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Creative Community: Why create? (part 2 of 3)
Where do the great artists come from? In my previous post on this question, I ended by suggesting that participating in artistic communities generates a creative feedback through the circles of artists that creates a great one. I mentioned John Lennon and Picasso.
In other words, I guess I am saying that great artists are, to some degree, a by-product of the creative environment. Look, I can’t prove this at all. I can’t even really support it. I’ve said elsewhere that I might end up making it the topic of a Ph.D. in the field of Economics if I ever decide for sure that that is what I want to pursue, but, for now, it’s just a hypothesis. With these three essays, I want to describe how I think about it.
As much as art is about talent and about work, in a lot of ways, it’s really a hunt. In a way, all art is topical. It is topical even if the topic is the form itself. A small group of artists preoccupy themselves with a message or a cause, but I think most artists, no matter what subject matter they deal with, are really searching for a new way to express themselves. A new way to break through the form and convey ideas in a new way.
In some ways, that’s what’s so cool about new media and social media. Everything about using this stuff is new, so we’re all out here bopping around in a territory that has not been charted and therefore doesn’t really have rules or road signs. That’s great, but it’s also disadvantaged in the same way, because fewer people “get it.”
No, what really gets people going when a traditional art form is reinvented or revived in a new but satisfying way. The public likes it, too. I suppose we’ll always have nice, melodic songstresses like Norah Jones, who sing pretty melodic music that challenges nothing and no one, but Jack White is the one making that which was old new again. It’s not just the beat that gets our pulse up, it’s the novelty. And M.I.A. — man, we don’t even know what to make of her.
Jack White has this song about his “Little Room,” where he was working on something good, but Jack White did not spend all of his time in his little room. Jack White got out there and listened to other music, he worked the scene. I guarantee that Jack White stayed up a lot of nights, the whole night through, talking about music with other musicians. Long before it meant anything to be Jack White.
And you know what else I think? I think that if you’re a musician and you’ve ever stayed up late into the night talking about music with other musicians, then you were talking with Jack White. You were helping him brainstorm till he had the idea to become Jack White.
I think the dialogue of creative people feeds, nurtures and inspires us. I think it’s a beneficial system, I think that creativity has its whole own ecology.
In this series: