system that allows us to do our work. It's how we grapple with the issues of time and funding. It's what we absolutely need in terms of place and environment to really accomplish something.

Rule Breaker #33: Identity is the only formula for process

Very early on, it was clear to me that I wouldn't be able to keep at this work if I didn't develop a process that fit within my unique personal situation. By finding time within the cracks of a demanding job schedule and family responsibilities I was able to refine and master a systematic process of working that made it possible for me to keep going.

Work time is priceless, so process needs to function, to actually work. All the time, every time. Right now. Reliable. Within the constraints that I have to work in, the repeatability of my process has been a huge factor in whatever I've accomplished. With very limited time, having the opportunity to get down to work is priceless – and rare. I can't waste a moment of it.

In my experience, process has been the single most important element in my ability to do the work that I have done. Without a conscious effort to evaluate my specific needs and to solve the conflicts that existed, nothing much would ever have seen the light of day.

" _It's been a hard day and nothing went too good,_

I'm gonna relax like everybody should..."

Process is the mediator, the intersection between the ideal world of pure inspiration and the harsh reality of making a living and keeping everything together, day after day.

First, it needs to establish systems that generate awesome content, fulfill vision, meet the ideals and values of identity, and reflect the brilliance of inspiration. At the same time, all this has to happen within the often conflicting forces of living in the real world. That's why process has to be so very individual. It needs to be as much a reflection of our identity as the idea itself. There are no formulas, no "best practices" when it comes to something so interconnected to our personal situation.

Process is where phenomenal ideas become real and reach out and touch us, change us. At the same time, it is where the demands of eating, sleeping, living, and loving clash with the demands of an exacting sense of our highest ideals and intent. Within the whole spectrum of creativity, process is the place where the two worlds of creativity and reality collide.

It's highly complicated and interconnected. How can it all come together? Only through reliance on the solid foundation of identity, vision, and inspiration.

Rule Breaker #34: Amazing work can happen anywhere

Does anyone have unlimited time to work anymore? I doubt it. So when there are a few available moments, the work better start happening right away. Sit down and do some work.

Finding solutions to unanswerable questions of time and resource means applying our strongest creative skills to the task. Basically we're doing what we always do: building something that's never existed before, discovering ways to accomplish something that most people believe is utterly impossible.

So being creative and doing the work is not impossible, but for most of us it's not the top priority. We have day jobs and caravans of responsibilities that can become huge time sucks. It's tempting to think that those famous heroes that we hold up on a pedestal are so awesome because they have the financial and social freedom to sit around and be "creative" all day. Well, the really famous people I know are pretty much in the same situation. Finding time to write or compose or invent gets smashed into a busy schedule packed full of all the normal duties any entrepreneur confronts.

So time really isn't the answer. It's really about the very corporate sounding descriptor, time management. That's really what makes it possible for all of us to carve out the resources necessary to get something done.

" _Well I feel so good, everything is sounding hot,_

Better take it easy 'cos the place is on fire.

Been a hard day and I don't know what to do,

Wait a minute baby, it could happen to you..."

Long ago I realized my ideal working situation wasn't ever going to happen. So I had to really dig in and learn how to work. I needed to find a way to make something happen in my circumstances, no matter what. I experimented with different time schedules, different locations, all of it. Circumstances forced me to work in the middle of the night, or very early in the morning, in public places and closets. After several years, I trained myself to work just about anywhere, anytime – if and when I could grab a moment. I know what works best for me, but I don't need ideal conditions anymore. But it took direct, conscious effort to get there.

Process needs to be consistent, reliable, and repeatable. Our system needs to function, to actually work – all the time, every time. There's nothing more frustrating than actually carving out some time only to sitting down and have nothing happen.

Whole books have been written to help people overcome the blank page, creative stagnation of all types and labels. You'll notice I don't have a chapter devoted to the topic. That's because, in my own experience and the experience I've observed in hundreds of college students over the years, creative stasis is never a factor when inspiration is guided by identity and vision. Those facets of our true being are always active and expanding. Once the connections are made in our thought, inspired ideas are going to come flying in fast. Sit down, get warmed up for a couple minutes, and go to it.

It is imperative that we find systems, processes that work for us, here and now, even in the midst of all the interrelated factors, bumping and colliding, and frequently conflicting. More than any other facet of the spectrum of creativity, process is the most brutally challenging and supremely essential. The fact is, nothing is ever going to really happen until we get this part right.

It's a dirty word, but I don't know any other way to accomplish things with any kind of consistency and repeatability: Discipline. Sorry, but it helps. So dig in, learn how to work, learn how to live, learn how to make all this come together inside the framework of your own identity.

Rule Breaker #35: Get to work, you'll get good

Projects change us. They push us to do things that seem completely impossible. We learn, we progress, we grow. And that's a good thing. At least for me, it was.

At first, when I'd flip the switch, a lot of things would blow up, unintentionally. I'd forget something important or some part of the project just wasn't happening. It was the best I could do, but it just wasn't good enough. Over time, I got better. And the projects got bigger, more complicated, more people involved. The projects changed me. Made me see more accurately, have more skills, be a better communicator, be more efficient, get better at understanding how and when each little element needs to get done. And the projects turned out better. Everyone was happier.

At first the goal was to get something done. Just finish it. No matter what. But along the way, the goal changed.

Some of my early stuff wasn't very good, and people told me so, often quite bluntly. I became completely obsessed with production values, quality, overall professionalism. Stuff had to really shine. I was focused on a high level of quality on the outside. But there was still a lot of lame stuff under the gloss.

My skills had finally reached a level that I was able to consistently execute my work in a reliable and predictable way. But the substance, the message, and the vision were not deeply refined. The stuff was functioning on a surface level, but what was being communicated needed more maturity, more sophistication. I realized that I needed to dig deeper to find a way to make my inspiration and vision more rich and expansive.

So the next goal was artistic integrity, originality, creativity, and expression. Individuality. Continuing to build production quality while at the same time chasing artistic integrity really pushed me. They are two really exacting demons with very little forgiveness in them and they don't ever sleep, either. It was rough. I know there were times when the level of emotional strife was way too high. It was hard to work together because we were all trying so unbelievably hard to be perfect that every little thing just became monumental. It was a hard way to work, striving for perfection and never getting there.

So what's the goal now? What about perfection? What about sanity?

It's about balance. It's about finding the zone where stuff really works, really rocks, really comes together, but at the same time we're working together brother to brother and not as machines. I'm looking for a place where it's exciting enough to keep everything on the edge and at the same time the process is peaceful enough that no one's loosing it.

It's more intense than ever. Because energy is being expended on the work and not on damage control or another "learning experience." And I'm really digging the fact that it's all just sitting here now, right on the edge. A burning groove.

It has taken a long time to get somewhere near this balancing point, to get close to the intersection of exhilaration and raw intensity, fear and poise, panic and resolve, randomness and certainty, cluelessness and vision. Chaos and flow.

Keep it thrilling, and don't wipe out. Be brilliant and be cool. At the same time. Yeah, I'm going to be working on that one for a while.

" _You gotta,_

Gimme some lovin' (Gimme, gimme some lovin')

Gimme some lovin' (Gimme, gimme some lovin')

__________

make some beats

Limitations are stupid; don't moan about it, get to work

" _I said you want to be startin' somethin',_

You got to be startin' somethin'.

I said you want to be startin' somethin',

You got to be startin' somethin'..."

Let's call him Daryl. I knew him for only a short time. One day he just disappeared. But before that, he sat there immersed inside his headphones, laying down tracks.

His stuff was original, it was unstudied, it was free and expressive, and it was spot-on to the style. His methodology was unlabored and simple. I started to notice because there was something different going on – all his beats were great.

So how did he do it? It was in his intuitive perception of what was cool and what wasn't, in Daryl's ability to know what was hip and what wasn't. His hipness meter was finely tuned; he was tapped into the main vein. He knew what worked and he could recognize it immediately. Daryl's decisions were rapid and without hesitation. Cool track? Stupid track? Press the button, keep it or do it again. Bam. No hand wringing, no uncertainty, no coming back tomorrow to see how it sounds, no indecisive deliberation.

One day we were sitting around and I asked him – how do you make such cool beats?

"I just do, man."

Rule Breaker #36: The relevance of order is questionable

The street. It's where stuff happens. Fast. It evolves, it develops. Interactive and multi-threaded – happening simultaneously in hundreds of permutations. Some of the stuff works. Some of it doesn't. It shakes out. And comes together, without hierarchy. It happens on the fly without external structures or observance of any predetermined sense of order.

No command and control. No centralized management structure. Forget that.

It's freeform, tangible, practical, complex and simple, and deceptively inconspicuous. It floats under the radar until that moment when all those unseen forces merge into something completely new and unprecedented. And it explodes into the collective awareness with unrestrained momentum.

Great ideas need to have a chance without the burden of the past. Without looking back. There's nothing back there that applies, anyway. This is a new day.

I learned this on the street.

Back when I was doing commercial music, I did a lot of recording in a really large, extremely high-end studio in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood, the area just north of the river along the lake. Chicago Recording Company was one of the top facilities in the city. The place was filled with the best equipment, amazing instruments, and engineers who knew how to make it all come together. I was there because it was a given that the work produced there would be of the highest technical quality. And yes, the rental bill could add up very quickly.

Jammin'? Not if the cost of musicians, engineers, recording tape, and studio time mattered at all. Which it always did. Everything was written down, carefully orchestrated. And the musicians could read it backwards and forwards in one or two takes. A lot of quality work got made that way. Most of the time everything went down smoothly. Great equipment, great people, great talent. That's the definition of cool.

But it took guts. If something went south in the session it didn't take long for all the producer's profits – that is to say, all of my profits – to immediately evaporate.

And the gig became what we all euphemistically call, "a learning experience." There were a few of those early on. And they hurt. They hurt in a very real, visceral way. Thousands of dollars came in and thousands went out but there was absolutely nothing left for me to live on. That's the kind of pain that's hard to forget.

So after a couple of learning experiences, the incentive to do a little jammin' on the clock, or experimenting with just one more take of the guitar solo, or, "We could do another harmony vocal, Jim," just evaporates. Add in the factor that a two-inch roll of recording tape held only 24 tracks so that extra take of the guitar solo required recording over – deleting – the good one that was already there.

Are we ready to roll? I'm thinking not. Not another learning experience, thank you.

And that's what started to really bug me. I wish I could have let Billy, my guitarist, give me another take because I know it would have been even more exciting – because he was really rockin' now. But I just couldn't risk it. I just couldn't mess up. There was too much at stake – like my family's groceries. And staying in business. And that translated into only doing stuff that I knew for a complete fact would work – zero risk, zero unpredictability. I worked fast, I worked efficient, everything was timed out ahead of time – come in and just lay it down. And everyone made money.

But was it as really awesome as we all wanted it to be? Inspired ideas? Great art? No, it wasn't.

" _It's too high to get over (yeah yeah)_

Too low to get under (yeah yeah)

You're stuck in the middle (yeah yeah)

And the pain is thunder (yeah yeah)..."

I wanted more. Something more than safe, it works, it makes money, it keeps me in business, and it keeps the client happy. I wanted to do amazing things. I wanted to do really inspired stuff. Stuff that really hangs there, on the edge. Like it does out on the street.

Rule Breaker #37: Frustration is the mother of invention

Day after day I was sitting behind the board looking at all those phenomenally talented musicians and engineers – all that incredibly elegant and sophisticated gear, and the finely tuned acoustical spaces – and it really seemed stupid to me to be cranking out ordinary predictable stuff. Just because it came in on budget and it met the clients needs.

What a waste of resources. Frustrating is not a strong enough word. It was absurdly idiotic. A complete waste of infinite potential.

But this is the dilemma: Doing amazing stuff means doing stuff that hasn't been done before. And that means doing stuff that is never bulletproof, reliable, sure-to-record-in-two-takes kind of work.

It means taking risks. Without restraint. Like what's happenin' out there on the street. It's asking the musician to just get into it for a while – ask her to play what she really wants to play, not what she thinks the client wants to hear. It means experimenting. Trying stuff that probably won't work, but just might lead to something that no one's ever heard, or even thought of before. That kind of stuff. Original stuff. Stuff that's pure inspiration.

And it could fail. Multiple times. And at a studio like CRC, those failures are going to cost some real money. I couldn't have afforded it. And that was where it all rested, for several years. A Gordian Knot of intertwined conflicts about how to actually achieve inspired stuff and not bet the farm to do it.

" _I said you want to be startin' somethin',_

You got to be startin' somethin'..."

Making beats. Making the background tracks for rap and hip hop. Thousands of dollars can change hands for a beat – that's the urban legend, anyway. Fact? I don't know, but a lot of people are drinking that water. They're chasing it.

Beats can be made anywhere, by anyone, right? Today, yes, with software. But back in the day, you had to have the specific gear. Unfortunately, costing somewhere north of five grand, there were a lot of people who wanted to make beats who can't afford the gear. But that didn't stop them.

Over the years I have spent a lot of hang time in the Guitar Centers of LA. Doing "research." I was there to check out the gear that never made it to the stores in the Midwest. I wanted to get my hands on that stuff. Learn what it could do, how it played, discover if it was something that inspired me.

And whenever I was in those stores, some cat would be hunkered down at one of the Tritons with his headphones on. Making beats. And saving his beats on his floppy. So he could take his floppy home with him. With his beat on it. And then later, he could take his floppy into the producer's studio, load his floppy into the producer's Triton, and sell the beat. How brilliant is that?

See, there's a reason why this was the gear of choice for most every form of dance music. The beautiful thing was that the Tritons and MPCs could save their sounds and patterns on an inexpensive computer floppy disk. Easy, cheap, and highly transportable.

In the music world, the evolution of a genre often relies on available resources. It's about finding a way to realize ideas with no money.

Although the Triton and MPC have professional caliber sounds and make really killer sounding tracks, they became the sonic standard not so much because of the sound itself, but because a peripheral attribute of the instruments – the floppy drive – afforded accessibility and opportunity in an unexpected and unconventional way.

And resourceful people exploited it. Big time.

Looking at it now as history, it seems like the sounds drove the style, the sounds made the genre. Indeed at first, the genre focused exclusively on the sounds of those instruments, and consequently, those specific sounds became the expectation within the genre. But in fact, the sounds were simply a by-product of the process – a residual affect of finding a way to accomplish a vision despite the limitations of unobtainable resources.

This specific gear provided a way for determined and resourceful people to realize their inspiration even when they didn't have the conventional means to acquire the necessary instruments, themselves.

Gordian Knot? Unraveled. Inspiration realized, zero investment. Limits of conventional implementation completely negated.

Streetwise.

" _I said you want to be startin' somethin',_

You got to be startin' somethin'..."

Part Three

__________

### freedom

Where is all this big creativity talk going? It's a journey, but what's the destination? Is there even a destination at all? And how will we know when we get there? Will there be cake? Or a warm sunny beach at the end of this long twisting dirt track? Maybe. Creativity, it keeps going. Ideas generate content, projects get completed, and our work goes out there and all manner of cool things happen. And then new ideas arise and we do it all again. It's a circle. But really it's a spiral. Each time through the process we get better, more assured, our originality and vision are more solid, our ideas take form more quickly.

Rule Breaker #38: Creativity works for real

Eventually creativity stops being a big hairy unknown and starts to become manageable, and the work we do takes on a solidness that doesn't cause us to keep asking all those hard questions like "should I even be doing this," "will this work," "is this the right fabric to convey the message I hear in my head? Stuff starts to come together organically. Our decisions lead to more logical relationships, we develop systems and discover colleagues that are reliable. And then one day, it seems like this creativity thing isn't out of control any more. We stop worrying so much.

Basically, we're free. Free to do our work unhindered by our own and other demons. We don't have to ask permission from anyone, including ourselves, to devote our thinking and our action to the expression of ideas.

The kind of freedom I'm talking about is there for everyone, but we have to discover it ourselves. From day one, we are searching. We learn, step up, move closer, gain insights and wisdom, and find threads of understanding and ability. It happens in small or large increments each day of our lives. Our creative journey moves us forward, we get good and find ways to be awesome.

Freedom is within reach, the ability to create with the power of an unshakable identity is out there, waiting for us to discover it. Inside our own being.

Freedom, it's the pure expression of inspiration.

__________

6

### courage

The strength to succeed
__________

### the comfort of uncertainty

Hold on, it's going to get crazy

Looking back at Apple's "1984" spot, it would seem that everything fell together like it was in Wonderland, perfect concept, amazing execution, and awesome venue. It must have been a dream gig in every way.

Totally not.

Steve Hayden begins the tale of the dark underbelly of the production: "Mike Murray and Jobs played the spot for the Apple board of directors in the fall of 1983. When the lights came up, Murray reported that most of the board members were holding their heads in their hands, shaking them ruefully. Finally, the chairman, Mike Markula, said, "Can I get a motion to fire the ad agency?" (Hayden)

The spot had played well to an audience of Apple dealers in Hawaii in October. Jobs was convinced the spot should air. John Scully, the new President brought in from Pepsi, was not in favor but deferred to Jobs.

Support for the spot had never been strong in corporate. The only reason the agency got funding to make "1984" at all was that it had been part of a two-spot deal they made with Ridley Scott. Scott would direct "Alone Again" for the Lisa business computer and the Macintosh "1984" for a combined total of $900,000 [by some accounts, $600,000]. (Hormby)

The corporate drama started during filming in London at Sheperton Studios.

Hayden continues, "The "1984" spot nearly died when the client on the shoot refused to sign the estimate for a second day of shooting. O'Neill called me from London again, saying the spot was dead if we couldn't get two full days of shooting. I had just been promoted to VP at Chiat/Day, therefore becoming an officer of the company. I asked O'Neill if he could proceed on my signature. He said, 'Hey, you're an officer—I can go ahead on your say so. But if it doesn't work out, you're fired.' I thought it was a risk well worth taking." (Hayden)

Back in Cupertino, it was beginning to look like "1984" would never see the light of day. In response to the board's dismal reaction, Scully told Chiat/Day to sell the Super Bowl air time that had been purchased. When Jay Chiat told media director, Camille Johnson, to sell off the thirty [by some accounts, the two thirties], she laughed, thinking that no one would buy the spots on such short notice.

But Jobs had another idea. Seeing Steve Wozniak at a Macintosh group meeting, he pulled him aside and played him the spot. Woz was blown away. When Jobs told him the board didn't want to run the ad, Wozniak said, "Well, I'll pay half of it if you will." Woz had thought the $800,000 price tag was the reason the board was balking. He said, "I thought an ad that was so great a piece of science fiction should have its chance to be seen." (Linzmayer)

As the date approached, Scully passed the decision to VP of Marketing, Bill Campbell and executive VP of Marketing and Sales, E. Floyd Kvamme. However, most reports state that it was Jobs that made the final decision.

Again, Hayden, "I'll never forget the Friday before the Big Game. The media group sold off one 30-second to Hertz and a second 30-second to Heinz. That left a single 60. When New York closed at five o'clock, we jumped for joy—the spot would air after all." (Hayden)

Haydn, not a sports fan, watched the game alone at home and missed the audience reactions. A few minutes after the spot ran, he was in the kitchen washing dishes. "About 10 minutes after the spot aired, I was doing the dishes. And the phone rang. I'm up to my elbows in turkey grease. It's Jay Chiat. He says, 'How does it feel to be a f&$king star?'" (St. John)

Rule Breaker #39: Be fearless

My finger's twitching on the key. Jump at the wrong time and who knows what horrible thing might happen. It's a platformer, this creative life. Suddenly, the scene is rotating and in a blur dissolve, I'm inside the game looking out through the screen. The goofy mind numbing loopy 8-bit music soundtrack is blasting at me from every direction. The colors have become brilliantly vivid, saturated, and the fire-breathing dragon behind me is doing his best to turn me into barbeque.

Sorry, it's just too hot to stand and chat. I've got hoops to jump through, Goombas to fight off, castle walls to climb, and a redheaded princess to save. I'm just too busy grabbing as many gold coins as I can and stuffing my pockets with lucky points. Yeah, I might need some of those.

The thing about a platformer is that if you fall down a deep dark hole into the caves of lost perspective, get stuck in the quicksand of indecision, or trapped in the jaws of a giant man-eating flower of unpreparedness, it really doesn't matter.

If you make a mistake, you get to restart.

But in Real Life there is no rewind, there's no _undo_ button. It's more immediate, more intense – sharper focus, greater potential, and bigger impact. It's not a game.

But it's OK. If you make a mistake, you still get to try again.

Uncertainty doesn't scare me anymore. Maybe it's because I actually like to edit, slice and dice, cut tape. Or maybe it's because I know how to patch up the slips of the blade well enough that no one will ever notice.

Predictability is boring – on stage and in life. I'm going for exploration. I'm searching for the new stuff, the stuff that's not a sure thing, ever. Even though I've fallen and I've taken a lot of hits, I've patched things up. And I've started over.

It's where I want to be. It's where I need to be. It's worth it. I'd rather explore the unknown than drive the same road day after day or cross the same bridge over and over. I don't want to redo stuff, only to find out it's just the same as it was the last time. I never want to do that again. I need to go someplace absolutely new, someplace completely uncertain. I'm willing to live with that kind of instability. I'm willing to take the risk. For me, that's where it starts to get really interesting.

Here, on the edge. I mean right here, looking out into the vastness. Out on the precipice of the unknown. This is where the good stuff is, where the great stuff is. Where the really new and original stuff is. The real innovations are here on the edge, in a place that's entirely unpredictable, uncharted, unexplored and undiscovered.

Yes, it's slippery and dark – hard to see very far ahead and there's not much to grab onto if you start to loose it. But it's got to be this way.

It's safe here. Once you get a grip. And let me tell you, these spaces are huge and they're all mine. There's nothing to bump into, no preconceived notions, no best practices to hold things down, no rigid formal structures that demand conformity to expectations, no weight of historical precedence.

I like it here. And even if it means I have to put up with a high level of risk, a little shaking of the fault line once in a while, I'm down for that.

Why does risk hurt, anyway? What is so inherently painful about making mistakes? Mistakes happen. All the time. Isn't it a given that the development of ideas is going to be full of mistakes, full of blind alleys, full of completely useless detours? That's never going to go away. It is a given that stuff won't always work the first time. It takes multiple mistakes, even multiple failures sometimes, to arrive at the point of real discovery.

Welcome to the edge. Where the only imperative is to keep exploring. To keep searching. Where adapting to the uncertainty of mistakes is just part of the daily grind.

It's more than simply survival. It's surviving and then continuing to reach out into the unknown, continuing to take risks. Again, and again. Survival. With a purpose – to keep searching, keep exploring, keep discovering. Fearlessly.

Rule Breaker #40: Brilliance is intuition with conviction

Despite the irrationality of it, I believe in brilliance. Maybe I shouldn't. But I do. It's the best way that I have found to master the fine art of uncertainty. After many years of watching other people's music compositions unfold before my eyes, week after week, I know that there's something going on in the creative process in addition to a lot of shear hard work.

If it is brilliance, then it's not the kind of intangible make-believe magic that most people associate with the term. I'm not talking a out the romanticized view that creativity is a supernatural gift given to only the chosen. I've seen way too many otherwise ordinary people create brilliant things to know that's a fable.

The brilliance that I'm talking about is in the process, the approach to discovering ideas and implementing them. This brilliance is an over-all approach that helps us work more efficiently and with more energy. It yields results that are more original and more immediate.

When it comes down to it, creative work actually is supposed to be like a platformer, and not some dark angst-heavy drama. I'm referring to the F word. Where's the fun in all this? Where's the joy and excitement? Where's the cake? Where's the party?

Invite spontaneity and uncertainty in for a drink, they're always pretty entertaining. Instant reactions and spontaneous decisions have a way of lining up and making rational sense later, in the cool, clear, reasoned light of a new day. Maybe it's a subconscious thing, or maybe it is some kind of brilliance, I don't know, but it happens all the time.

There's a zone of explorative imagination that is the exact opposite of cognitive deliberation. Don't expect a thesis statement. It's way outside that. This kind of exploration yields ideas and vision that are like dark matter – tightly compacted packages of vast complexity. They appear in hyper-energized forms without the header file or conventional structures. They need to be manipulated, rotated, seen from a variety of perspectives, time stretched. They are literally exploding before our eyes, emitting unique ideas bursting with potential.

It's the exact opposite of formulaic. So some testing will be required. Make mistakes, make some more. Each time, pushing deeper into levels of insight that are infused with immediacy – exploration that is not reliant on established processes, logic, or reason. Find unpredictable juxtapositions of content and relationship. In the end, they just might make perfectly rational sense.

I am standing now, on the edge, far removed from the predictable currents of reason and order. I'm looking out, as far into the distance as I can, trying to understand more clearly what is here, what I need to see.

Inspiration and vision – immediate and spontaneous – is the call that draws us here, to the very edge; the force that holds us and pulls us up when we fall. It enables our discovery of ideas entirely new, beyond expectation, unprecedented. This is the true force that moves us all forward and changes everything.

Seize the power – the beauty – of the unknown, exploit the uncertain. Break conventions, break rules. Break expectations.

And yes, be something like brilliant.
__________

time after time

Life and work, it's impossible sometimes; get some help

" _Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,_

And think of you.

Caught up in circles,

Confusion is nothing new..."

I devised my own plan of artificial intensity: compose a string quartet in a week. I had a week off from my job and I spent every waking moment composing. Did it work? Yes, I completed a short, twelve minute, quartet in four movements.

It was an interesting exercise in the creative process in microcosm. The short timescale forced me to really concentrate on the connection of process to vision, inspiration, and voice. Indeed, the core of the work's process, the limited timeframe, was driven by a highly practical criteria – get something finished before I have to go back to work. That parameter impacted all levels of the work, forcing immediate decisions at every turn. Looking back at the work, now removed from the haste of the moment, it is amusing or perhaps enlightening to review the affect those choices made on the overall content of the work.

I wish I could revise it. But is there time? There never has been.

Rule Breaker #41: Limitations can't stop creativity

The constraint of resources – time, funding, personnel – will always be part of the mix. We always have to dig down to the core, the foundation of what is really worth saying, and then find a way to say it within the borders of the circumstances and resources available. Make reasoned assessments of what is possible to achieve and then frame the project to work within those boundaries.

Is that compromise? Is it settling? I don't see it that way. I'm not talking about accepting a lesser degree of expression or a lower level of quality or effectiveness. What matters most is making a full and complete statement of the idea through a medium that communicates it most directly and effectively. Composing a half-backed orchestral work just because I am obsessed with that form isn't serving my identity, my vision, or the idea. The main criteria are to cut through the noise of a busy world, arrest people's attention, and tell them something they need to know.

From the standpoint of effective creative expression, it is not a compromise to choose to devote whatever time and effort is available to writing an extremely well written, high quality short story instead of a hackneyed, hastily written novel.

Which is going to see the light of day? Which is going to make a difference in this world? Which is actually going to get finished? That's what this is really about.

" _Sometimes you picture me,_

I'm walking too far ahead.

You're calling to me, I can't hear

What you've said.

Then you say, go slow,

I fall behind..."

The second hand unwinds.

Life or work? It's impossible to do it all. If there is any kind of "solution," it never meets everyone's needs. Often, there just is no middle. The work ends up failing, or life does. In big and small ways both sides of the balance fall.

There are large segments of my children's young lives that I can't even recall. It's not because I forgot. It's because I wasn't there. How many of us have unrelenting employers that demand 24/7 and can't take "sorry, its my daughter's birthday," as an answer to yet another 14 hour day or working yet another holiday concert?

That's what's unfair. As much as we try, as much as we want to, we can't do it all. We can't do everything, all the time. So what then? Give up, walk away? Compromise artistic integrity and crank out some real junk? Something needs to be done to address the challenges of conflicting spheres of responsibility long before the situation ends up in that place.

Creating amazing work and coping within the parameters of an ordinary modern life is generally considered to be impossible. Working a day job, providing for a family, caring for children and working at home, keeping the bills paid, and feeding the family are all full-time jobs. So is doing creative work.

Is it possible to do all of it?

Maybe, sometimes. With help. Lots of help.

Rule Breaker #42: Creativity is a group project

I don't really know how, but each time I've accomplished a major work, I've had a lot of help. Family, friends, strangers. Their support always makes all the difference. If it weren't for the patience and forgiveness, and often the active involvement of family and friends, the work just would not have happened. They're the undocumented workers. The tireless individuals that everyone knows are the real reason the world is still turning.

Accomplishing anything of significance is an achievement far beyond ourselves. With help, it's possible. Incredibly so.

" _Flashback, warm nights,_

Almost left behind.

Suitcases of memories,

Time after..."

I'm bumping into the walls. Wandering. Flailing against the unchangeable. Those kinds of structures – walls, relationships – hurt when you bump into them. They hurt for a reason. Tear down a wall and pretty soon the roof is not where it should be. Tear down a relationship and the basis of just about everything is gone. We need each other, we need all of us. Together.

In Cyndi Lauper's music video, the woman, Lauper herself, ponders her future, perhaps even her identity. She is living in a travel trailer, in the middle of a forest. There is a man involved, but the imagery and body language convey that it is a lifeless, lonely, and isolated place with nothing but trees, trees, and more trees. We watch as she walks out the door and glances back, the trailer door hanging open. He comes out after her, but he's too late. She is gone.

Later in a train station, I'm not exactly sure what happens, it's intentionally vague, or I'm just too thick. He catches up to her, they look at each other and maybe he says something, it's hard to tell. Does he refuse to go away with her, to become part of her journey? Or does she tell him she's got to move on?

In a moment, she walks away. Alone.

It hurts.

Ideas, the vision that it just might be possible to do creative work, to bring change to the world – this is not for the purpose of tearing us apart. It is not to the end of a great good for the world, but loss and isolation for us. This work we do, this powerful mission of carrying ideas forward, this struggle of ever pushing against the gravity of disbelief and suggestion of lack is hard enough. It must not be rendered tragic by the loss of our own relationships, the destruction of our own lives.

The kind of determination and resilience that accomplishes great work and initiates significant change doesn't exist in a vacuum. Great work lives in the real world, and so do we. Vision and identity – the core of it all – doesn't exist alone, separated. It must interact, converse, dance, touch, commingle, and intersect.

And sometimes it collides. When that happens, it's time to reach out and grab a hand. Share vision, it's not a secret. Help those nearby understand the importance of the work. Ask forgiveness, ask for support.

Rule Breaker #43: Choose life, always

We all need to do this. We need to take care of each other.

It's hard to wake up every morning and be perfect – brilliant, original, inspired, and calm. The work itself is hard enough, but keeping our lives together – it's unrelenting. It demands everything of us. It digs down into the depths of our soul and always wants more and more and more.

It can break us apart. So don't let it.

It all really comes down to this: Be strong, be courageous.

And take care. Stay sane. Stay healthy. Stay safe.

Stay connected.

Reach out; let's pull each other up.

" _If you're lost you can look and you will find me,_

Time after time.

If you fall I will catch you,

(I will be waiting)

Time after time..."

__________

7

### integrity

The foundation of freedom
__________

the real reason for everything

Integrity of purpose, simply that

Success anyone? The question just sort of hangs there. It can cause me to start asking all kinds of inappropriate questions. And at one time it even started a chain reaction that lead me to a job in commodities. Yeah, totally stupid, but true.

In case you're concerned: back in the 1980s anyone – and I mean anyone – could get an entry level job in commodities in Chicago. I sure hope that's changed; but back then, it wasn't hard. OK, I only stuck it out for one day; I didn't go back. And for the sake of the world economy and my own sanity, that was a very good thing. But to find myself in such a rotten state of self-perception that I did even one day's time in that world, was more than stupid – it was wildly incomprehensible.

Rule Breaker #44: Trust the logic of identity

Was I really that confused? Yes, I was. I was confused about why I was doing the work I did, I was confused about it's purpose, it's meaning, it's value. I was confused about how to measure success. I was completely incapable of recognizing my own achievements even when they smacked me in the face.

Actually, it was a sideswipe. But it completely rearranged the bodywork. And it changed everything. It gave me a seismic shove towards finding a new understanding of my work that was based on something way more substantial than simply what others thought.

The inspiration side of this creativity thing fascinated me first. The potential of making something out of thin air, out of nothing but the imagination has always seemed very intriguing. On the inspiration side, the main resource is cerebral – the work of nailing down a coherent understanding of identity, exploring and expanding vision, and remaining true to purpose. Get all that going and let imagination take over. It's an idea machine that requires nothing more than one's own initiative and clarity.

Commodities seemed like that to me. It seemed like a business that was built on the notion that it was possible to generate income out of thin air, out of nothing but the resources of personal effort.

My one-day excursion into the world of commodities was the start to learning that a great idea is barely half of it. Ideas alone are not enough. They need to become something real, something that can exist in the real world. Ideas need to be expressed.

In the case of commodities, the expression of the idea that it was possible to realize financial gain on nothing but one's own wit needed to be made tangible by a very large amount of talent, skill, and knowledge. And I had none of that. I needed to be able to actually do something, but I didn't have a clue even where to start.

At the time all I knew was that I was in way over my head. I quickly realized that to get to the point where I could even start learning was going to take a huge amount of time and effort. Years. It was going to take just as much work to get good at commodities as it was to get good as a musician. And I liked being a musician a whole lot more than being a commodities guy.

At the end of the day, the main thing I got from the experience was that I was, in fact, made to be a musician, and not something else. That was huge.

Some lessons need to be experienced to be learned. Often, at least for me, the molecules of freedom, the confidence gained from important lessons learned, has been won through flesh and blood lessons.

And when they stick – or they leave a deep lasting mark – they are woven into the fabric of identity, they become a stone in the foundation of our freedom.

Rule Breaker #45: Freedom is a journey

A long time ago, it seemed like everything I did was a struggle. I was never sure I could stick with it. I kept beating myself up about the value of the work I was doing. Questioning the validity of every minute detail. Trusting nothing, certainly not myself. It was rough.

With the production of the opera, my work took on a life of it's own and from that point on I realized that quitting or being forced to quit was no longer going to happen. I had made it to a level of stability in my own mind that gave me the conviction that no matter what, this is what I would be doing from then on.

So I stopped wringing my hands about the whole mess.

I signed a pact with the devil. With myself. It was a true Faustian deal. I got what I wanted but there was a price tag attached. I agreed to stop entertaining any notion of failure if I would commit myself to work and work and work. And never stop. A pretty simple arrangement, really.

So I got out my pen, and I signed my life away. I agreed to devote myself to the work with complete conviction, with everything I have, with my whole being. I agreed that I wouldn't ever look back. That I would do everything I could to fulfill the expectations that I placed on myself and not let anything get in the way of doing my work. Nothing would cause me to question my work ever again.

And it happened. I'm doing it. Still.

So when I'm practicing or I'm writing, I feel good. I feel like I'm doing what I promised myself I would do. I'm fulfilling my side of the bargain. I've stopped wondering about the value of the stuff I do. I've stopped being uncertain if this is what I should be doing. Those questions have simply faded away as I've remained entirely focused on the work. I'm not sitting around and wondering anymore. I'm not sitting around at all. I'm way too busy. I've got too much to do just keeping all my projects afloat to be wasting time navel gazing about this negative stuff.

It's the equivalent of going to the gym, I suppose. Or loosing weight. I'm fulfilling the goals I've set for myself, I'm sticking with the program, I'm holding on to a level of discipline and order that gives every aspect of the work a higher level of value and significance.

Rule Breaker #46: Greatness is a mashup of courage and integrity

Success? That's the wrong question. The real criterion is integrity – the ability to hold a tight focus on identity, on the originality of voice and the rigor of consist intensity. It is integrity that affords the freedom to stand above the winds of popularity and hold firm to the conviction that this work has real value.

For me it started with skills and ability. Gradually I became aware that I had the discipline and commitment necessary to crank out hundreds of production music tracks on schedule and within budget. After five or six years of writing on demand day after day and week after week, I got to the point that I was sure I knew what I was doing. I had an unshakable level of confidence in my ability to do the technical things of writing, arranging, recording, and mixing.

I had reached a level of ability and execution that met the accepted standard of the day. And the feeling of accomplishment and achievement that came with those skills and abilities gave my perception of the work a level of validity and success. That was a start.

But the real deal happened later, during the time I was working on the opera under the NEA grant. A project that started out as a DIY one-time low-budget indie thing had become the opportunity for an underwritten New York premiere. That seriously intimidated me. At the same time, being awarded the grant was an opportunity beyond my wildest dreams and I was determined to make the most of it. So I bit down hard on the bullet and jumped in.

Literally overnight my previous limited local sense of everything was completely blown open and I knew I had to learn how to look at my work in a much larger context. Everything mattered more.

It started with my realization that several anonymous jurors had believed in me enough to give me this opportunity over many other applicants. And I felt that in turn, I had made a promise to deliver a composition that was excellent, original, and unique. This pushed me to really commit to pushing the artistic quality of the work as far as I possibly could.

During the grant period I made several complete, significant revisions to the entire piece. Scenes were added and removed, the libretto was entirely rewritten, new songs were added and existing songs were radically revised. The major roles were re-envisioned and the instrumentation of the accompanying ensemble completely changed. The core of the work remained consistent but by the time the work was performed, even the title was new.

Revising the work at this level of intensity and microscopic detail pushed me farther than I had ever gone as a composer. I learned to precisely scrutinize every tiny detail, to understand how absolutely every component interconnected with everything else. I questioned everything, multiple times, explored dozens and sometimes even hundreds of alternative structures and mixes.

Two test performance read-throughs were staged and after each session I spent months making corrections, additions, and revisions. These read-throughs, and the input I received from the musicians regarding their individual parts, showed me in a very immediate and tangible way how much I was progressing towards realizing the artistic vision I had for the work. Through this process, I learned how to more accurately translate the creative vision and inspiration that was inside my thinking into sound and notes that could be made tangible and real by the performers.

The results of the test performances also bolstered my courage and started to give me a foundation for a stronger conviction that I would be able to achieve the artistic and production standards necessary for the premiere.

Going in to rehearsals for the premiere, which took place in March of 1997, the composition had arrived at a place where every aspect of the work had been highly refined, prepared, tested, and matched against the original inspiration and the now greatly expanded concepts of vision and purpose. I went home that evening with a deep sense that the journey had moved me into an entirely new place where my identity as a human and as an artist was no longer subject to the winds of doubt or lack or fear.

From that point forward, my identity and my work has been founded on a deep abiding conviction, cut from the rock of experience, that ideas surely can be made real for us all.

This is creative freedom.

Rule Breaker #47: Creativity is way more than essential

Deep down, why are we doing this? Why do we do all this really hard work and give up so much? Why do we keep going? Wealth, fame, access, opportunity, resources, love? Yes. And more. Because it is who we are, it is what we do, it represents us, it fulfills us, it satisfies something in us that can't be met any other way. It explains what we value, it realizes our dreams and visions, and it pushes us all forward to the next level.

Integrity of purpose. The fact that this stuff matters. But not just because it matters to us, alone. It matters to the world. To our friends and neighbors – and far beyond to all those people we'll never meet who live across the fabric of humanity. Our vision encircles them and our work speaks to them.

But there's a lot more to it than even that.

Great work speaks for all of us. It says what we want to say, but can't. Powerful creative work gives a voice to those who can't or don't have one of their own. Great work reaches deep into the hearts of real people and expresses their dreams and their hopes and their spirit. It represents us, all of us.

That's why it works. It fulfills something that can't be fulfilled any other way. That's why it's powerful. And that's why it matters so much. That's why it's so essential.

It's not about the work; it's not about the process. It's not even about any one of us, individually.

It's about saying something that others want to say, wish they could say, need to say. But can't. So we have to say it for them.

It's essential. We've got to do it.

That's the real reason for everything.
__________

a story of radical creativity

Ideas have the power to change us, to change maybe everything

It's radical to think that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were each willing to commit nearly a half million dollars of their own money to put the Apple "1984" spot on the air. But even though the things most of us deal with have a lot less zeros on them, I think we all feel that same strength of commitment.

It's vision that shows us the potential of an idea and it's our very identity that throws us into the fray. Because we have stood on the edge and look hard into the future, we've seen what ideas can do and it makes us radically believe in their power. As Woz said, the spot "should have its chance to be seen."

It's radical to know you have a phenomenal idea and remain committed to it enough to do whatever it takes to put it out there. You've got to believe in it, give it all the resources you can, push it far beyond the ordinary, and place it in a venue where it can actually do its thing and connect with lots of people. Doesn't that sound pretty much like identity, vision, inspiration, voice, process, and strength? And the freedom is there, too, in the boldness to produce an advertising concept that didn't even show the product, to approve funding even when the client was too timid, to imagine a 60-second spot as having the depth and weight of a feature film, and to keep searching for a beautiful blonde heroine that could throw a sledgehammer twenty feet into the air.

"1984" aired at two hours, forty-nine minutes into the CBS broadcast to an audience of 96 million people. "A.C. Nielson estimated the commercial reached 46.4 percent of the households in America, a full 50 percent of the nation's men, and 36 percent of the women. The commercial recorded astronomical recall scores." (Louisville)

Seconds after the spot ran, "switchboards immediately lit up at CBS, Chiat/Day, and Apple with calls demanding to know, "What was that?" (Louisville)

"The Super Bowl was always a venue for a huge audience. But Masterlock was the only one that did something exclusively for the Super Bowl until we did '1984.' Our vision was more about the idea of how the world was going to change because of computers, not that we were changing the Super Bowl that day. But it did create a phenomenon where people started thinking [about] designing advertising specifically for the Super Bowl and keeping it secret and having it be a surprise. All those things were kind of born out of '1984'" (Bloomberg)

Viral. That's what we'd call it today. Clow again, "Every news show the next morning was basically saying 'the game was OK but did you see the commercial?'" (Bloomberg) The spot "would ultimately garner an estimated $5 million in free publicity; all three television networks and nearly 50 local stations aired news stories about the spot, most replaying it in its entirety, and hundreds of newspapers and magazines wrote about the phenomenon." (Louisville)

And the spot worked, far beyond expectation. "Consumers flooded electronics stores across the country when the Macintosh debuted the following Tuesday. Those consumers would go on to purchase $155 million worth of Macintoshes in the three months after the Super Bowl." (Taube) Sales figures surpassed Apple's predictions by 50%.

"1984" was unique, a moment in time when hundreds of creative forces came together and resulted in something utterly spectacular. But the work we all do is no different. The scale may not be as grand, or it become even grander. But through our lives and work, each day we prove the power of ideas radically formed and achieved.

Each time we open the house, post the download, open the shop doors, we have proven the impossible is truly possible. Stuff gets made, stuff really does work. This is what grounds us in the freedom to rise above what others say or think, and to have the wisdom to know a good idea when it comes up, the confidence and conviction to run with it, and the courage to stand with it alone if necessary, until the power of the idea is proven in real people's lives. That's radical creativity.

Rule Breaker #48: Creativity is radical, it changes us

Stories speak to us of roads traveled, of places that are far beyond the horizon, new and different. Stories are an expression of a trajectory, an adventure that starts someplace ordinary and ends somewhere beyond the horizon, in a place unimagined and unexpected. The best stories are filled with sights and sounds new and colorful. They portray a vision that is out there somewhere, beyond the perception where it all began.

Stories are like songs, or dances, or poems that give us a glimpse into something better, more brilliant and intense, more dynamic than the place we stood upon before.

Stories change us. They move us from here to somewhere else, from an all-too-familiar perception to a vision that sees the vastness of the future and how it can become the richness of the present.

It is radical to be creative. It is even more radical to act as if creativity has power, that held inside our own identity is the very essence of a unique vision and purpose, that within us is the ability, power, and freedom to say something – write it, sing it, build it – that can touch every heart and every mind and turn our collective thoughts into a new understanding of what it means to live here in this world.

Radical creativity is the force of change through the discovery and expression of highly focused ideas. Discovery is the clarity of vision and purpose reflected in the objects of inspiration. Expression is the shaping of ideas through the craft of voice and process and propelled by the power and permanence of strength and freedom. Radical creativity is the intensity of an expansive identity made real and tangible through amazing words and works.

It is radical to open the door and step out upon the road. The story we write takes us somewhere new, away from the familiar and into the vast distance that lies ahead. It is radical to push forward across the plains of uncertainty and over bridges of doubt that crumble as we pass.

The story we write is ours alone, it is as unique as our own identity, and as powerful. The intensity of radical creativity is the strength and freedom we carry with us upon the road; that guides us and holds us up, that keeps us together even when we falter, even when it is dark and the way forward is impossible to see.

Radical creativity is the courage of vision, the determination, conviction, and resolve of strength and freedom, the bravery and skill of voice and process, the momentum of inspiration and purpose. Combined as the full spectrum of an expansive identity, the infinite shades of identity propel us forward and give balance and strength to our very being.

There is a story yet to write: a journey of radical creativity that is our own to experience and explore. In infinitely unique ways, every story leads here, to the very edge – to the place where everything that is known, and everything that has ever been dreamed, meets our own vision of what comes next.

A vision of the power and certainty of change – it is of more reality than has yet been imagined.
__________

afterword

Standing on the edge

Creativity. It's a journey. Off-road. Without GPS or even a flashlight. And it is unavoidably alone. We all must travel our own journey, founded upon our past, our present, and our future, a creativity that reflects the whole of our own identity.

It starts here, now. In this place, at this moment. And it stretches out before us over chasms of doubt and vast expanses of shear hard work to the infinite distance that lies ahead. And then one day, without notice or exclamation, something happens and we realize the end of our journey is not out there, hidden, after all.

It has become within us. And we carry it forward from that moment forward, internally rooted.

The place where vision is born: our identity, our own edge of inspiration.

It is a hypothesis, this notion that creativity comes from within, is founded upon our deepest sense of identity and the vision we carry with us. "Who are you?" And what do you value? What do you want to _do_ with this time we share here together?

If it means anything at all, I think there's at least more than a little need for all of us to search more intensely, to ponder the potential of something new, something better. And do something about it.

A hypothesis is not a theory. It is not a rule. At best, it is supported by incomplete evidence. In the experiment of radical creativity that I have called my life, I've tried to prove it. Every day, as best as I can.

But it remains to be tested in the most intense laboratory of all, real life. The lives of us all.

So try this:

Standing here, looking out far into the distance, what do you see? Look hard, look again. A flash, a colorful blur of something that doesn't exist, yet. Ideas never before known. New discoveries. Inspiring and captivating things – appearing for the very first time.

Isn't that what we're all searching for? Solutions that actually work? Stuff that really rocks? Amazing, exciting, dynamic statements that send everyone home with a new way of looking at the world? Products, designs, inventions, discoveries that enable all of us to do the never-before-imaginable, to overcome limited resources and to suddenly be able to rise to new levels of human experience? Ideas that foster knowledge, wisdom, and insights that empower and give hope to anyone seeking a new or better way of life?

Rule Breaker #49: Creativity is ideas made real

In the end, what creativity is really about – and why it is so absolutely essential – is something much deeper than the work, the product, the story, or the content – no matter how cool or exciting or spectacular it is.

The work is only the messenger, the medium.

When it comes down to it, the reason to do all this is not the story or the melodies, but rather, it is what those words and notes are able to say to us. It is the meaning, the message, expressed through the content, which has the power to lift us all higher.

What matters is the message itself – your idea, your singular underlying vision expressed through words or shapes or colors or sounds. A glimpse into a completely new world. A new idea, that only you have seen.

Adapting, surviving. Hanging in. Holding an unflinching dedication to keep working. Maintaining an unwavering commitment to find the time and resources to do the cool stuff. Taking care of ourselves enough that we're not knocked out of the game, not taken down by external forces.

For me, when things went south, when everything that had once been so cool had completely evaporated, whenever I've lost it, there's always been something that's pulled me back.

Vision, a dream, inspiration, hope.

Anyone that feels that pull, feels that energy of strong, powerful ideas, anyone that has that insight and burning desire to do something wildly unique and original can hang in, too. That's where the strength comes from. That's where the resolve to keep going is founded. It's beyond survival. It's breathing and living what really matters deep down in our hearts. As simple and as complicated as that is.

In the light of a new day, we rise up. Try again. We find a way to keep reaching, to keep expanding our vision, to keep refining our expression. The world drags us all kinds of ways. It's beyond our control. The focus changes. The venue changes. But the fundamentals don't change. It will forever be all about making great stuff, stuff that connects, stuff that has impact, stuff that blows everything else away.

It has been a long time, now, it seems. Looking back. Sitting at my mother's Hammond organ, writing those very first notes of a melody with a blue ink pen. A child's hand, shaky and unsure, crossing something out, writing new ideas over the top of old ones, changing things; imagining what might be.

It's very quiet now. There's a soft silver light emerging. A solitary bird is singing. Out in the street, a red car glides past like a phantom ship without sails, passing unnoticed in mid-ocean. My wife's alarm beeps in the other room. There's a hazy gauziness that descends subliminally over my consciousness until finally it makes me pause for a second; I look up.

Oh, it's morning.

We've all had way too many late nights and a lot of bleary morning-afters. Most have merged into one long blur of parentheticals that get lost and forgotten in the final cut.

But a few leave a mark; like the morning when I finished the first draft of the opera. In that one silent solitary moment as the early light came in through the windows, with everyone still asleep and completely unaware, my world was suddenly and entirely changed. It was as if the bridge, upon which I had only moments before been standing, was now just simply...gone.

And I was left standing, alone. Dazed. On the other side. Knowing there was no turning back, I just sat there for a long while and tried to look ahead, off into the distance. Tried to see what was out there, ahead of me. I felt completely blown apart.

Looking back upon that memory at various times since, I now understand that it was in that moment when I first arrived at the edge. It was there, in our century-old, simple grey frame house, that I found the place where certainty crosses into uncertainty, and everything that is known becomes unknown.

Even though I was as yet unable to describe it in words, I was suddenly aware of just how important this stuff actually is: The significance, the power, and the responsibility. This stuff really matters. This stuff is necessary.

In that single moment alone with the sounds of the opera still reverberating inside me, I knew somehow that great work is not at all about me, alone, or even any one of us, individually. It is in no way even remotely personal.

Great work is about all of us, together and collectively; great work is essential to all our lives, to who we all are. And who we all will all become.

Rule Breaker #50: Creativity makes the impossible, possible

And that basically brings us to now.

I'm standing on the edge and looking out into the distance. Searching for what comes next. And the edge? I've stopped worrying about it. I don't even bother to look down, now. Slip off a few times and it just isn't scary, anymore.

Why? Because I now know that the impossible is possible. I have proof: the opera – and just about every other project that's materialized around me. They were all impossible, until they weren't. So I'm not even thinking about falling. I'm not letting myself get distracted. I'm holding my focus on the horizon, the vision, the next impossible thing. The thing that's going to change everything.

So perhaps this is all, then. All the details, all the experiences, all the questions, all the words up until now.

What pulls it together? What single line sums it all up?

Keep pushing, keep searching, think big, then think bigger. Stick with it.

Most of all don't do a meltdown over any of this. We need you. We need what only you can tell us, what only you can show us.

Take care of yourself. I think that probably covers it.

Renew my sense of who I am; help me understand my brothers and sisters; tell me the real reason why I'm here; give me a reason to get up in the morning; help me absorb the shocks and burns of a complicated world; show me how to love; tell me it's OK to care and even love deeply; give me some strength; convince me that I have a reason to be here; make me courageous and joyful; make me believe there's a morning after that will be better.

We all really need this. We need passion and resolve, love and peace, beauty and power, wisdom and spirit. We need unrelenting hope. We need your every inspiration. We need your very creativity.
__________

a note of thanks

In street photography, the best shots are completely unplanned and unscripted. On the street we move together, we intersect and interact – and sometimes the moment captured reveals an underlying primal order of relationships that is there all along, even though we have been too busy to notice.

As creative artists we are busy people. We work, live, love, and still find time to look over the edge into the vast distance and discover something entirely new. Literally, we are as those individuals in street photographs – rushing towards something, yet expressing relationships and connections that are ever present, but too busy to grab the moment and take a look.

In September of 2010, I decided it was time to start paying attention. I deliberately focused my internal camera on my own and other's creative work. In big and small moments, I stopped the action and looked hard at what was happening around me.

In almost every case, the people in those mental photographs were my family, friends, colleagues, and students. Their thoughts, questions, and suggestions have helped guide me and inspire me in this project.

My sincere thanks to Mary-Jean Cowell, Thomas Zirkle, Hilary Harper-Wilcoxen, Steven Thomas, Janet Buchanan, Jeff Bailey, Ben Wann, Lisa Hagan, and Libby Scheiern for reading early manuscripts and for their encouragement and insights.

I'm also grateful for my family – Anna, James, and my wife Janet – for their patience as I searched for the words to express these ideas.

I am the founder and director of the Institute for Creative Ideas. We present events that seek to inspire, enlighten and empower through the development of creativity, originality, and innovation.

As an artist, I am an improvising pianist, music producer, and filmmaker who also writes on creativity and artistic expression. My compositions have been performed in Europe, Asia, and throughout the US. In 2014, I made a documentary on the creativity of street musicians in cities across America. It's on my YouTube channel.

Throughout the 1980s I worked as a free-lance commercial music producer confronting the collision of art and commerce at a time when technology was rapidly changing the recording studio landscape.

I've written concert reviews and articles on music technology for magazines and music journals.

Thank you for reading my book. I sincerely hope it has fueled your inspiration. Please stay in touch. I look forward to connecting with you on my web sites below!

-Jim

www.JimHegarty.com

www.TheCreativeEdgeBooks.com

www.Facebook.com/TheCreativeEdgeBooks

twitter.com/JamesHegarty
__________

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