NEWS
I’m launching a new class this week called Vision: from Wild Ideas to a Perfect Pitch in 6 weeks. Vision builds on lessons I’ve learned through creating new things: A freelance illustration and design career, Legendeer, Think Louder, Book pitches, collaborations with NASA, CoStar Group, VCUHealth, solo exhibitions, partnerships and many others. Vision is for those creative entrepreneurs looking to author their own opportunities. It’s built upon the framework introduced in the Ideacraft and Voice courses, which also have new cohorts beginning on July 5th. Come study with me and a group of amazing creators from around the world who are all looking to Think Louder.
MOM’S PANTRY
As the daughter of a United States Forest Service Ranger, mom grew up between Hungry Horse and Glacier Park in Montana. We had the opportunity to visit her childhood stomping grounds last summer with our original family- mom, dad, my brother n’ me.
We put our feet in the same stream she played in, saw the cabin my grandfather managed, the campground that he designed and got funding to build, met with my cousin, Uncles and Aunts, climbed a fire tower, had a private home concert from My Uncle Ryan, hiked the Trail of Cedars that my Uncle Dan built (not alone, but supervised a troop of scouts) and even found the old neighborhood where she grew up. All the houses are gone now, sitting as open plats of impossibly soft waist hard Gh natural grass. The chaos turned magic led us on a trip that defied words and pictures. It was imperfectly perfect. My heart aches from that time together, the way that newly formed memories open you up and leave a deep void all at once.
My friend, Adam Paquette said to me once that we all aim to be “fully alive”. There we were, our little family all grown older; all together and that’s exactly what we were- fully alive. God, what I wouldn’t do to stay there in that place; in that moment. But there are so many such bitter-sweet moments. I collect them.
In those times I’m torn. While I’m out on different adventures, all I can think of is sharing those moments with my wife and kids. Guess we’re never truly complete. At some point, you just get used to the push and pull between joy and heartache. It ebbs and flows, but that tension is always there.
Is it strange that I’ve come to enjoy that ache? That I listen for it in songs? Search for it in books? Watch for it in films, illustrations and paintings? Hold me in that perpetual tension; make me feel something and you’ve got me.
“A heart that is broken is a heart that is open.” Good on you, Bono.
U2, Cedarwood Road
In rural Montana during the late 50’s, you made do. Going to the market was a luxury. If the pantry was empty you did without. If you ran out, you improvised. How many novel solutions were born of necessity? New recipes, songs, stories, ideas, inventions and innovation. Ingenuity is a response to this friction, our ideas an unmooring from their hold. To know mom is to know someone who is endlessly creative and intuitively resourceful. It was like having YouTube’s endless DIY channels as my mom. Yes, some of this is clearly innate, but you can also credit where and how she grew up.
My family and I just got back from a summer adventure of our own. There were so many highlights- often born from challenges. There is no lost irony in how hard you have to work to relax.
I figured out how to help my son catch a big ole’ bass. I’ve historically been a bad fisherman, but he loves it and I’m learning. I was able to rescue a young woman hopelessly stuck in her truck on a steep embankment next to the lake. No danger here, but a group of five strangers didn’t have to call a tow-truck. It requires some sequential problem solving with a jack, a log and a request that I drive her manual transmission truck out of there. My son found a lost inflatable boat that we patched and named the SS Tuggs. We invented a new game with my wife and I throwing Big Mo’s splash balls at the kids on floats (think Battleship in real life).
But, it was almost the vacation that wasn’t. On the way down, the turbo on my truck blew with trailer, family and foster cat in tow. My wife quickly identified the problem based on the sudden whooshing sound and our loss of power, thanks to YouTube. Apparently it was the Intercooler? and with some good fortune at 6:00pm on a Sunday, we limped into the parking lot of an Advanced Auto shop that had the only intercooler in this small Virginia town (we tried the first two with no ssuccess). Within an hour, I was able to fix that damn thing because I had to. (Honestly, it wasn’t hard, but it was necessary).
Now to stitch this back together with the here and the now. In this era of interconnection and global access, new connections are being made at unprecedented rates. The clashing of cultures is proving to be absolutely fucking seismic. New theories, academic ideas, medical advances and technological capabilities are being tested in the real world and in real-time, often to great harm. What is the most shocking is how quickly new ideas are being embraced, entrenched, weaponized and propagandized. These new connections and new ideas have no qualifier and seemingly limitless capacity to be shared and disseminated. Cast them to the wind, see what sticks, consequences be damned. We’re in a time of tremendous discoveries and dangerous ideas, as our threshold of tolerance has dropped to unprecedented levels.
When we’re immersed in problem-solving, the consequences are felt personally and the limitations that bind us are familiar. We have skin in the game. But these new theories are being tested, leveraged and manipulated on those who would confuse information with knowledge. It’s a recipe for disaster.
I feel we’ve lost that critical step in the scientific method of trying to disprove our theories. I’m an ambitious optimist, but damn if culturally we don’t need a dose of good old skepticism. Not the external dismiss out of hand kind because you’re different than me, but the internal, could I be wrong? kind.
In physics, potential energy is held by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, its electric charge or other factors. This serves as a strong illustration for the way that creativity works.
In art, ideas are born of the marrying of unrelated things. The greater the difference between two or more known objects that are placed in proximity to one another, the greater the tension. Each object amplifies our awareness of the boundaries and limits of the other. These jarring discrepancies are exploited and manipulated within creative enterprises as hierarchy; the ordered presentation of information.
The most thought-provoking art passes this question on to the viewer to be considered long after the curtains have closed. Great art and images invite participation. This initiates a dialogue between the viewer and the finished work that echos the creative dialogue that occurred between the artist and the work during the creative process. But that’s just it- the best work makes us feel something and often allows us to understand that there is a process. An effort; a labor; work. A human problem that was looking for a solution, solved by a human mind.
Many of these new ideas provide no insight into the process. They are presented to the world as a complete and perfect thing. A black box. We don’t know the process. We can’t see the hands that have brought them to life, nor do we know the motivation behind them. If it feels like we’re currently living in an impossible fiction, know that our best writers and artists saw all of this as a possibility, maybe even probable outcome long ago.
Like all creativity, there is a structure and logic to ideas. The best ideas are laden with potential energy. They wake us from our sleep and run on repeat over and over again. In this cyclical iteration process, we challenge our assumptions, we question, we test, then we take action. Ideas by nature, are divergent. The entire point is that ideas introduce the potential for innovation and opportunity through new solutions to new problems or novel solutions to old problems. But bad ideas and untested theories are often created, not as solutions to problems, but simply because they can be. Often, they become the problem itself.
As you look to design new ideas, or look to embrace the next new thing, I’d encourage you to pause. Think for a moment on the consequences- both intended and unintended if your idea were to reach it’s highest boss level. Some of these monsters can’t be put back in their bottles and we’d be well advised not to feed them.
I swear that I’ll continue to do my best to welcome the problems and challenges in my life as opportunities. To see them as a chance to understand my own worth and to have something of value to offer those that I walk with, as well as those I find in need along the way. Remember that not all ideas have to be big, ambitious or world-changing. There are times when our smallest effort, our most efficiently applied ingenuity can have a life-changing impact on the life of another person. Look for those places where you can serve others. Have the moral courage to know what is right and to learn where your value and values live. Often, it takes very little to do a tremendous amount of good, if the need is deep enough.
Think Louder,
Sterling
Hey, want to study with me? I’m running three classes starting this Friday: Ideacraft, Voice and Vision. All live with direct feedback. The classes begin June 5th and runs six weeks- find out more here.
Dates: July 5th- August 17th
What a beautiful read. Thank you.