Well, the snails may be slowing down but the site visits are speeding up, with more people visiting per post in February than ever before. The site is just shy of 10,000 visits! I’m very happy because the next few months are going to be spent getting the project tied up and finished, so it’s nice to have an audience. The start to 2012 has been incredibly busy but I think it should quieten down a bit in the summer. Here’s some more writing from the book:
ON TIME
The process of development and the pursuit of improvement. This is not an easy thing to market and sell. We like to have an idea of time and effort involved. I think of the adverts with a hideously muscly man stood next to a thinner picture of the same person, and the caption ‘Get the perfect stomach in four weeks!’. Now, the reality is that whilst this is achievable, it is not achievable without some kind of sizable effort. Furthermore, for those who have the perfect stomach, it was the sizable effort that makes them proud of what they have achieved. If we could all look like that with no effort it would be meaningless.
We are quick to want a payoff from our creativity. It is difficult to accept that original thoughts and good ideas do not always come easily. The process of reflection and consideration are often dispensed with in the hope that the first thought will do. Often this means it isn’t all that well developed and mistakes occur a bit further down the process. I see this a lot with student filmmakers. They often don’t develop their scripts to be that original. They mimic and imitate the styles of their favourite films and make substandard copies. This is less of a creative process and more of an act of forgery or plagarism. It is quite common for someone to copy and imitate the style of their favourite artists without going through the development and process that the originator went through. That is why some artists consider originality and innovation as the core value of their work instead of perfection. Their work will be copied and perfected by imitators who are looking to be like them and improve upon it. These imitators will always exist, but it is incredibly hard to keep creating original work.
If we accepted that our creativity was a process that has no fixed end, that it is evolutionary and changing as we change, we may be more willing to accept our own work. This process connects us to our surroundings in a way that we have been grown unaccustomed. Our lives have become fragmented, to perform roles within larger organisations and societies. It is rare that we are connected to products or projects from concept through to completion. Think about food. It passes through so many hands on the way to our plate, often having travelled further than many of us could ever hope to travel on holiday. Perhaps this alienation from the things that we consume means that we don’t appreciate the real value of these products. The idea that we just purchase our products instead of having any involvement in their creation has become pervasive. In the ‘developed world’ we are consuming more of everything, food, fuel, media, you name it, we are consuming it in greater volumes than ever before. But are we valuing it less?
