Category: Ideas

Big and small.

Spare the rod.

dannygregory46 Comments

My second stepfather was quick with his fists. He would escalate disagreements with waiters into brawls in parking lots.  He threw chairs in parent-teacher conferences. He wouldn’t hesitate to pull the car over and reach into the back seat to swing at me and my little sister. He was six feet tall with meaty forearms covered with red hairs. When I was ten years old, his right hand left an imprint on my left cheek which I wore to school for a week.

We moved a lot when I was little and, as the new kid, I was an easy target for bullies. I was tripped, teased, and occasionally had to get stitches. I was told to just walk away or to stand up for myself or to name names, but nothing made much difference. I was a wimp and a weed.

I’m no longer the new kid. And my second stepfather has been dead of pancreatic cancer for over a decade. These days, the only likely sources of physical violence I encounter are drunks and madmen. I live in Greenwich Village so there are a fair number of each around but I haven’t been struck since a large, intoxicated man appeared out of nowhere and knocked me to the ground in Washington DC. That was during the first Clinton Administration. Except for 9/11, the Bush and Obama years have been without incident.

It’s pretty unusual to see an adult strike a child in public these days. When it happens, it seems so barbaric, like witnessing a street fight. No doubt family services will soon be called, courts, foster care, but when I was a kid, it was an everyday thing, never discussed with outsiders, a family affair. I can’t imagine striking Jack. He’s taller than me these days and goes to the gym all the time, but even when he was knee-high, I would never have turned my frustration into any sort of physical response. It just wasn’t in me.

But what is in me is the battle against the impending threat. While I haven’t been physically assaulted in this millennium, a part of me is ever vigilant, waiting for an attack. It’s the part of me that bruises too easily. My ego. The slings and arrows of garden-variety disagreements and critiques can still sting disproportionately. A blog comment, a client request, a passing suggestion from my girlfriend, all can raise the specter of my second stepfather, his shadow on my doorstep.  My only weapons are flimsy and malfunctioning: defensiveness, sarcasm, withdrawal — the sorts of things that do me more harm than good.

I have long been working on toughening up. I’ve had to. I spent decades in the trenches of advertising where curt dismissal was part of the job, where hard-earned ideas would ride out of conference rooms on their shields, where creative competitions are called “gang bangs.” I have spent decades on the Internet too, where anonymous trolls are free to lumber in, 24/7, and empty their bowels on my creations with the click of  a mouse.

Here’s what I tell myself, not always successfully:

A) Everyone has the right to an opinion.

B) Each critique is an opportunity to better my work.

C) My second stepfather is dead. Even if he does live on in my head.

I force myself to first take a deep breath and try to clear the fog of emotion. This is now. It is not the past. (I know, I know. Easier said than done).

Then I consider the content of the input. (God, even the way I wrote that last sentence shows how tightly I clutch the reins). I look at my idea as objectively as I can, as if it was not mine, unvested — and then I apply the critique. Is it helpful? Can I use it? If so, all good. Thanks very much for saving me from myself. Now I can do better.

But if I am unsure of the critique, if it seems not to fit at all with the way I see the situation, then it’s time to consider the intention behind it. Is the critic there to help? Or to throw a fist? Do they want me and my idea to succeed? Or will they profit in some way from my failure? Will it make them bigger? Will it prop up their vanity and insecurity?  Because if their motives are suspect, maybe their criticism is too.

This is easier said than done, but I think it’s right.

Whatever sort of childhood you’ve had, being creative thins your skin. You take your work so personally. You have to, that why you care enough to make it good.  Not because of the money or the acclaim but because it’s a part of you that you are putting out there.

But remember that the world is essentially kind and welcoming. The people who matter want you to succeed. They will collaborate with you to help you make your work as good as it can be, because good work makes the world a better place for all of us.  And the assholes? They see your success as further proof of their own failures. That’s not your concern.

Unfortunately, I have long given my second stepfather a sort of immortality by letting him enter my dreams. But I won’t let him crush them too.

No returns, no regrets

dannygregory23 Comments

Getting what you want out of any creative form takes work. You have to make a lot of crap to get to the good stuff. You invest time. You tussle with the monkey. You doubt yourself.

Why bother?

It’s easy to avoid being great. In fact, the world seems to want you to avoid it. It bombards you with temptations and distractions. It seems not to understand why you are wasting your time. It fills your browser with zillions of example of people who are doing what you should be doing, only better and seemingly without effort.

But being great at what you’re good at has lots of benefits. And they’re not the benefits you imagine. The goal is not numbers: not more $ in the bank, more Twitter followers, more awards on your mantle.

The goal is to be who you are meant to be: a person who is living a life of fulfillment, who is working for something bigger than themselves, who is helping, who matters.

You have gifts to give to the world. But it may just take some sweat to unwrap them.

Freaky Friday

dannygregory32 Comments

A few days ago, I woke up in a parallel universe. It took a while to realize that I was in a new dimension because my bedroom, my bathroom, my dachshunds, all looked pretty much the same. But the back page of my neighbor’s New York Post, lying face down on the elevator floor, clued me in.

The headline screamed, “Yee Dominates Open” over a picture of some ceramic sculptures. The caption went on to explain that artist Lulu Yee’s work was all the rage at the Bushwick Open Studios.

I nudged through the rest of the paper with my toe. Where I expected to see hockey scores and an update on the Yankee’s quest for a shortstop, I found reviews of two shows at the new Whitney, a long essay on Robert Motherwell’s legacy, and a table charting the top twenty seniors at RISD and their expected prospects at Art Basel in Miami.

I walked back into my apartment and hit the remote. A flashy logo for ESPN (the Exhibition, Sculpture & Painting Network), swept across the screen. Two talking heads were discussing Gerhard Richter’s decision to switch to a new brand of paint thinner, then rumors about Damien Hirst’s wrist injury, the economics of a trade of three Rachel Whiteread sculptures between the Guggenheim and a huge new museum in Dallas, and Matthew Barney’s newly trimmed beard.

In this alternate world, art schools recruited talented third graders, galleries poached art school freshmen, and major corporations viciously competed to sponsor retrospectives at the Guggenheim. There were hundreds of extraordinary new artists I had never heard of before: they now had the chance to show their work, were supported and encouraged to push boundaries and create new dimensions in art.  School art programs were lavishly supported and even the most provincial colleges had big, sun-swept studios, subsidized art supply stores and  deep pockets. Most athletic programs, alas, had meager support and sparse attendance.

Every city built stadiums to present Pussy Riot performance pieces and screen Tom McCarthy videos. Teenaged girls mooned over half-naked pinups of Richard Prince. Marina Abramovic had her own cable network. Every street tough wore Basquiat dreadlocks and paint spattered shoes. Kids coveted jackets festooned with Liquitex and Grumbacher logos. Parents named their babies “Winsor” and “Newton”. Art students lived in mini-mansions and drove Escalades to Starbucks where star quarterbacks made them pumpkin lattes.

Exhilarated and exhausted by my first day in this wonderland, I drank too much absinthe and passed out. When I woke up the next morning, it was to the sound of reality, two cab drivers across the street arguing over how the Yankee’s star pitcher’s strained forearm would effect their season. Art funding was still in crisis, parents still worry about their creative kids’ prospects, museums catered to the lowest common denominator, and our education system and our culture were still ruled by sports and money.

Oh, well.

If I figure out how to get back to the other side,would you want to come with me?

Child’s Play

dannygregory23 Comments

Sometimes I want a spoonful or two of sugar in my tea. I want to reread The Wind in the Willows. I want to watch Tom & Jerry. I want to eat Lucky Charms, or a meat pie with ketchup, peanut butter and jelly on white bread. I want to listen to Danny Kaye singing Hans Christian Andersen.

I want to spoil the kid in me.

My childhood was far from idyllic but things from my childhood can make me feel comfortable and free. And that freedom makes me feel creative in a visceral, fundamental way. The smell of paste, the feeling of scribbling with crayons, splattering poster paint with a big mushy brush, they loosen something in my head, the something that binds me to judgment and fear. School art supplies release me from rules and expectations and let me free to play.

I’ve been using materials like these more and more, since I started to explore in my California garage and then spent time with schoolkids in Beijing. I bought tempera and huge rolls of brown paper and Play-Do and sheets of cardboard and started to let loose.

It took work to let go, to undo the handcuffs and shake off the rust, but poster paints and fat cheap brushes helped a lot. There was nothing at stake. I could chuck paint around then toss the results in the trash. I didn’t care. And the kids in China didn’t either. We were just playing.

A couple of months ago, I started working on some projects using these childhood materials I’d rediscovered. I made some videos for an imaginary kid, someone six or eight or ten, to show him or her some cool things we could make together. I turned my thumbs into rubber-stamps, I melted crayons, I made masks out of grocery bags, I made stop-motion animations — and I had a lot of fun.

These videos were the foundation of a new set of lessons that I plan to take with me to Switzerland and Dubai these fall, to work with kids and show them some new ways to play. But they are also a new kourse we created for Sketchbook Skool because playing is something that’s not just for kids, it’s for the kids in all of us. I’ve seen time and again that when grow-ups are given permission to mess around with cheap art supplies, they reconnect with their original creative impulse, that impulse that fuels even the most sophisticated art and professional creative projects. Without that wild child, art becomes business, stiff and academic and overthought, and driven by fear and judgment. But unleashed it can produce anything.

I also liked the idea of creative projects that kids and grownups could take together and inspire each other. And that kids, out of school for the summer, could do on their own to keep their creative flames a flickering.

The monkey fought me a lot as I put these lessons together. What if adults resented being treated like children, felt patronized? What if I looked foolish? Unprofessional? Lost my ‘authority’?

Aw, screw it. I had fun and I think anyone watching the lessons will find some fun in them too — or might want to ask themselves why not. They gave me the same sort of comfort I find in childish things and my drawings and writing have been a lot looser since I started, more open to experimentation, less filled with consequence. I can’t wait to work with schoolkids again this fall. And to see what you make of our new kourses, Playing and More Playing at Sketchbook Skool. Here’s a little preview of the kourse if you’re interested:

Me, Myself and ________.

dannygregory15 Comments

The forms of art I work at are solitary. Writing, drawing — I start with blankness and have to look inside myself to fill it up.

So many other artists have collaborators.  Choreographers who work with dancers. Pianists who work with Mozart. Directors who work with screenwriters and cinematographers and editors. They have sand in their oysters, something to push off. I start only with me.

But I wouldn’t trade with them. I never have to compromise, dilute, or share. My hands stay on the reins and I pick the path, lonely and rocky though it may be. I own the blame and the glory.

What I make is mine. And that’s fine.

Write on.

dannygregory20 Comments

The old cliché of the teenager spending hours talking on the phone has been replaced with a new cliché: The teenager spending hours talking with her thumbs.

The positive aspect of this development: we all write a lot more than we used to, typing endless texts and emails to communicate on virtually every subject. We write a lot but not necessarily well. We have to rely on ALL CAPS and exclamation marks and acronyms (LOL! OMG!) and emoticons 🙂 to overcome the deficiencies in our vocabularies.

All this writing is really typing. The keyboard has replaced the pen and apparently for good. Virtually every one of the United States has recently changed the core curriculum for their schools eliminating a cursive learning requirement. They’ve replaced it with a mandate for keyboard proficiency.

Now, malcontents have been bemoaning the decline of handwriting since the invention of the typewriter 150 years ago. Most offer iffy arguments — Doctors with bad handwriting kill patients with illegible prescriptions. F’real? Others say we are losing the ability to read crucial old documents, that kids who can’t write cursive can’t decipher it either and they’ll never be able to read the Bill of Rights, Democracy will wither, and we’ll all go to heck in an illegible handbasket. Whatevs.

I have always had messy writing and I’m also a fairly poor typist, so I can go either way on this (nonexistent) debate. But I have thought of a more compelling reason for the young ‘uns to brush up on their penmanship.

Zombies.

Most of the entertainment loved by tweens and teens these days is dystopian. The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, and endless variations on how tsunamis, asteroids, aliens, bird flu, Benedict Cumberbatch and/or werewolves will soon take over the world. When this happens (and it could be any day now), down goes the electrical grid and the Internet — and with them the power of the keyboard.

A whole generation of people who don’t know how to use ham radios or morse code will also not be able to legibly write signs warning that there are seriously zillions of zombies coming down this road or not to drink the brown water or kiss a chicken or leave home without a hatchet. People will stand around trying to work out what the signs mean and meanwhile, vampires will emerge for the caves or zombies will come out of the trailer park … and the writing will be on the wall.

It’s high time The Calligraphers Lobby® and The Penmens’ Guild™ started infiltrating Hollywood and embedding scenes in movies in which brave young men and women write gorgeous Palmer Method graffiti that save their pals from the monster invasion. Neatly lettered, perfectly grammatical signs could well be the salvation of humankind.

Think about it. Maybe write your Representative a letter.

(I had some other important ideas on this subject but unfortunately I wrote them down on an envelope and now can’t read a word of it. 😦 )

P.S. PL: Happy 616!!

Soup.

dannygregory65 Comments

I’m a big, fat vat of soup.  Deep below my surface, I am roiling, ingredients churning, interacting, breaking down to add flavor and texture.  Sometimes I’m hot and bubbling, giving off a delicious aroma. At other times, I’m tepid and lifeless, the gas off, a greasy film forming, unappetizing, dull.

What’s in the soup? Well, let’s dip in the ladle and fish out an ingredient. Ooh, it’s a book I’ve owned since I was eight, dog-eared and well-thumbed, its browning pages loose in the binding. How to be Topp is a satire about success written by a fictional school boy. It’s a fairly silly book and I don’t think I’ve ever read it all the way through. But it was illustrated by Ronald Searle and its pages are full of splatters, spidery calligraphy and loose, scratchy drawings. I may not look at this book for years but it’s in the soup, adding its flavor.

When I was eight I read a lot, several books a week. It’s a pattern I have kept up ever since. Each of the many books stacked on many bedside, in my Kindle, on my phone, and my desk, all end up sliced, diced and scraped into the soup. Many of them break down completely, their pages diluted, vanishing from memory. But each sentence, like a single granule of salt or a delicate frond of dill, though disintegrated, has added  a few more molecules to the flavor and body of the soup that is me.

There are the Grove Press books on the top shelf of my grandfather’s study, “grownup up” books I climbed up to purloin and read in private. There are all the Gerald Durrell books that fed my fantasies about raking through the jungles of Borneo and Brazil for aardvarks and toucans, kitted out with a solar topi and a butterfly net.  There are 92 volumes of PG Wodehouse, Professor Branestawm, Raymond Chandler, Geoffrey Chaucer, Spiderman.

There’s the girl I kissed in David Heller’s basement in 1975, the bucket of coffee cooked over a campfire on a patch of Israeli wasteland one dawn, the snow boots my mother made me wear that were too big and made me trip over every hummock of snow in downtown Brooklyn. There’s my dog Pogo’s third litter of puppies, two stillborn. The boss who yelled at me while eating an egg salad sandwich. My first Rapid-o-liner. My second stepfather’s broken toe when he kicked in the door of my mum’s MGB. All are bobbing in the drink, coming up to the surface, then subsiding like Moby Dick into the darkness below. There’s Moby Dick, Holden Caulfield, JJ ‘Dynomite’ Walker, the English Beat, my Latin teacher, Jenny’s stuffed hippos, Jack’s soccer cleats, my Pakistani orthodontist.

My soup is rich and complex and like none other, a unique combination of stuff that has been cooking for decades. It contains some ingredients found in your soup, maybe lots of them, but the way they interact with the rest of the bits and bobs bobbing around is all mine, all me.

This cauldron of soup is the source of all I create. If I write a story, make a drawing, come up with an idea, it’s all because of this big bubbling vat of experiences and influences. If I neglect the soup, forget to add new spices, fail to stir it up and fill some new bowls, let the pilot light go out and the temperature cool, the soup becomes anemic and tasteless, a bland consommé that’s forgettable and without value.  But if I work the soup, it fills me up.

Being an artist or a writer means reading, looking, listening, cribbing, copying, from a zillion sources. That’s much of our job. These slices of inspiration may have disproportionate effect when they first enter the soup, big undigested chunks that are too obvious when they show up in the work. But over time they break down and dissolve, leaving only ripples that intertwine with others to form a new flavor note, subtle and unique.

We are all vats of soup. Make sure you tend yours, stirring and adding new ingredients every day. Keep the hot on medium-high and take the lid off now and then. And don’t be afraid to dish it up to share with others, to pour a few tablespoons into their tureens. I want to taste your soup. Here’s a spoonful of mine.

Pep talk.

dannygregory32 Comments

Having trouble starting your creative habit?
Wrestling with the Monkey in your head?
Here’s a helpful little video I made for you — with some assistance from Shia.

Caution: Contains a little, well, yelling — which may offend those with delicate sensibilities and fragile eardrums.

The Dangers of Dabbling

dannygregory53 Comments

You may be good at several things.  You may be one of those “creative types” who cooks and weaves and writes poetry and plays the ukulele. I’m there. I am a dabbler in all sorts of things. I love plunging into new skills, learning the basics of HTML5, then editing film, then painting with gouache, then roasting a chicken.

But I know, not even that deep down, that I am not getting all I can out of any of these skills. That I am still envious when I see someone doing something truly great at which I am only marginal. I know they are getting far more out of this art than I am.

Being great at something takes work.

Doesn’t matter how talented, how smart, how connected you are, you have to focus and work to refine you skills and your vision. That can be painful at times; how much easier to find another meadow to graze in.

Here’s an interesting phenomenon: the famous, would-be poly-tasker. Michael Jordan leaving the NBA to play baseball for one dismal season. Eddie Murphy recording a disco album. Fame brings opportunity: who was gonna tell Allan Iverson not to record a gangsta rap album? When Picasso read his poetry at Gertrude Stein’s salon, she said “Pablo, stick to painting.” And then there’s James Franco. But being a genius in one field doesn’t effortlessly make you Leonardo.

I wonder how many people get sidetracked from their true calling by the fact that they have talent to excel at more than one artistic medium. This is a curse rather than a blessing. If you have only one option, you can’t make a wrong choice. If you have two options, you have a fifty percent chance of being wrong.
— Twyla Tharp

I’m not saying, “Stick to your knitting.” It’s quite possible you don’t need to excel at at one thing, that you are content playing the field. For you, creativity is just a hobby, and you don’t want to invest in any particular medium or metier. If so, good on ya — but know what you are giving up. When you focus on the thing that you were born to do, work hard and really push yourself, you will find new pleasures, deeper, richer, more fulfilling experiences that dabbling will never provide.

Do some self-examination and listen for your true calling. What do you feel in your marrow? And are you investing all you need to to achieve your own personal form of Greatness® there?

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Finding fulfillment

dannygregory37 Comments

Recently, I have been reading the amazing biography of van Gogh by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. What a story! Vincent tried so many things before turning to art. He was desperate to find a vocation and devote his life to something that his family would think was worthy. But nothing stuck. He tried being a print dealer, a clerk, a schoolteacher, a minister, a missionary, and each time, despite starting with intense enthusiasm, he gave up and wandered away.

Getting good at something involves two, related factors.

One — you have to work at your skills. Practice, experiment, research, study, and come back to work, regularly, for an extended period of time. I don’t care who you are or what talents you think you have, working at your craft is crucial to greatness. Experience makes you better, more facile, more intuitive, more apt to come up to some new and great. There may seem to be shortcuts. They are illusions. Even one-hit wonders work their butts off for years. Vincent was certainly willing to put in the work — but he couldn’t stick with anything. Why?

The second factor is purpose. This is more complicated than just wanting to be great at something. It’s about your calling. What must you do even if no one ever saw you doing it or paid you to do it? What will you stay up late to do? Skip meals to do? Do until your shoulders cramp and your hands fall asleep? What completes you?

We all have something we can excel at. It might be throwing a football, making a sauce, curing disease, building a house or running a country. If you can’t think of what that is, you just haven’t found it yet.

When you discover this purpose, it will fuel you while you do all the work required to be good at it. Without it, you won’t get far. But to find your true purpose, you must be brutally honest with yourself.

I took a creative writing class in college. When the professor told us we needed to submit a story each week, one of my classmates groaned, “A story every week? That’s required?” The teacher paused then said, “Why are you here?” and we each looked into our souls.

You can’t pick a purpose because it’s fashionable or lucrative. Don’t take up acting just to become a celebrity. Don’t go to graduate school just because no one will hire you. Don’t become a missionary just to please your dad. Write because you have to, not because you want to be “a writer”.

Finding your purpose can take work too. It means exposing yourself to lots of different experiences until something clicks. Watch YouTube videos, observe people running different kinds of businesses, wander through museums or hardware stores, ask strangers what they do and why. What draws you in?

Look into yourself and your past. What were the moments that brought you the greatest happiness? When did you truly feel you were you? Where were you? What were you doing? What was the essence of that moment? Was it about helping others? Making something with your hands? Solving a complex problem? Organizing chaos?

You can discover your purpose at any age. You might be young and starting your career. You might have spent thirty years doing something indifferently because you had to bring home the bacon. It’s not too late. Vincent discovered his purpose just ten years before he died. But it gave his whole life meaning.

Can you live yours without it? Should you?

{Thanks to everyone who commented and emailed after my mea culpa post yesterday.  Your understanding and encouragement mean the world to me.}