8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

Category: Jovial June

Chapter List

  • Confidence Boosts

    I bought yet another book of sheet music recently.

    That’s what musicians probably do, right? I assume so myself. Going to the music store makes me feel like how I used to feel going to the bookstore or the record store (way back when that was a thing) and I spent hours browsing through the stacked pages of a million potential adventures through grand ideas or creative expression.  Sheet music still seems to hold that grip on me.

    I bought a book of sheet music that is probably too hard for me to play.

    Precisely, it was a thick book of classical standards, two and a half centimetres of paper bound up with literally hundreds of works by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and a couple dozen more mostly-famous composers. Intermediate piano music.

    Don’t get me wrong.  I can read music. I’ve been playing some form of instrument for about forty-five years, most recently going on a music journey with the violin.  But having delved in a serious attempt to learn how to play the piano this past year I would still neatly categorize myself as a beginner. 

    And now I have this sheath of music for intermediate players. It’s probably, almost certainly, too hard for me to play… right now.

    Confidence is many things, often immeasurable things, but sometimes I need to remind myself that I must have a least a little bit of it: I invested in my future self this week and I bought a book of music that is aspirational, too difficult for me today, but some part of me must believe that tomorrow will be better, huh?

  • Gifts Dangers 

    For me, personally, I have often struggled to keep a clear line between the work I do for money and the work I do for fun.  That is not to say that the creative aspects of my job have been particularly lucrative in my life, but the overlap of my creative talents has often benefited employers–and vice versa, my hobbies have often benefited people and companies I don’t actually work for (or get paid by…)

    Coincidentally, I was reminded of this recently: a photo I took on a running adventure with my friends found its way through a bit of sharing in a corporate newsletter that landed back on my inbox: weird thing that, getting your own work sent back to you by a company who is using it for something they didn’t inform you about or pay you for.

    Legal blurriness aside (this is not a post about that, really, and if any company was going to benefit from my work in this way this is one of about three companies in the whole world I would look away and say, okay, you guys have given me so much over the years, blah, blah, blah, I’m gonna ignore this one… but I digress.)

    Creativity is a gift, but it can be a dangerous minefield of people taking what you can do for granted. It happens routinely. You become the guy with the camera. The dude who can make websites. The man to go to if someone needs something sketched. We all have those things: plumbers are going get asked about leaky faucets, doctors are gonna get asked about that mole on my back and chefs are going to be expected to bring the best dish to a potluck. Navigating the overlap is the hard part for all of us.

    Under the category of Gifts & Dangers, I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Idea Bank

    Case in point: I had been watching videos about creative note-booking strategies on YouTube, too many to make it worth linking to them, and thinking about my own process for tracking ideas, brainstorming and creative ideation, and I sat down to write this post.  In my notes, months ago, I had already written “an idea bank by carrying a notebook even a digital one is a foundational tool for creative” on a bulleted list at the top of a digital topic page somewhere.

    I keep an idea bank.

    It’s not complex.

    And that’s the whole point. 

    It’s simple. It’s low effort. It’s low friction, as the business gurus might put it.

    I use the notes app on my phone, keep a date-stamped note near the top of the list, and just add new post ideas to the top of the list when said ideas cross my mind. No bullet lists. No categorized planning. No grids or charts or bubble flows. Just note on list.

    Later, when I’m sitting in a cafe sipping on a tea I’ll go through them and copy-paste them into a giant living document that I have going where I write my posts. Personally, and this isn’t so much an endorsement as it is a I happen to use note, I use Scrivener on a Mac. It is billed as writing software and is the closest I’ve come to a big multi-document, cloud-synced, writers organizational platform as anything.  Results may vary, so do your own research for what works for you.

    Which is to say: keep it simple.

    I’ve gone simple and it works for me.

    If I had to put a point on this it would be merely to tell you that creativity happens anywhere at any time—you know that—and the best tool to capture that is not one that involves tapping some of that creativity to engage with it. The best tool to capture it is one that takes the absolute minimum space: a sheet of paper with a pen, a notebook you carry around with you, a voice memo, or the simplest text app on your phone.

    Bank on it.

  • Poets Processing

    Daily writing has a way of losing focus. I dive down metaphorical rabbit holes all the time, and yet I’d be the first to tell you that such things are not just okay, but a kind of magical side effect of creativity. A perk.

    As I collect topics and ideas to fill these pages I have gone down one particular hole multiple times and at times have risked turning this blog into something else entirely.

    The bad part of that is losing focus on something I care about—creative pursuits—and is not (strategically speaking) the direction in which I want to take this project.

    The good part of that diversion is I that I do in fact have the time, resources and inclination to pursue those topics in another place.

    All this is to say that as of this month I’m going to be (trying to)maintain two daily blogs—yikes!—and write on two different topics.

    Here, on “Eight Clicks from Nowhere” I will keep on track with my ramblings related to creative motivation, insights into building skills and habits to make stuff, and write about the interesting (at least to me) hobbies that clutter my life.

    Over on “on poets & processors” I am building a new site around the topic of the dehumanization of art and creativity by algorithmic competition: how AI is invading the creative spaces and simultaneously stealing work while probably, maybe, sort of creating interesting new opportunities… and what’s the deal?

    Advance warning: there may be some cross posting, but as they veer off down different paths I suspect it may turn into more of a cross-blog conversation.  Or, whatever: what do I know, I’m not a machine here.

    Check it out.

  • Uncritical Content

    At first I was casually avoid it, but lately I’ve been actively blocking and aggressively veering my personal algorithm away from it: complaint baiting. 

    Sloppy critique often starts off as sincere criticism. I imagine so, anyhow. I would like to think that many of the types of armchair film critics and technology buffs and gaming reviewers started off with a genuine interest in doing artistic criticism.

    Rightly defined criticism and critique are invaluable aspects of the feedback loop for artists and creators. One of those difficult but important skills any artist must learn is how to take critique and learn from it without crumbling under the perception of negativity.  Good critique, after all, is not anger or dismissal or ridicule: it is important information to help someone redirect their effort and improve it on the next iteration or attempt. 

    Yet, social media has become rife with what seems to be more of something I would call complaint-driven content. It disguises itself as critique, but rather than offering insight or nudging the artist in a slightly different, presumably better direction creatively… it rails. It gripes. It complains. It mocks. It leeches off the work to make something ugly of its own that was never intended to lift or improve or offer even critical support of the original.

    I have to assume there is an audience for that, and an audience means clicks and revenue.  The capital-driven feedback loop never fails in this regard.

    I also have to assume the only recourse towards weakening its grasp on society is to each do our parts in ignoring it, blocking it, and discouraging it through our lack of attention.