8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Category: Part 3 – Clicking In

The creative human fits into a bigger picture spanning the gamut of society, technology and tradition. The grit of creativity.

Chapter List

  • 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.

  • Linked Out

    There is a flavour of professional writing which I find myself trying to avoid veering into.

    If you’ve ever been on that professional networking social media platform you know exactly what I’m talking about, those articles that talk about leadership, career growth and always seem to find a new way to write an article called what I learned about insert-business-trope-here from insert-random-life-experience-there.

    On site, those articles get lots of likes and reshares, but off site many assume it is all a lot of performative mugging, a bit vapid, and almost certainly driven by a lot of generative AI.

    So when a guy like me sits down to write a daily article on creative motivation or skill development or artistic niche hunting, it would be real easy to drift into the lane where all those aforementioned articles persist.

    That’s not my goal.  Far from it, in fact. It’s the reason I don’t pepper this site with advertising. I want to be more than that. Better than that. And in fact if I were to suggest that what I’m doing here is writing articles with that similar flavour but also with a lot more homespun sincerity and (what I’m hoping is) experiential insight then you might be closer to understanding where I’m coming from with this writing project.

    Still, the problem remains: writing optimistic micro-essays about creative pursuits is a genuine niche and one that has drawn the ire and ridicule of many who see it, when poorly or hastily done, as an disingenuous to the spirits of voice and purpose and method.

    It becomes just more slop.

    But I think I can avoid that.

    After all, just because fast food commodified and ruined the hamburger, doesn’t mean you won’t find a delicious example of one somewhere else, right?

  • Green Echoes

    I went to the park to sketch the other day. It was a whim. I wasn’t planning it, but the moment arose and I grabbed onto it. 

    I got there, set up, and pulled my collection of pens from my bag.

    All but one pen was dry.

    And the only pen that was not dry was a thick, green-inked brush pen.

    Let me add to this tale of artistic frustration that my pen of choice is usually a black ink fine-liner. This is pretty much the opposite of that is a clunky green ink shading pen—a pen that I really only brought along because I thought I might get bold enough to add a splash of colour to my spring-inspired sketch, whatever that might have been.

    Yet there I was, sitting in the park having added a few lines of black to the page before the blank ink fully failed and, well, I needed to finish the sketch.

    Art, I truly believe, is as much story as it is product. The best art, the best photos, the best music, and the best anything is threaded through with an artistic narrative that gives it meaning beyond the final product. Polishing a perfect piece of art that has no story behind it may work for adding commercial value, but artistic value?

    Less so. Arguably.

    Admittedly, the story of my dried up pen collection is not the best story, and my minor inconvenience is hardly a tale of hardship worthy of the ages… but the story of why I now have a clunky sketch made with a green-hued felt brush in my sketchbook is arguably better than the sketch itself. 

    That alone is worth it.

  • Artificial Audience

    I’m writing this on the day that Google died.

    I know, I know. Google is a thriving company with years of profitability ahead of them. I should probably also disclose that I own exactly 0.0209 shares of Google currently valued at approximately eight American dollars. So, I get it. Google is probably not dead, at least not in the strictest sense of the word.

    But the company was founded on the idea of democratizing the internet by helping average people find websites built by other average people, people like me building websites like this, and as Google switches over to an AI-forward search engine that mostly summarizes answers and, as an afterthought only just might send one of those average people into a click… well, the idea of getting readers from search is basically dead in the water.

    I bring it up here and now because like most creative people who create things, we do it with the idea of sharing those things with average people. 

    If you are reading this it’s now unlikely that Google helped you find it.

    And as we increasingly commodify creativity and ever more turn to AI to be the gatekeeper of what is seen and known, it is a difficult distraction to overcome as a creative human being wondering what it is even the point of making stuff.

    It’s not wrong to feel that way. I have felt that way a lot lately.

    All I can say is that I also feel it is worth it to keep making stuff, sharing stuff, and looking past the gatekeepers of what was for a moment—but is no longer—the most democratic creative outlet humanity had ever built.