The Creative Shoofly Podcast

In this episode, I interview some of my fellow participants at this year’s Everything Conference in Minneapolis. We talk about creativity and multipotentiality.
 
Links mentioned in this episode
Everything Conference
Puttyverse
How To Be Everything by Emilie Wapnick
World Domination Summit
Camp Indie
Some of the above are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission.
 
Transcript
Welcome to the Creative Shoofly. I'm Thomas Beutel. This podcast is about exploring the creative journey as an artist. And in this episode, I speed-interview some of the people I met at this year's Everything Conference, which was held in Minneapolis.
The Everything Conference is a semiannual gathering of multipotentialites, and it's styled as an unconference, where everyone is a participant, and the workshops and experiences are led by the participants themselves.
I had an opportunity to lead a workshop based on some of the creative processes I've described on this podcast, mind mapping, role play, and Scrum for One, and I'm happy to say that I got some nice feedback.
In addition to participating in other experiences, I met a lot of wonderful people and I made some new friends. It's really cool to be in a group that doesn't blink an eye when you say, I'm interested in this… and this… and this… and this! They totally get it because they have as many interests as I do.
Before going to the Everything Conference, I knew that I wanted to interview my fellow multipods, and the idea I came up with was to write a bunch of questions and have them pick one at random.
Half of the questions are about creativity, and half about multipotentiality. I ended up writing them on a set of blank Bicycle playing cards. I enjoyed seeing the look on their faces when they picked a card from the deck and realized that it was not a real playing card. I ended up interviewing about a dozen people. And we'll start with my friend, Heather.
Heather: Can you tell me what it is? Oh, oh, okay.
Thomas: Let's see. So, Heather. What's a piece of advice you would give to a young multipotentialite?
Heather: Okay. That's a really good question because I think our society has typically been, quite, like you must choose something you have to specialize and I do think that's shifting. But in the meantime, it's really working on accepting that for yourself. Honoring that you do have all of these interests. And that basically, one, you're really awesome, you're not broken, and it's just sort of, it's, it's just like being a different flavor of human.
Thomas: Yeah. Right, right.
Heather: Yeah, um, and to explore, like get into your interests, try them out, it's okay to shift because that's what we do. But yeah, just to kind of honor that and try to be firm with others. Like, hey, this is really who I am, and I need your support, especially for a young person. It's just like, I need that support to nourish those interests and, and that identity, so.
Thomas: Thank you very much.
Thomas: So, Colleen, how do you know when a creative project is finished?
Colleen: Oh, that is a hard question, because most creatives I know, they'll, they'll pick at it. And never let it go.
I think there's a couple ways to see. One is by sharing your work. Because other people will see the whole better than you will. Another time is just to be comfortable with good enough, it meets your standards, and then let it out in the world. I think when we don't let our work out, it's really, fear that it won't be good enough.
Thomas: Right. So that letting go part is, is key.
Colleen: I think that is what it is. I mean, we don't, you know, especially people who do, one off work, and you know in my practice, I know that a lot of times I'm terrible at planning. I don't, I'm trying to learn how to sketch my work ahead of time, but really I just see what the materials want to be. And so it's sometimes hard to know when you're done because you didn't know what you were going to do when you start it.
I think if you know, it's kind of like, well, in my corporate life project is done because you define done at the beginning.
In my creative work, I'm not as good at doing that.
Thomas: Great. Thank you very much. You're welcome.
Thomas: Let me pull up my cards. All right. Stacey, how do you stay updated and informed in multiple fields?
Stacey: Okay, primary way I do is I'm an avid reader. And my tastes are eclectic. So I'll read across anything that interests me.
I mainly do nonfiction though. I do read fiction as well. And even a lot of the fiction you can learn or you can learn a lot of things or even spark thoughts if, especially if it's an author like a Michael Crichton, I'm trying to think like Dan Brown. Or those that meticulously or carefully that they really research before they write.
So you learn a lot of stuff even from there.
Thomas: They really study their craft.
Stacey: So whatever the novel or that they're writing, you get a lot of good detail. And that usually has sparked me to look into other things, whether it's… mainly travel. But also trying new things or trying something based on something I read.
But like I said, also read nonfiction. I usually read four or five books at once. So that's the primary, but also internet of course. And then coming to things like this, and just interacting with people and just hearing what I call like just different perspectives of what people are into.
I'm lucky that, you know, I've either lived in big cities or in this now, like in a college town. So of course you have like a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas that sort of cross pollinate.
So that also kind of helps, not just expose me to new things, but also even stuff that I do, interacting with other people that are into the same thing, but may have either a different level of experience or perspective.
Thomas: Well, thank you very much.
Thomas: All right, Cristy, how do you deal with creative burnout?
Cristy: You know, I am really fortunate because I'm a multipod. So when I feel like I have creative burnout in one particular area, like I've been writing too much and it's just getting foggy, I can switch. I can do something verbal like a podcast or a discussion with someone. Or an interview with someone.
And somehow I feel that it's returns my energy to me. So I think having a couple of different interests that you juggle is a real benefit because when you, when one of them just gets stale or you're not inspired, you can draw from that well of the other kinds of interests and hobbies.
Thomas: Isn't that a wonderful thing about being a multipotentialite?
Cristy: I love it the most. I love it the most. And I think also when you have those creative energizing people that you talk with, you can, you can draw from that too. You can be like, eh, I'm a little stuck, you know, like let's talk about whatever. And it'll spur something in you. So it's a real benefit.
Thomas: Thank you.
Cristy: Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for asking.
Thomas: Alright, Ted. how do you celebrate your multipotentiality?
Ted: I celebrate it in my day-to-day life. Basically, based on how I live my life, I choose multi very multipotentiality friendly work and career. And, I don't shy away from it. I really embrace it. And it's, it's been a journey to get to that point, but I'm very happy with, with that.
And, you know, a lot of it's the support from the group, for sure, from the Puttyverse and, and more broadly speaking, but people who get it, people who understand that. And, uh, it really helps us, I think, survive and thrive with that kind of mentality.
Thomas: It's important to celebrate and it's important also to, to really have a good support group and that understands it. So thank you.
Ted: Yeah, it's my pleasure.
Thomas: Okay, Lisa, what role does failure play in your creative process?
Risa: It's a tough one because I don't see failure in my creative process every time, like I do something and then I just try to make it better the next time. So it's not necessarily a failure. Because it's, again, it's a spontaneous, creative, instantaneous kind of thing that I go for.
And so there is really no wrong way to do it. Just jump in and do it. So I've never, it's a tough question cause I feel like it's not, I don't view it as a failure. It's just
Thomas: Right. So failure to you is just, it's just an iterative process. You just go and figure it out and do the next thing. That's wonderful. Thank you.
Thomas: So Ryan, what's the most rewarding aspect of being a multipotentialite?
Ryan: That it's opened my life to meeting people I never would have met if I wasn't a multipotentialite.
Thomas: And that's fantastic because it's like, I want to meet these people.
Ryan: No matter what size city you live in. And I'm, I'm from, I've spent 44 of my 46 years in Northeast Ohio, Youngstown, Ohio, and Cleveland, Ohio. Also briefly lived in Washington DC and Ann Arbor, Michigan. But when I read Emily's book, How To Be Everything, I thought she was writing my biography.
And I immediately joined the then Puttytribe, now Puttyverse.
After reading the book and listening to her Ted talk, and I realized, Oh, there's several hundred of these people worldwide.
And this is now my second Everything Conference I've come to. And once you meet these people, you realize these would have been my best friends if I'd have met them when I was five years old instead of 40 years old.
Thomas: Isn't that so true? I mean, what I love about it is it's just sort of like there's an instant comfort level.
Ryan: Yes, absolutely. Fully agree with that. There's a sense of if you were all little kids in the same sandbox, that sandbox becomes a lot bigger.
It's not just the six by eight or whatever your dad was able to fit in the backyard. It becomes like a football field size sandbox. And there's a little corner over here where people are doing arts and crafts. There's a corner here where people are business and analytical, and there's another corner where there's singing.
But the one thing I found about this community, mainly the Puttyverse--I know there's World Domination Summit and Camp Indie people here as well--is it's almost agenda free.
There certainly are some coaches who want you to do sessions with them. Or other people have a business plan. Or authors or artists who want you to maybe buy their book or listen to the music, but there's never that push. It's always organic, natural conversations.
None of us little snowflakes are alike, but the one commonality is there's just overwhelming encouragement.
There's not the vitriol and hatred you'll find at other sites. There's not the pushing us. That's what I really treasure about this community and the people I've met in it.
Thomas: I do too. Thank you.
Ryan: Thank you, Thomas.
Thomas: So, Monica, name a place you would like to visit and why.
Monica: I've always wanted, since I was a little kid, to visit Greece.
Thomas: Greece?
Monica: Probably because I went through, as I think a lot of kids do, a Greek mythology phase. And I still would love to see the ancient structures and learn about the ancient times. Yeah. So, Greece.
Thomas: Do you think you're going to get a chance in the next, let's say, ten years?
Monica: I think it's possible, but I've lately been struggling a bit with travel. So it would be something that I would have to work towards.
Thomas: Alright, well, thank you very much.
Thomas: So, Amy, how do you find new creative challenges?
Amy: I think just by exploring, different aspects of issues. So trying to take a look at a problem or a challenge in a different way. So kind of just trying to take a step back and looking at something from a different angle, I think helps me approach a challenge differently or gives me a new challenge because I've applied a different perspective to it.
So yeah, I think that would be how I approach different creative challenges.
Thomas: I’m going to ask a follow up if I may. So, how do you think that your multipotentiality sort of, is a part of how to find a creative challenge.
Amy: I think it's actually essential to being able to, so I think my multipotentiality allows me to see things from different angles because I'm interested in so many things.
I can kind of look at things from a scientific perspective, an artistic, a musical perspective. So being able to be interested in so many things and know a little bit about a lot of things, it kind of helps me put different perspectives or bring different ideas, that maybe are not traditionally associated with a particular challenge into that challenge.
Thomas: Well, thank you.
Thomas: So Marcus, how do you handle criticism of your creative work?
Marcus: A good way that it seems to handle criticism would be to just approach it with an open mind, understanding that we all have areas in which we can improve and just trying to approach your work from a humble and honest perspective.
If you really care about delivering a quality product, you're going to want the truth first. As the saying goes, all progress begins with truth. I think it was Socrates or someone said that.
But, yes, just, just approaching it from the perspective of that. There's always another stair rung I can go up. Or another level I can go.
So just seeing it from the perspective of, we can always take another step towards perfection.
Thomas: Yeah. All right. Thank you.
Thomas: Vanessa, what does creativity mean to you?
Vanessa: Oh, I love this question because I think sometimes we are brought up to think that creativity are only for like the artists and the makers. And, you know, Oh my gosh, they're so creative. They made that cool sculpture or painting or jewelry, or look at how they like dress, they're so creative.
And to me, the creativity is like what lights us up, what sparks us, how we feel alive. And we're like creating or doing or being like our best self.
And sometimes creating is putting together a delicious meal. Sometimes creating is, the simple gestures of bringing together different friends and say, Oh my goodness, you should speak to this friend about that, or you would like to hear this story.
It's, you know, it's these behind the scenes creativity. I believe that I am a creative person in the events I create. Right?
So yeah, creativity is just the thing that lights you up. It feels good. I'm sure there are football coaches who are creative because they make an amazing, you know, plays, trick plays and stuff like that.
Creativity is actually all around us. Those who really can take pause and look are going to see it.
Thomas: I like what you said about being. Creativity is a lot about the being. And I think your creativity is creating community.
Vanessa: Oh, thank you. That is literally one of the best compliments. Definitely! Creating and cultivating, curating community is important to me and something I love to do. And it is a special place of creativity and bringing people together. It just, it lights me up.
Thomas: Thank you.
Vanessa: Thank you so much.
Thomas: Tomoko, how do you manage the transition from idea to execution?
Tomoko: Thank you very much. So first, I use my mind map to jot down all the ideas that I have inside of my head. And once I finish listing it, I put, like, I divide it into two categories, which is my priority project and, like, take it for later project, I would say. And I focus from the top of my priority list into execution.
Tomoko: So I like to divide the ideation process from the execution process. That's how my brain works better.
Speaker 17: And if I can ask a follow up question. When you create your mind map and then you are sort of prioritizing, how long do you think that usually takes you? Do you spend hours on it or is it fast or slow? What do you think?
Speaker 18: Thank you for the follow up question. I think it depends on the size of the project. So sometimes I mind map twice because if I have a very big project, I like to jot it down to like what kind of process I have to go through. So it takes me to the another, second mind map.
But if it's a smaller project, it's gonna take me about maybe 30 minutes to hour to wrote the mind map and to build the execution plan. I will take other day because my brain is like, doesn't like to function for like ideation and execution at one time.
Thomas: Ah, okay. Well, thank you very much.
Tomoko: Thank you so much, Thomas.
Thomas: And, let's take a look at this card. Joel, what inspires you?
Joel: What inspires you? Uh, the sun is the first thing that comes to my mind. But I might be thinking a little bit too literally in terms of a synonym of what sparks me, what gives me energy and enthusiasm. The sun is, both from an intellectual perspective, I realize that that is the source of my life and all other life on this planet.
Um, but spiritually, I really get inspired by the fact that the sun comes up and goes down every day, without fail, and even when it's cloudy, the sun is always there. You just have to feel it behind the clouds. Can I have a two-part answer?
Thomas: Yes, go ahead.
Joel: There can be an and?
Thomas: Yes, and.
Joel: Yes, and?
Thomas: Yes, and. And I love that, that first part of the answer. And I'm glad too that it goes, comes up and goes down every night, every day.
Joel: Yeah. Uh, humanity in general inspires me. I love humans, especially the challenging ones. And sometimes it's hard to do that in the moment. But the people who have challenged me to be a kinder, more patient, more respectful and trusting version.
I really appreciate all the opportunities that humanity gives me.
My family, my friends, incredible people that I get to meet around the world who come to my hometown from time to time for events that I help co-organize. It's just so cool that we can be together, do so many things, discuss so many things, experiment in so many ways.
I just get endless inspirations from just these tiny little moments of interacting with all these incredible humans around the world.
Thomas: Thank you, and thank you for inviting us to Minneapolis. This is a wonderful place.
Joel: Agreed. Shall I say more? No. Thank you.
Speaker 26: Thanks to Joel, Tomoko, Vanessa, Marcus, Amy, Monica, Ryan, Lisa with an R, Ted, Christy, Stacy, Colleen, and Heather for being willing to play with me on this podcast. It was fun to see which questions would pop out of the deck, and I was delighted how thoughtful the answers were.
If you're interested to learn more about multipotentiality, check out Emily Wapnick's TED Talk, Why Some of Us Don't Have One True Calling.
And also check out the Puttyverse community, which is an online gathering of multipods.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Creative Shoofly.
If you liked today's episode and want to hear more about the creative process, please consider subscribing to The Creative Shoofly wherever you get your podcasts.
That's it for now. Be well, and be creative.

In this episode, I discuss meditative ideation, a mindfulness practice that I've honed over the years to combat creative block. It has transformed my creative process, and I think it can unlock new realms of inspiration for you too.
 
Links mentioned in this episode
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
How boredom can lead to your most brilliant ideas, a TED talk by Manoush Zomorodi
The Wisdom of Not Knowing by Estelle Frankel
The Artist's Way by Julie Cameron
Some of the above are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission.
 
Transcript
Thomas: Welcome to the Creative Shoofly. I'm Thomas Beutel. This podcast is about exploring the creative journey as an artist, and in this episode, I'll be discussing a mindfulness practice that I've honed over the years to combat creative block. It has transformed my creative process, and I think it can unlock new realms of inspiration for you too.
Today I'd like to tell you about a dream-like technique that I call meditative ideation. The essence of the technique is to calm the mind, get the voice in your head to stop talking, and to be quiet enough to invite inspiration in, and to invite ideas in. I've been using this technique for a number of years now, and as a result, I rarely experience the blank page syndrome or the creative block that I used to have.
I think everyone struggles somewhat with creative block. For many people, and this might include you, creative block is not often a lack of creativity. It's usually due to too much focus.
Now that might seem strange, but being overly focused on a problem will prevent the flow of new ideas. Focus form of creative block. Focus blocks to allow those ideas to emerge.
I used to struggle with creative block quite a lot. I'd sit down and say, okay, I need an idea, and then I'd wait, and I'd wait, and I wouldn't think of anything, and then I would go off and start criticizing myself. My monkey mind would just keep on talking and putting myself down. It would say, “You're a creative person, what's going on with you? Why can't you come up with a single creative idea?”
I'm sure many of you listening have experienced this type of self-criticism, and it sure isn't conducive to creative thinking or being inspired.
Things started to change for me when I read a book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She has a wonderful concept of how inspirations work. In her telling, inspirations are living things that go around the world looking for creative people to make them manifest, to put them into action.
The idea of inspiration shopping around for creators really resonated with me. I just imagined a great idea looking at a sea of humanity and saying, “I pick you, Thomas, because I know you're a creative person.” It feels kind of flattering, actually.
So I began wondering, how do I actually invite inspiration in? What would the process look like?
At about the same time, I listened to a TED talk by Manoush Zomorodi. Her talk was about the default mode network of the mind. This is a part of the brain that jumps into action when you're not focusing, and not paying attention to something in particular.
A lot of people say that they get their best ideas when they're taking a shower, or they're going on a walk. The way it works is when you're in a very relaxed state, and the mind isn't focused on anything, the default mode network starts making connections between all kinds of different places in the brain.
The point that Manoush makes is that so many of us don't allow our minds to idle to the point where the default mode network can come in. And the connections that are made are where inspiration comes from.
Or, as Elizabeth Gilbert might put it, this is when inspiration finds you because it knows that you can make it manifest.
So after seeing the TED Talk, the question I asked myself, could I simply close my eyes and empty my mind enough to engage my default mode network?
This was an intriguing idea. I had already been doing a daily meditation for a number of years, and I was very familiar with the meditative style where you breathe, and if any thought comes by, you let it drift by, and you just let your mind think about nothing else other than your breathing.
I can't say that I'm really good at it, but at least I became aware of when my mind is busy with thought and when my mind is calm and relaxed.
I thought that that might be a way to try to activate my default mode network. And I started doing it, and yes, I can report that it indeed does.
So I formalized it into a practice where I intentionally quiet the mind and let wonderful ideas come along. I call it meditative ideation. The key difference between breathing meditation and this practice is that I'm allowing interesting ideas to stay and evolve rather than letting the thoughts go as I would in a breathing meditation.
I still watch for non-creative ideas and dismiss them as soon as I can. And this happens a lot at the beginning of a session, and I still have unproductive and self-critical thoughts show up. As soon as I recognize that I'm having one of those thoughts, I let go of them.
Eventually, my mind relaxes enough that truly interesting and creative thoughts appear. It's a joy when it happens, and it confirms for me that this is a practice worth doing.
Embracing the quietude necessary for meditative ideation might seem daunting to you. The concept of sitting in silence, clearing your mind of its endless thoughts and distractions, can feel like an unfamiliar or even monumental task.
Despite its simplicity on the surface, reaching a state of mental stillness is anything but easy. You might find, as many do, that your thoughts persistently wander toward daily concerns and lingering questions. This illustrates the persistent nature of our inner dialogue.
You might also question the productivity of this practice, wondering if dedicating time to quieting the mind could ever be worthwhile. Initial forays into meditation rarely bring instant insights, which can feel frustrating. In our fast-paced world, carving out twenty to twenty-five minutes a day for quiet reflection might seem like an unaffordable luxury.
And then there is a more intimate obstacle, the fear of facing your own thoughts. In the silence of meditation, your mind may venture into realms that you'd rather avoid, making the practice seem all the more challenging.
Despite these hurdles, I encourage you to give meditative ideation a try. The journey towards stillness and the inspirations it can unlock might require patience and perseverance. But the rewards are profound. Learning to quiet your mind can open the door to boundless creativity. It's an investment for your creative practice that truly pays off.
So I invite you to embrace the practice, to step beyond that initial discomfort and skepticism. You might just discover a wellspring of ideas and inspiration waiting for you.
The practice of quieting your mind and starting to receive inspiration is a very interesting experience. You'll have your eyes closed and you won't see anything, but occasionally you'll see some forms taking shape. But more than that, your mind will just be drifting and quieting down. You'll experience serenity and calm, and then all of a sudden your mind catches a theme.
And the theme might be something like animation, or it might be watercolor painting. Sometimes it depends on what you did during the day. A memory will show up in your thoughts, and as long as you're thinking about something creative, run with it. Let the thought just go where it wants to go.
And then all of a sudden, an idea will coalesce. To me it's like a sparkle and then all of a sudden, boom there's an idea. What I do at that point is I open my eyes and I start writing in my journal, where I keep all of my ideas.
Allowing the mind to wander allows the default mode network to activate and that leads to the connecting of disparate ideas. How is watercolor painting related to animation? I don't know.
But when you're in a state of meditative ideation, what may come forward is a series of watercolors forming the basis of the animation. That's how ideas form. It's like the mind just wants to find solutions to these little conundrums that appear when you're ideating.
When I sit down, I always give myself about 25 minutes or so for the practice. Within that time, I usually come up with maybe two or three good ideas. But there will be some days where it's just one idea.
And occasionally I'll spend the whole 25 minutes and not have a single inspiration come up at all. But that's rare now. Usually, I'll have multiple ideas pop up.
But when you're starting out, you might not get immediate results. The key here is to let go of focus. If you're too focused on something, the default mode network doesn't engage.
As I do this practice and I feel or sense that my thoughts are getting too focused, I'll dismiss the thought. Empty my mind again, and then just let my visual field see the nothingness of closed eyes. I find that during a session I'll be letting go many times because my thoughts become too focused.
The challenge is clearing the mind just enough to keep the mind relaxed and the default mode network engaged. It's a mental dance that gets easier the more you do it.
Another challenge is carving out the time to do a meditative ideation session. If you're like me, you're busy during the day. And if you don't actually set aside some time, you'll find you've gone a couple weeks having done the practice.
In my practice, I usually set aside the time between 5 and 6 o'clock, after I'm done with my client work. This way, there's a regular time slot for my meditative ideation practice. my daily meditation during the same time. That helps to get the mind in a meditative state. But you don't have to do a meditation before this practice for it to be effective.
Another thing that can get in the way of doing the practice is being stressed and having a lot of interruptions. It's really hard to empty the mind and clear the mind if you're stressed, and if you're thinking about some problem that's going on in your life.
Another thing that might trip you up is trying too hard. The whole purpose of this practice is to let go of all thoughts. That struggle to empty the mind is a necessary part of this. But if you try too hard, you'll fall into the trap of being overly focused.
Remember to relax into it, and gently let go of non-creative thoughts as they appear. Don't criticize yourself for having a busy mind, because we all experience that same busyness.
One of the reasons that I continue to do this practice is just the joy of emptying the mind and inviting new inspirations in. I'm just continually amazed by it.
I've been doing this practice for four years now, and I already have two journals full of ideas. I have so many creative ideas that it would take me five lifetimes to finish them all.
When I was starting out, it actually bothered me a little bit that I was coming up with more ideas than I could ever hope to complete.
But what I found over time is that the truly good ideas are the ones that are going to hang around, and you're going to get a desire to actually do them. These ideas are so good that you can't help not to do them.
One of the breakthroughs for me was recognizing how many really good ideas come forth from this process. Every so often, maybe every couple of months, I actually go back to my journals and I take a highlighter and I highlight the ones that still seem amazing and exciting and new.
Even though our understanding of the default mode network of the brain is fairly recent, people seem to have had an innate understanding of it for millennia.
Buddhist practice includes accessing states of consciousness beyond the ordinary. Sufi mystics often describe states of ecstatic union with the divine. Christian mystics speak of turning inward to access a deep well of spiritual wisdom. Hindu philosophy has an emphasis on the mind to access deeper levels of insight and creativity.
One of my favorite guides to using silence for connecting with creativity is Estelle Frankel. She wrote a book called The Wisdom of Not Knowing. And in it she describes the idea of embracing ambiguity and the unknown. She writes about Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah.
One of the things that she explains is the concept of white fire and black fire. Black fire represents the written words that are the tangible and explicit knowledge set forth in the words of the Torah. The white fire, in contrast, is the intangible white space between the words. And that represents the implicit and the unknown.
The point of the concept is that wisdom doesn't come alone from one or the other. It comes from both.
And I just like the way this sort of ties in with the idea of inspirations and ideas coming from nothing. It aligns well with the practice of meditative ideation. I like to think that when I'm doing this practice, I'm closing my eyes, I'm allowing the white fire to be present. I'm allowing myself to be connected with the unknown and unknowable source.
In Jewish mysticism, to something called the ayin. This is a profound idea. In the Kabbalah it represents the nothingness or the void. It's closely associated with the ultimate state of union, with the divine or with God. Some people refer to this as the source. Ayin in the Kabbalah tradition is a state that's way beyond human comprehension. And they believe that everything emanates from this nothingness. Accessing ayin through meditation can be viewed as a way to tap into the boundless source of divine inspiration and creativity.
Estelle Frankel has an entire chapter on creativity and really touches upon these ideas.
In her book The Artist's Way, Julie Cameron encourages artists to write morning pages. The practice of writing morning pages can be seen as a way to empty the mind.
If your mind is preoccupied, then you won't have the space for new ideas to form. So morning pages can be a way of releasing concerns and worries that are floating around in the mind so that you can then have the space to invite new inspirations
In wrapping up this exploration of meditative ideation, I want to leave you with a few pivotal steps that could transform your creative journey.
First and foremost, if meditation isn't already a part of your routine, I encourage you to embrace it. Find a form of meditation that resonates with you, one that guides you toward silence and tranquility within your mind. This foundational step is crucial because it teaches you the art of calming your mind, setting the stage for creativity to flow.
Next, make a commitment to yourself. Carve out a regular time slot each week dedicated solely to the practice of meditative ideation. It doesn't have to be long. just a thirty-minute window where you can sit undisturbed. Allowing your mind the freedom to make connections between all of the experiences already within you. This regularity builds a sanctuary for your ideas to flourish.
Finally, keep a journal. This journal will become the treasure chest of your mind's adventures, capturing the sparks of inspiration that visit you. It's a tangible reminder of your creative potential, waiting to be explored further.
Understand that quieting the mind is perhaps the most challenging aspect of this practice, but also the most rewarding. With patience and perseverance, you'll find yourself guided toward the boundless divine where emptiness becomes the fertile ground for your inspiration.
Remember the journey to unlocking your creative essence through meditative ideation is unique to everyone. Be kind to yourself as you navigate this path. The beauty of this practice lies not just in the ideas generated, but in the process of inviting silence, allowing your mind the space to breathe and to wander.
It's in this space that creativity dances freely, untethered by constraints. Of the focused mind. So embrace the quiet and let your creative journey unfold. Who knows what incredible ideas await discovery in the serene landscape of your mind?
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Creative Shoofly..
If you like today's episode and want to hear more about the creative process, please consider subscribing to the Creative Shoofly wherever you get your podcasts.
That's it for now. Be well and be creative.

In this episode, I explore how role-playing can help reduce the chaos and distraction that often plague us as artists.
 
Links to books and websites mentioned in this podcast
You And I Make A Thing podcast website
Trick Yourself Into Breaking a Bad Habit at HBR.org
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
How to Declutter in the Simplest Way Possible at SaturdayGift.com
Some of the above are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission from them.
 
Hello and welcome to the Creative Shoofly podcast. I'm Thomas Beutel.
Before I begin this episode, I want to tell you about a new podcast that I've started called You And I Make A Thing. It's where I invite fellow artists to stretch our creative boundaries by collaborating on a project that neither of us have done before.
Longtime listeners will know that I started You And I Make A Thing right here on this podcast. I really enjoyed those episodes and got some really good feedback. In fact, the feedback was so positive. I decided to spin off You And I Make A Thing to its own podcast and website. You can find You And I Make A Thing wherever you podcast, and you can also find it at youandimakeathing.com.
Now, even though I have a spinoff podcast, I will still be making episodes here on the Creative Shoofly. This podcast is about exploring the creative journey as an artist. And in this episode, I want to talk about how role-playing can help reduce the chaos and distraction that often plagues us as artists.
This episode is specifically for multipotentialites, those of us who are curious about many different things and have a great many interests. We are sometimes called renaissance souls or polymaths, and we find ourselves pulled in many different directions.
In fact, many of us have so many ideas that we want to pursue, that we get discouraged that there isn't enough time. We're starting new projects all the time, but we don't finish many of them. Because either we got bored, we learned what we wanted to learn, or something else captured our interest.
We also get discouraged because in our excitement to get started on a new project, we don't allow ourselves enough time for planning and preparation. And that scattered chaotic energy that we have often means that we haven't organized our spaces. How many times have I excitedly started a project, but then I wasn't able to find the tool or part that I needed. And I know that I have it in some box somewhere, but I can't figure out where I had put it.
Multipotentialites also have a habit of starting a project and then leaving it, only to come back to it six months later. And that often presents its own problems. Was everything stored properly? Do I remember where I left off and what I wanted to do next? Did I leave enough context for me to continue the project?
Everybody has their own process for achieving their goals and finishing projects. But as multipotentialites, we often feel isolated and alone when pursuing them, mainly because there's no one that we can call on to help.
But what if you could have a team to help you with all of your projects? What if you could just jump into each project with everything already prepared and ready to go? What of each project could get the attention it deserved?
Well, you are that team.
The key is to play the different roles of that team. Role-playing is the crucial factor to reducing the mental chaos that is part of multipotentiality and unlocking your creative potential.
And role-playing is different than just following a process. The roles you play define what is possible at the moment. And what you leave aside.
I've designed specific roles for my creative work, which involves making kinetic and three-dimensional art. But the roles can be tailored to your needs and creative goals.
You might be thinking, “Isn't role-playing for kids? And besides I'm not good at role-playing because it's hard for me to pretend.” Or, “It's simply hard for me to form new habits like this.”
But my bet is that you already have all of the imagination that you need to role-play. If you're like me and have pursued many interests and held a variety of jobs. You already know what it feels like to be in different roles. So what I'm going to describe to you should feel familiar.
The three rules that I call upon are the studio assistant, the art director and the lead artist.
I liken these roles to people in a professional kitchen. The kitchen master is responsible for the kitchen itself, making sure that everything is clean and organized, the tools are sharp and ready to use, and the food is fresh and stored safely.
The sous chef is responsible for gathering the appropriate tools, utensils and cookware that'll be used for tonight's meal. They also do mise en place, chopping and prepping the food so that is ready to be cooked.
Finally the master chef cooks the food, using their master skills to create a beautiful meal.
I've taken these roles and map them to my art practice. The studio assistant role is responsible for organizing my studio and keeping a tidy. This role's main concern is to make sure that the studio and all its tools and materials are easily accessible and ready for use.
The art director's role is responsible for planning and prepping the project. This role creates a detailed plan for each project. When the project is ready to be built, this role makes sure that all of the necessary tools and materials are out and ready for use.
Ready for whom? Well, that's the lead artist. This is the role that I really look forward to. It's where I get to step into my studio and work on a fully prepared creative project. All of the work by the other two roles serves to get me into a creative flow state quickly.
When I'm done with my project, finished or not, I slip back into my art director role. I capture notes and what I need to do next with the project. Then I become the studio assistant again, and I clean everything up.
So why be so deliberate with these roles? Why not just prep and go?
The beauty of role-playing is that it compartmentalizes the various parts of the creative cycle. And this is a crucial difference from just following a process. I tried many different processes and they weren't as effective as actually inhabiting the roles.
Being the art director slows me down and makes me think, “Do I have everything that I need to start this project?” So instead of the way I did it before, where I would just clear my work bench and then just jump in, now I sit down and I try to visualize, “What am I missing? What are all the tools I need?”
That helps because I don't want my creative flow to be interrupted when I have to go look for a tool or for some sort of materials.
I call this visualization process hypnotic rehearsal. With hypnotic rehearsal, I imagine myself doing all the steps. I'm imagining that I'm picking up the tools and I'm building the project. I imagine my work bench in front of me. When I visualize that a tool is not there, then I know, oh, I need to have that tool as well.
What I like about the art director role as it helps me pause. And it helps me think about the project before I actually launch into it.
Another benefit of role-playing is emotional detachment. When I'm in my studio assistant role, I don't all of a sudden start a project, which was what I used to do. When I'm in that role, my goal is to tidy up and organize. And that's it! I'm in the mode of, “What can make my studio more efficient and my experience in it even better?” I don't allow myself to start tinkering or feeling depressed about not finishing something.
When I'm in my art director role, I focus on planning the project. That includes creating a project plan that breaks down the steps, includes the tools and materials list. However, I remain emotionally detached from the project itself. I'm only thinking about what will make the project go more smoothly.
As for the lead artist role. I'm not seeking emotional detachment as much as I am seeking flow, that mental state where I'm totally immersed in the project itself. I have all the tools right there on my work bench and the project just proceeds. All of the work and all the prep done by my other roles helps me to achieve flow more quickly.
For most of my life, I basically created things when the mood struck when I had the urge to do something, I would just jump into it and start working on it.
It feels good when you have an idea, then jump right into it. And I did get some things done. But More often than not, it would just lead to frustration because I wasn't really ready to work on the project. I didn't have things in place. I didn't have things prepared.
Role-playing helps me avoid that urge. With role playing, I don't start my projects until I've fully prepared them.
The other thing that's common for multipotentialites, something that I've always struggled with, is distractions. Role-playing helps me by reinforcing the idea that when I'm in a particular role, I can respond to the distraction by, “Saying not now, this is not the appropriate time to pay attention to that distraction.”
The problem with distractions is that they really in reinforce sub optimal habits. Allowing myself to be distracted teaches the mind that getting pulled away and being taken out a creative flow is okay. But it's not okay!
This is where I find that role-playing supports good habits, in that it helps avoid distractions. Now when I'm role-playing and I'm faced with a distraction, I have a note pad on the side to write the idea down or whatever it is, so that way I can capture it. And then maybe later on, decide if it's something that I want to pay attention to.
Speaking of habits, there's a really good web resource on the Harvard Business Review website called Trick Yourself Into Breaking a Bad Habit. The article discusses five different ways that you can approach changing habits.
And I liked number five in particular. It's called changing your frame. When you're asking yourself a question, it's really helpful sometimes to just tweak the words you use to represent that decision. Tweaking the words can really change how you feel about making a decision.
The example they give is when you are feeling a temptation. You're far better at resisting it if you say, “I don't do that” than if you say, “I'm not allowed to do that.” It's a small change, but “I don't do that” frames the decision in terms of a personal value, whereas “I'm not allowed” frames it as someone else's value.
And this relates directly to role-playing. When I'm in a role, my values are different for each of the roles. This is where emotional detachment helps me in making decisions as I'm performing that role.
When I am a studio assistant, the values I have in that role are about organization. I place a high value on making my studio efficient. When I'm in the art director role, I value planning and I value preparation.
Notice that I'm expressing different values in different roles. These are all still my values. But acting in different roles helps clarify which values are the most important for the moment.
I do encourage you to take a look at the HBR webpage. I've gone ahead and linked it for you in my show notes.
I'm sure that many of you have read Marie Kondo's book on tidying up. And I think one of the most valuable things that I learned from her book is this idea of one place for one thing. She calls it, “Tidy by Category.”
And by that she means that in your house or in your creative space, your studio, wherever, there should be only one place where you find, let's say your scissors or your X-acto blades, or where all of your art papers stored.
And the reason for that is if these things are scattered all around the place, you have to look into so many different places for that item. And that just takes time and effort and it produces frustration.
I’ve become a real stickler for this idea of one place for one thing. All my scissors are in one place. All my rulers are in one place. All the pencils are in one place. And that's been incredibly helpful for me when I'm in my art director role, when I'm preparing a project for myself. I know exactly where I need to go for the art pencils or the rubber stamps or whatever I'm using for that project.
I would definitely encourage you to read Marie Kondo's book, especially for the section on tidying by category.
Another tool that I found that really helps comes from a website called SaturdayGift.com. And it's the idea of deciding what to keep and what to throw out. It's called the yes-no-maybe method.
When I have to do a massive cleanup and I have to decide, okay, do I want all this stuff that's accumulated over the many years? Do I want to keep it or do I want to get rid of it?
I set up three folding tables and one table is the yes table. The next table is the no table. And then there's a third table that's maybe. The beauty of this ideas that you don't have to make a decision instantly.
The yeses are going to be obvious. And usually the no's are pretty obvious, too. And then you have that maybe table. So I set aside a couple of hours sometimes every couple of months and I go through this process.
And what I find is a lot of the maybe’s end up being no’s. The maybe’s are basically there for me just to get over it, you know, to look at it a few more times and decide, “All right. It's really time to let go whatever it is.”
The yes-no-may be method is a very useful way of organizing. And of course, when I do this, I'm in my studio assistant role. By being in that role and focused on organizing, I'm not focused on anything else. And the emotional detachment that comes with my studio assistant role helps me make the yes-no-maybe decisions more quickly and more dispassionately. I'll put a link to the Saturday gift.com article in the show notes.
One of the things that I've found by doing role-playing is that it actually makes it easier to jump between projects. And what I find is that when I'm in the lead artist role, I usually last about 45 minutes to an hour before I get to a point where it's like, “Okay, I'm done!” Even though the project isn't done yet.
But in my mind, I'm done. I've done as much as I want to. And so at that point I can go back to the art director role and record some context. I can say, “Okay, I'm this far in the project and the next step is this.” And it might be just a quick note. It only takes me a couple of minutes to capture the context.
At that point, I can then decide to work on another project. Or maybe what I need to do is be the art director and do some planning and some preparation.
Now my mind is refreshed. Because my mind is in a different space and in a different place. My multipotentialite mind likes to go from one project to the next and that's refreshing in itself.
Switching roles can also refresh the mind because when you jump from lead artists back to art director, you have to shift gears. The act of shifting gears has a sort of salutary effect on the mind, because it acknowledges and supports the way the multipotentialite mind works.
The compartmentalization of values, the emotional detachment, and the salutary effect of changing gears are all reasons why I'm committed to role-playing for my creative process.
As you can see role-playing reinforces good habits. The benefit it brings is emotional detachment. It helps focus you on the task at hand. And each role has its own set of goals and values within the larger creative process.
And that means you're less likely to get stuck or distracted. It helps you get into flow much quicker.
And as I have practice role-playing as a multipotentialite, I find that I'm more satisfied because I've conquered the creative chaos that has plagued me in the past.
If role-playing is something that might benefit you, I encourage you to give it a try. You can design your own roles based on the creative goals that you're trying to achieve. But I would start with a kitchen model as a framework. See, if you can corral a bit of your creative chaos and be more satisfied with your projects. And if it does help you, please let me know.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Creative Shoofly. If you like today's episode and want to hear more about the creative process, please consider subscribing to the Creative Shoofly wherever you get your podcasts.
That's it for now. Be well and be creative.

In this episode I explore a productivity method for creativity called Scrum for One.
 
Links
Scrum for One by Dustin Wax
Photo credits
Rugby player image: Hassan Omar Wamwayi
 
Hello and welcome to the Creative Shoofly podcast. I'm Thomas Beutel. This podcast is about the creative process. In it, I explore ways to avoid creative blocks and procrastination.
If you're a fellow multipotentialite, someone who has many different creative pursuits, you might relate to the struggle of juggling different projects at the same time. This episode in particular might interest you if you have a multitude of creative projects going on at once. I'll be talking about a planning technique I use called Scrum for One.
It's the beginning of the day and I've just finished my first cup of coffee. I'm on my iPad, scrolling through the news, scanning through my Instagram feed, and then watching some new videos on YouTube.
The news is depressing and boring. Instagram is full of amazing artwork that causes me to focus on my lack of productivity. And YouTube? Well, it's just full of people ranting.
I look at my phone and realize that I have only two minutes before my first client meeting of the day.
But you know what? My client work goes smoothly. I'm a member of my client's technology services team. And we use the Agile methodology to guide our software development. It seems to work pretty well. As a team we're working on many different projects at once and Agile helps us stay focused and productive.
The day is busy, so by the end of the day I'm mentally exhausted. I end up doom-scrolling on my iPad again. I'm not making any progress on my many personal creative projects.
The contrast between work and my free time is palpable. At work I'm focused and productive and I feel supported, in large part due to the team successful use of Agile.
And so I start to wonder. Even though Agile is intended for teams, could there be a personal version of Agile?
It's a strange question to ask whether you could apply Agile to your own artistic process. The myth of creative work is that it has to be magical and spontaneous. We make up that you can't force creativity, that you need to wait for the muses to show up before you can do any meaningful creative work.
Multipotentialites in particular thrive on spontaneity and novelty, so being tied to a process or methodology might lead to a lack of excitement. The idea of using a methodology like Agile for personal creativity can be quite intimidating for some people.
Perfectionists might also shy away from such a process. Agile emphasizes using the tools, materials, and time at hand, instead of waiting for the perfect moment. For perfectionists, this might seem like a constraint that limits their ability to achieve perfection in their art.
But my curiosity is peaked. So I Google Agile for personal use. And the first article that shows up is Scrum for One by Dustin Wax. I'm intrigued, so I read on.
Agile puts a great emphasis on constant feedback. Dustin explains that the term scrum comes from rugby and represents the team huddle after each play. In agile, the daily standup meetings give team members the ability to report on progress and identify any needs going forward. The meetings are typically no more than 15 minutes long.
In the Scrum for One model you check in with yourself every day. This could be in a journal or a diary or on a simple notepad. You make notes on how your projects are going and you identify any needs going forward, perhaps noting something that you might want to research or noting a tool or material to add to a shopping list.
The daily check-in is also an opportunity for self-reflection. “How did I do today? What worked well? What can I do better?”
This enhanced self-awareness is one of the primary benefits of the model. It helps you identify things to improve. You make frequent adjustments to your work habits instead of waiting until the end of a long project to figure out what you can do better.
Another Scrum for One principle is to work with what you have so that projects don't stall. Most project plans will have many steps, so if you can't make progress on one step, you could probably make some progress on another step. And if you're like me and have multiple projects, you can probably make progress on another project while you wait to restart the one you're stuck on.
With daily check-ins, it's important to work towards clearly define short-term goals. Vague goals that stretch over months are often discouraging. It's much better to have reasonable but meaningful goals that you can name and measure every day.
If you're writing a book which can take months, create a daily goal of 500 to a thousand words a day. Then in your daily scrum check-in you have a measure that you can reflect upon.
Setting short-term goals and tracking progress daily allows you to stay focused and motivated. Breaking down larger projects into smaller, more manageable tasks helps you prioritize your time and make progress in multiple projects simultaneously.
The last Agile principle that can be applied to your personal process is the sprint plan. This is a planning step where you decide what project or projects you'll be working on over the next week or so. It could be just a simple checklist. But the important thing is to have it out and visible as you work on your projects and also when you do your daily check-ins.
In a traditional Agile sprint, you would be responsible for just one project or set of tasks. But in Scrum for One that may not be practical. After all, we have all kinds of roles that we play in our daily lives. What does help though is to set aside consistent time to work on your own stuff. And even the simplest of sprint plans can help you focus during the time that you've blocked off for your own creative projects.
Dustin explains that this is not anything like a complete productivity system. But just applying the daily check-in process is a big benefit. He says, “The next time you're stuck ask yourself the simple question, ‘What's standing in my way right now?’ And see if that doesn't lead to, ‘Okay, what am I going to do about it?’”
I have to admit I was never much of a planner. It wasn't that I couldn't focus, I can. But every day I would find myself interested in something new. This is something that many multipotentialites experience. I was starting projects but not finishing many of them. I felt aimless in my own creative goals. I blamed myself for not being productive enough. By the time I was finished with work and family, I was too tired for creative work. And when I did have time, I faced decision paralysis, not knowing how to start or what to start.
Scrum for One changed all of that for me. I started using it when I applied for and was accepted in a local artist-in-residence program. I had three months to finish five different kinetic art pieces. And I needed something that would keep me on track.
Every weekend I created a new sprint plan. And during the week I worked on my projects and did a daily check-in with myself. “How was I doing? Is there something I needed? What was I going to work on next?”
One thing I realized early on is that I could be quite productive in the early morning. I had over an hour and a half of time every day between breakfast and when I started my client work that was previously spent surfing the web and other mindless stuff.
And where before I would struggle to decide what I wanted to do in the mornings, I now had that decided the night before. Each morning I was jumping right into my project because I knew what I was going to do.
 
What using this method revealed to me was that in addition to helping me finish the art pieces on time, it was helping me change my view of myself. What I like about Scrum for One is the emphasis on introspection and self-reflection. “How am I doing?” is such a powerful question. I'm no longer blaming myself for not being productive.
And I don't feel that I've lost any spontaneity. I have the flexibility to choose to do something different from my sprint plan every day. And as a multipotentialite that flexibility is freeing.
As for perfectionism, I've always felt that was more of a strategy to hide your talents than to use them well. Scrum for One encourages you to use your creativity, even if the time isn’t right or you don't have the right tools and materials.
I often find that I have a creative breakthrough when I'm faced with limitations. For example, I made a prototype automaton of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader fighting with lightsabers. I made it with cardboard and Popsicle sticks. And the motions were crude and imprecise, but that imprecision gave the figures a human-like quality as well as a feeling of weariness that seems appropriate for the battle.
I don't find Scrum for One intimidating at all. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's comfortable because it's routine. And I feel a sense of constant course correction. Decision paralysis has basically disappeared because I'm making small affirmative decisions in my daily scrum check-ins.
So that's my journey with Scrum for One. As I wrap up this episode, I want to challenge you to try Scrum for One in your own creative process. Whether you're a writer, a painter, a musician or creator of any kind, give this a go.
It doesn't require you to turn your life upside down or to commit to a rigorous regimen. It just requires a few minutes every day to check in with yourself. Plan your sprints, break down your creative goals into manageable daily tasks and reflect on your progress regularly. And remember it's okay to adjust your plan along the way. That's the beauty of the system.
The important thing is not how well you stick to the plan. But how well you listen to yourself. Honor your own process and find your path to productivity. This methodology is not about perfection, but about continuous progress.
Thank you for tuning in to today's Creative Shoofly podcast. Your time and interest are truly appreciated. If this episode inspired you consider subscribing and sharing your thoughts on Apple Podcasts. Remember, embrace your creative spirit, continue exploring, imagining and making. Every idea, every brush stroke, every note matters.
See you in the next episode.

In this episode I collaborate with artist Michael Tarnoff to make self-portraits inspired by Chuck Close.
 
Links
O'Hanlon Center for the Arts
Michael Tarnoff's Instagram
Chuck Close Website
Wikipedia Entry for Chuck Close
Procreate for the iPad
Interlude music: https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2017/13/1497796312321798
 
Michael's Self Portrait
Thomas' Self Portrait
Original Photos
 
Thomas: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Creative Shoofly podcast. I'm Thomas Beutel. This podcast is about exploring the creative journey as an artist. And in this episode, I'm continuing my improvisational experiment that I call You And I Make A Thing.
I invited my friend Michael to come up with a theme or project that we could do together. I hope you will enjoy hearing about our project, as much as we did doing it.
My guest today is Michael Tarnoff. Michael is a painter, a mixed media artist, as well as a photographer and all-around creative person. Welcome Michael.
Michael: Thank you for having me Thomas.
Thomas: Yeah, I'm glad to have you, Michael. I'm curious, before we get started, I'm want to know if there's some creative project that you've been working on or you're planning to work on right now?
Michael: Well, you know with COVID, things changed for me artistically [00:01:00] as far as access to my painting space and such, and I've been doing more photography and small works. And right now, we're in the mountains in the Utah area and I've been fascinated with ice and snow and cold and what happens with nature with that.
So I've been thinking about, in the back of my mind, a series of photographs and just thinking about them as a series of what nature does in the cold. Because I never really lived in the cold and witnessed it.
Thomas: Right.
Michael: There's just fascinating things like when the fog comes in and then the cold comes in. If there's just the right amount of humidity, ice crystals form everywhere and it looks, it's just, it's magic.
So I'm just kind of keeping my eyes open for that and just being witness to the magic that nature creates.
Thomas: Well that's great, that sounds like a real process of discovery.
Michael: It is, it is. I love that you say that because where I got most of my art learning [00:02:00] from, not so much teaching but learning I'll call it, was at O'Hanlan Center for the Arts in Mill Valley. And the founder Ann O'Hanlan, one of my favorite sayings of hers was, “Exploration comes first, discovery perhaps later.”
Thomas: Ah.
Michael: And it’s just, it's so true when it comes to art and life.
So it's really, this really is a process of exploration and discovery, with, I mean the medium is nature and the cold and what, how it's so much different from the temperate Bay Area.
Thomas: Right, right.
Michael: Yeah.
Thomas: And I've been following you on Instagram, and your photographs have been just brilliant.
Michael: Thank you.
Thomas: For my listeners, I'll put a link to Michael's Instagram in the show notes. Well, exploration I think is a good segue into what we're going to be doing today, which is You And I Make A Thing. And as you know, what my goal here is to come up with [00:03:00] something that we can do together, either something that we do in parallel or something that we actually collaborate on.
And Michael, prior to our conversation today, I've asked you to come up with three things that you might be interested in doing, and I've done the same. And what I was thinking of is that we'd just bounce back and forth with our ideas and then we'll see if we can coalesce on something that sounds like fun.
How about that?
Michael: That sounds great.
Thomas: Why don't you start with something that's on your list.
Michael: Okay. Let me preface it with saying that when you asked me to think of these things, it actually was harder than I thought it was going to be. And I couldn't because I'm just I'm so spontaneous with my art. I actually never think about what I want to do ahead of time and just sort of let the process flow with that in that moment.
Thomas: Okay.
Michael: I mean, I might know ahead of time I'm going to draw just because of, you know, whatever's happening.
Thomas: Right.
Michael: [00:04:00] So this was, this was very different for me. So the first thing I thought of, and these were all things, at least a couple of 'em were things that I've always thought about, but I have never done.
Thomas: Uh huh.
Michael: The first one was doing encaustic painting. Which is painting with paint that is mixed with wax and it sort of creates, on like a panel, it creates this dreamy kind of thing.
And I've never done it before. I don't know how to do it. and I don't even know if it's practical, but it was the very first thing I thought of because I've always wanted to try it.
Thomas: So I do follow a number of artists and I've seen a number of encaustic paintings, and they are sort of dreamy. They're sort of lots of different colors flowing and mixing. And that's what you're talking about, right?
Michael: Right. I mean, you can do realistic stuff. I'm not a realistic painter, but one could do that with encaustic painting. But it just sounds like so much fun. I it would be quite an exploration and discovery process.
Thomas: So I'm curious, is the wax [00:05:00] hot
Michael: Yes. Yes.
Thomas: Oh, it's hot. Oh it's hot wax. Okay. Interesting. And then you're mixing maybe like oil paints or something?
Michael: Yeah. I think, or acrylic. I don't, I actually have no idea. I think you can do acrylic, may have to wear a mask.
Thomas: I would imagine. Yes. It sounds interesting.
Michael: Yeah.
Thomas: I mean, I love sort of dreamy and very colorful palettes and drawings and, they don't need to be realistic at all. I just, I don't know about you Michael, but I really respond to color a lot.
Michael: Yeah, I'm a colorist. Yeah.
Thomas: Yeah. All right, well let's bookmark that one and let's see where this goes. So on my list, I've been fascinated with assemblage. You know, like box assemblage, Joseph Cornell type.
Michael: Mm.
Thomas: And I've noticed that there are at least a couple artists out [00:06:00] there that are doing, I guess what they call small box assemblage. They'll take, these little boxes that your iPhone comes in, or even smaller, like little jewelry boxes and then using found art, they'll put an assemblage together.
Michael: Oh, wonderful.
Thomas: Yeah.
Michael: I've dabbled in that a tiny bit, maybe one or two in my Saturday art class at the center over the 20 plus years that I was there. And it was fun.
Thomas: It's an interesting process to use found art as opposed to, I guess the best way to put it is, is like starting with an idea.
Michael: Correct.
Thomas: It's that exploration thing really. It's like, okay, let's see what happens here.
Michael: Mm-hmm. Oh, love it.
Thomas: What's, what's next on your list?
Michael: Okay. My next one is, I've never worked with Sculpey Clay.
Thomas: Uh huh.
Michael: I've felt it and played with it, but I've actually never [00:07:00] taken it, sculpted something out of it, baked it, and then painted it.
Thomas: Oh.
Michael: As simple as that sounds, I've never done it and I think it would really bring out my child, and my adult at the same time to kind of co-create something, again abstract.
But, I even looked into like, can you buy bulk kind of uncolored sculpey and you can. So simple but kind of.
Thomas: Yeah, I mean, I played with clay but I've never fired anything before or hardened it before. So that sounds interesting. And then, you know, and not painted it after.
Michael: Right, and that's the beauty of Sculpey is that you can… I guess I maybe you might even be able to paint it beforehand, I don't know. But you harden it in the oven. So it's, you don't need a kiln to do it.
Thomas: Right, exactly. I like that. All right,[00:08:00] well, my next one is not very well defined. The note that I have here is mail art collage. The idea is to combine the idea of mail art and collaging together. So it might be just a collage postcard, or something that we put in an envelope and then just send to each other
Michael: Oh, that's fun.
Thomas: Yeah. Maybe as almost like a call and response type of thing.
Michael: Oh my goodness. Huh. You know, that I could envision doing it together where you start one and then you send it, partially completed.
Thomas: Right.
Michael: And then you respond and we go back and forth.
Thomas: Uh huh
Michael: Yeah.
Thomas: Maybe like a little folded book where the pages are things that we fill in with collage. Or [00:09:00] like a zebra fold? Not no, what's the name? Where they, where you fold it? Accordion! Like an accordion fold. That's what I meant. Yeah.
Michael: Right.
Thomas: Oh, okay.
Michael: Yeah. I don't know. It sounds like a neat idea.
Thomas: Alright. What's the last one on your list?
Michael: All right. Hopefully you know the artist, Chuck Close?
Thomas: I don't, no. Tell me.
Michael: He did self-portraits, huge self-portraits, and what he did was he narrowed down and magnified into little, he would make a little grid pattern. So maybe it would be a nine-foot by six-foot self-portrait. Right. But he would make grids that were maybe one inch by one inch, or two inch by two inch. And he would zoom in on the photograph and see what the swirl pattern or color pattern might look like.
Thomas: Right.
Michael: And he would paint that in each little box. And so he would, [00:10:00] he would abstract. Build this grid with swirls and colors, and then when you step back, it became a portrait.
Thomas: Wow.
Michael: Which was, I was always fascinated by it. And I thought that would be fun to do, like self-portraits of each other.
Thomas: Yeah.
Michael: And you know, obviously we're not going to do nine by seven feet, so maybe a nine by 12, or something that can be mailed easily.
Thomas: Right, right.
Michael: But you can get a small grid on a nine by 12 and just kind of zoom in on a photograph and instead of drawing, as though you're drawing a face, you just draw what's in that grid, the kind of the shapes and the colors as best you can, and then you move on to the next.
And then you sort of end up with, you know, it's not always going to be this pretty image, which is kind of fun. Not all of his were either, he celebrated the ones that were kind of goofy looking too.
Thomas: Right.
Michael: So his last name is [00:11:00] C L O S E, first name Chuck. I highly recommend you Google him and see if we do it this time or not.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I will.
Michael: But that would be fun.
Thomas: I've been playing with Procreate on the iPad and I can totally see how you could have the the photo, then have another layer that is the grid, and then you just pinch open and then have another layer where you then do the drawing in in different brushes and different whatever.
Michael: Oh, I love that! I would actually love to know how to do that too, because I don’t know how to mix photo and drawing together in digital format.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I mean, I'm just thinking about this. This is something that we could share easily over email, right? Or file sharing or whatever to get going.
Okay. Well, I'm chuckling a [00:12:00] little bit because my last one is like somewhat related and I don't even know what I was thinking here.
I just wrote down the words wild selfies and I guess the image that comes to mind is like, yeah, I live 20 minutes from the beach, so I'd probably go down on the beach and just, you know, wild poses or jumps up in the air. I don't know what it might be
Michael: Hmm, that's fun.
Thomas: Yeah.
Michael: You know, I mean, we can each expand on that too. But I want to throw this into the mix just for you and the listeners. I've been on Instagram, there's some amazing artists on Instagram. I really just use Instagram for following artists. And there are a group, many photographers who do what's called Intentional Camera Movement.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Michael: And they purposely move their. [00:13:00] To create visual effects.
Thomas: Oh, right.
Michael: And there are some that are, I mean, they're like gorgeous abstract paintings. They're so beautiful.
Thomas: They're holding the shutter open. Is that what they're doing?
Michael: I'm not sure, I generally only take photographs with my iPhone because even though I have very nice equipment, the phone just fits in my pocket and I usually take photographs when I go hiking.
Thomas: The iPhone is so good actually.
Michael: It's actually quite good. The only way I've been able to do it is at night when the iPhone has a longer exposure and I can play with moving it.
So you kind of, there would be some exploration into how do you get enough light, but not too much light and, but those would be some wild selfies for sure. That would be fun to try.
Thomas: Yeah. Well, I think we have six fantastic ideas and, and I felt a lot of energy around all of 'em.
Michael: Yes.
Thomas: So I'm [00:14:00] curious now, what, which one did you feel a lot of energy around in particular? I have one that I did.
Michael: I think the one that I got the most energy around as much because I think it combined a couple of what we talked about and the ease of sharing was this idea of these sort of Chuck Close style wild painted selfies using Procreate.
Thomas: I agree.
Michael: And we can share, you know, constantly in progress sharing and it's, it's digital makes it very easy to do it. Since I'm, you know, we're 800 miles apart so.
Thomas: I totally agree. That's the one that I just felt, “Wow, okay.” That's something that I've never done before. And I can totally see, I can already visualize how I might be doing it, at least, for me working on Procreate on the iPad. Do, do you have Procreate?[00:15:00]
Michael: I don't, but I suppose I can get it, so yeah.
Thomas: Yeah, it's not, it's not that expensive. I think it's just, if I remember right, I think it's just $9.95 or something like that.
Michael: I can definitely get it.
Thomas: Wow, Michael, this went really quick, which I'm delighted about, and I'm also just, I'm just excited about how all of these ideas were really good.
Michael: Yeah.
Thomas: I mean, I definitely was sort of imagining something I might be making in Sculpey. And the encaustic painting sounds very interesting as well. But, I think we found something that is actually really exciting here.
Michael: I do too. And as a tangent, you know, this could be expanded to many people. Where you take any photograph and it could be a photograph of somebody that we don't even know, and you divide it into nine. So you would need nine different people, you know about it in nine [00:16:00] sections.
And then each person takes that and they have to be exactly the same size and that each person takes that. And then we all agree on the size of the grid that we're going to use. And then we each do one ninth and all our focus is on our little piece, and then you bring them all together and see how they form.
Thomas: It's like a quilt
Michael: A lot of fun too. Yes. That's a lot of fun too.
Thomas: Thank you for this offer. I'm going to go and look up Chuck Close now and see what he's come up with.
Michael: Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Thomas: All right. Very good. we'll be in touch as far as the logistics and all that kind of stuff.
Michael: I'm looking forward to it, Thomas.
 
Thomas: In just a moment. I'll return with Michael. To talk about how we did. On our Chuck close portrait adventure.
[00:17:00]
(Editor’s note. The musical interlude was performed in Sonic Pi and was created by Pit Noack. The complete code listing is available here: https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2017/13/1497796312321798 )
 
Thomas: Well, hello Michael. How's it going?
Michael: I'm well Thomas, how are you?
Thomas: I'm doing great. I have to say I had such a great time with this You And I Make A Thing and creating a self-portrait on the iPad. It was a very interesting experience.
Michael: Yes, I could wax away about my experience with it, highs and lows, but I can go into more detail about it, but it was fun.
Thomas: Let me read to you a quote from Chuck Close. He was interviewed by Cleveland, Ohio's The Plain Dealer newspaper, and he [00:18:00] made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush.
He said, “I threw away the tools. I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is, in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it'll push you to where you've never gone before.”
When I read that, I thought, wow, that's exactly what we were doing here, isn't it?
Michael: Yes. That's great.
Thomas: I'm always delighted when I read the thought processes of artists that I follow and admire, and in this case learned about, that sort of mirror some thinking that was going on in my mind. In this case about going places that I've never gone before.
Michael: Yeah, this process that we took was, [00:19:00] well by nature my design. It was new to each of us and there were aspects that I love and aspects that I struggled with. It was very, very different process from how I normally create.
Thomas: Well expand on that. How did you feel at the very beginning? You know, after we had talked.
Michael: Well, I there was a, so the combination of excitement and also newness. I think I had purchased Procreate on another recommendation years ago. I had never done anything with it. And so there was a learning curve. I just went to YouTube videos, and I think you may have sent some videos as well.
So I learned how to, you know, have the background photo so that I could then adjust it, things with that, and choosing the grid size. And then it was a matter of the different pens and such. It was all very new to me. And so I'm sure it, you know, to get to where I am, I think I've probably learned maybe one or two percent of what you can do with Procreate. [00:20:00] And I started with sort of the elements that I felt most comfortable with.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Michael: So my creative process is completely different from this. I never draw something that I think I want to draw, or the idea of what I'm going to draw is never there. It's never a specific thing. I draw more from stream of consciousness or in the present, or I must be channeling something. I don't, I actually don't know what, where it comes from.
And it just comes out of me. And I often make myself go into a very healthy struggle, if you will, so that I can get myself out of it.
Thomas: Hmm.
Michael: So my art goes through many iterations. It's always abstract. Sometimes it turns into a really cool abstract image that does look like something, but that's not the intent or it's, that's more of a fun ending.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Michael: So mine is always, I'm never intending to do anything other than just be with the [00:21:00] creative process of art and let it flow.
And that's what, that's my charge. I just, I mean, it's just the greatest feeling in the world.
Thomas: So this felt, this really felt different for you?
Michael: Completely different because I was doing something. So it was in the beginning there was a push-pull on how do I do it so that I could, I have still a creative process that's flowing and actually draw something.
And I just started to let go of what I was drawing and get into the meditative movement of it. Following the lines and letting my hand move with the, you know, the apple pencil on my iPad. And, it was fun, in segments where I would get lost were when there weren't any lines to follow.
And so I was split to where do I make it up? Or do I zoom in more, or do I make the background image darker so I can see it?
It was just, it was, you know, there was a lot of mistakes. There was a huge chunk where I put it all in the wrong layer. I [00:22:00] put a bunch of my drawing on the actual the photograph layer. That was lost, so I had to draw it again, which was fun. Again, this was all a good learning process.
But I think I went through a doldrum with it, for a couple reasons, which was really fascinating. One was that I, except for my really large paintings, I don't spend a lot of time on one art piece.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Michael: I usually, it can be a few hours to many hours, but then I'll move on to the next art piece.
Even with some of my canvases. It can be like that with my large canvases, you know, like four feet by seven.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Michael: I will spend months, if not a year working on them, you know, once a week, twice a week. They just go through that many iterations and it takes that long to do it.
Quite frankly, with this, it's just the size of an iPad, right? Hundred by hundred grid.
Thomas: Yeah.
Michael: I would get to a point where I would realize my arc for creating it was done so [00:23:00] I'd have to recreate a new arc. And it made me look at the piece differently, it made me look at the process differently and more at first, more constricting and like, ah, why is this like this?
And then after I got rid of that voice or I let that voice speak and then I said, okay, what's next?
It was more how do I, you know, I'm creating something really cool here. I'm, I'm creating something representational that I'm not focused on that because I'm only focused on each little grid and I'm gonna pour my creativity into each grid.
And when I zoom back out, we'll see what it looks like. And I'm not even done with mine, which is kind of exciting.
Thomas: I think it looks great as it is already. I mean, to me it has almost like a quilt feel to it.
Michael: Yes, you're right.
Thomas: Which I think is fabulous. I want to know more about what you mean by arc. I want you to elaborate on what you mean by arc. Does [00:24:00] that mean like the arc of getting into a creative or an in inspired moment? Is that what that means?
Michael: So for me, arc in when I'm doing art, what I'm creating, there's, it's undefined as far as time. And when I'm doing something that's not intentionally representational, that's just a free flow, I just follow the arc, so I'll just start drawing and, and, and usually it builds on itself, sort of this beginning.
You have a set a space, right? Sometimes it, you know, with or without music, but you have to get into it, it's a process actually.
Sometimes you, it just comes immediately and you're just, you're in the flow within the first few seconds.
Thomas: Would you say that there's like an act one, act two, act three? Is that what you're getting, at?
Michael: There is.
Thomas: It sounds to me that there's like a beginning, middle, and end. And, when you were at the end, you were [00:25:00] a little bit, I don't want to say lost, but…
Michael: I would say it was the middle.
Thomas: Oh, oh, I see.
Michael: In the beginning, I got into the flow. I got excited about it, and then I thought when I spent as much time as I did, figuring out the pens and working on this little bit, and I zoomed out and I thought, Oh boy, I just spent an hour and I've barely done, I felt like I barely did anything.
I thought, wow, this is going to take way longer than I thought it was, which is why I contacted you and said, we're going to need more time here. Which you graciously, agreed to.
And so I think my middle got, I don't know what the right word is. I don't know if it's interrupted, but the flow was changed.
And at first I resisted it because I just, I naturally flow when I create. I've never had an interruption before, but I still held the first act. It was, it's always, that's the beauty of art, right? Your first act is always there, [00:26:00] um, unless you pick up a new piece of paper.
And so, it was just a very long middle for me.
Thomas: Hmm.
Michael: I'm coming to the, it almost feels like in this piece I'm coming to the end of one arc and beginning another, or I've done that multiple times on this piece.
It's actually forced me to do that. From the way that I normally create to the way to create, so two things, both with the fact that we're, we're doing something that's intentionally representational and in a grid, right?
So we're limiting what we do. And also, I don't do that much creation digitally. feeling the paper or the canvas, feeling the pencil or the pen, and feeling the friction as that moves across.
Thomas: That tactile feeling.
Michael: That tactile feeling is so important. I didn't realize how important it was until we got deeper into this. I've done shorter drawings on the iPad and those were short arcs, you know, an hour, maybe two at most. [00:27:00]
But when it gets longer, I'm missing that sound of the pencil. Right? I'm going to draw right now. Just that sound when you're hatching or when you're shading.
I'm still drawing right now cause it's, kind of, it's fun. There's this element that I was missing, a connection to the piece of art that I am still learning how to let go of the friction that happens with in-person art.
That's not the right word… Versus the immediacy of when the pen touches the pad, it's creating something. And obviously the apple pencil, if you, whether it's angled or your pressure, it does change things, but I'm still, it's all very new.
Thomas: Right. And then the fact that we were doing the grid and you're, we're essentially starting over with every grid.
Michael: Yes, yes.
Thomas: I can see where that sort of lost feeling in the middle of it [00:28:00] is like, oh, okay, I just did something and now I'm starting again. And almost like Groundhog Day.
Michael: Yeah.
Thomas: So, you know, I experienced a lot of the same thing in mine. I laughed when you said, oh, I was, I was starting to paint another wrong layer. I can't tell you how many times I was started to paint the wrong layer.
And in fact, I did finish mine a little bit earlier and just recently I opened up the iPad again because I needed to save it and then send it to you. And I realized I was trying to move it around. And I realized that instead of moving it around, I was painting again.
And it's like uh oh! and frantically undoing. But there were a couple strokes that weren't in the undo stack anymore. And so I actually now have to go back and fix a few of the grids because I accidentally painted over them and. And so, or maybe I'll leave it there. I don't know.
Michael: Yeah, I think so.
Thomas: It [00:29:00] kind of looks goofy to me, but, you know, it's just how it is, right? When you see something that other people maybe not see or they see it differently. But learning the layers was an interesting process. And also it just, it tripped me up quite a bit. It was nice that Procreate does have a grid feature that kind of made it easy.
Michael: That was great.
Thomas: So for me, I felt it, it was also a little bit weird like painting over a picture of me.
Michael: Yes.
Thomas: And so it took me a while before that photo of me staring back at me sort of just faded into the background. It took me a while for just to say, oh, okay, I'm just, you know, I'm doing a process here.
The thing that never went away from me though, were the eyes and the mouth. I mean, that's sort of where you know, our brains focus on, on eyes and mouth. and that's the part that I had [00:30:00] to like, go over several times.
Like, okay, that mouth doesn't look right and I need to, start again. So I ended up spending a lot of time on the eyes and the mouth specifically to try to find something that would translate into this, you know, gridded picture.
Michael: Hmm.
Thomas: I'm curious, did you have an aha moment at any point where it's like, oh!
Michael: I, well, I had a few of them. The biggest one was, you know, when you're drawing or painting on top of a photograph, It always looks fuller and more complete until you turn off the photo layer and then it's obviously it's clearer. It's white behind everything that's, that you haven't drawn on,
Thomas: Yeah.
Michael: Plus all of your ink colors now look different.
Thomas: Yeah.
Michael: So I think my biggest aha moment was early on when I remembered to turn off the photo layer. And I saw all these crazy line. I was [00:31:00] maybe 10% done and I saw all these crazy lines and, and, and these weird colors.
And I'm thinking, where, where is this coming from? Like I could see that it was sort of my nose and part of my eye. I think that's, think I started right in my,  in that part of my face.
But it was, shocking to think like, oh, these colors don't look anything like my photo, like the, I couldn't figure out, and I still can't figure out how you get the right color. That's a mystery still to me.
But there was that moment. I think my hair, which in the photo is big and curly. That's been a kind of a wonderful struggle to get the way I wanted to look. Which I don't actually know what that is yet. It's more of a feel to try to figure out how to make it look something like what I think I want it to look like without actually knowing what that is, right?
I don't, I don't actually have the answer yet because I don't, I haven't seen it, but I've gone through my hair twice now and I'm still only about 50%. I don't even know if I'm [00:32:00] 50% done. Because I still want to play with my hair actually has lots of different colors in it, shades. It almost looks like it's highlighted.
Thomas: Yeah.
Michael: So that's actually really hard. And so the kind of, the aha moment is, and I've always felt this way, even when I've, you know, you see, great paintings, by Sargent or, um, I'm forgetting all the great painters at the moment in my head, but hair is always one of the most amazing things that artists are able to do, and I've always been in awe in doing it.
Now I can see why, because it's such a fascinating, it's such a fine thing to zoom in on and try to do in blocks.
Thomas: Well, I think you did a great job. As far as what I'm seeing so far, and to our listeners, you're welcome to go to the show notes and you'll see both of our portraits there. You've [00:33:00] selected some washes for sort of the base color, and then you have some sort of fine line work that, uh, almost to me looks like, you know, the terrain maps that have the elevations and all that kind of stuff.
Michael: Well, I am a civil engineer,
Thomas: There you go.
Michael: I think it comes out naturally.
Thomas: Yeah, I think it's great. So I had a few aha moments. One was that I made a layer specifically for swatches because there's a way in procreate where you just tap down on a color and hold, and it'll pick up that color. I picked that up from a YouTube.
So that was sort of a nice little discovery for me. It was, “Oh yeah, create a swatch layer because otherwise those colors ain't coming back.” You know if you're using, like, I used a pen that was called bleach, and so it it's not the full color. It's sort of a runny stained version of that color [00:34:00] that I was using.
Michael: I want to hear your other aha, aha moments. But I'm now, I'm excited to go find that feature. Because I was looking for something where I could use like an eyedropper to grab a previous color and I just, I couldn't figure it out.
The reason mine is a myriad of different colors is because I was trying to guess what the, what color to use each time.
Thomas: Oh, right, right. The other one that I used is the color tool has something called harmony mode, where you can pick a pair of complimentary colors or triad of colors. And so I was using triads in mine. I was sort of filling my squares with like a base color and then covering it with a complimentary color.
Michael: Hmm.
Thomas: And then putting a dot in the middle to change the gray scale value, like the density. So my thought was, okay, I'm going to create some complimentary colors and then put the dots in to sort of change the [00:35:00] value, the overall value when you pull back.
Michael: Oh, interesting.
I'm looking at yours right now. It's so great. It has, elements of, uh, Andy Warhol.
Thomas: And for the hair, I just did short strokes. I didn't really spend so much time on it because,
Michael: It's brilliant.
Thomas: Yeah, I had to do my beard and then I had to do my curly hair. What I decided there is I would do strokes, but I, the strokes would remain within the grid. So I wasn't taking the strokes beyond each grid. So each grid was sort of self-contained in terms of that. And I just tried to make sure that I was following the direction of the hair.
Michael: Are your grids and your squares of colors, are those in a different layer from your hair?
Thomas: No. And, but I should have! I think that one of the things I learned here was, is that layers are good, you know, and the more layers you do, the better. [00:36:00] And definitely when you leave it, leave it on a layer that, that you can, you know, erase stuff on.
Because I left it on my main layer. And then, like I said, I came back later and I was trying to move it around and I was actually painting over. It's like, “Oh no!”
Michael: Well, and you kind of created a, you created a grid, like your grid is defined on your painting.
Thomas: Right. And you mentioned how like when you took away the photograph layer that it changed and so I actually had to create a background layer that was sort of a neutral, like 50% gray. And I played with that a little bit and I made it really dark. I made it light, but I finally sort of settled on sort of in that middle 50% gray as a background, because otherwise to me the photo didn't look dense enough.
Michael: And [00:37:00] it's gray background on well, and the listeners will have a look at the images, but you're from your shoulders up, there's one background, and then down below you've got white. There's lots of white that's in there that really helps break up. It creates tension and it helps divide your, painting really nicely.
Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I didn't, that wasn't intentional.
Michael: That wasn't intentional. Oh, it's fantastic.
Thomas: Thank you. I was just following the photograph, so I'd taken the photograph in my bathroom and there's a yellow wall behind me and so that's why I chose that color. And then the shirt, you know, was a sort of a darker gray shirt.
Michael: Will the photographs be on the notes as well so they can see what it looks like or just
Thomas: Yes. Yeah.
Michael: Oh, great. Good.
Thomas: Yeah.
Michael: Did you choose the colors for your face and your hair? You, you wanted a more abstract and [00:38:00] fun direction?
Thomas: Yeah, sort of an orange-ish color. I was contemplating to actually to do like a, like a blueish or greenish, but I just, I thought, well, that might look a little bit too ghoulish. So I went with a warm color.
Michael: Okay.
Thomas: I had to play with the colors a little bit, definitely.
Michael: Well, it's it. Yours is definitely playful.
Thomas: Yeah. Thank you. It was also a playful pose that was kind of fun to do the pose.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Thomas: So Michael, what would you say or recommend to someone who was going to try this or something similar to this?
Michael: I would say, well, okay, I was going to say learn the tools and et cetera.
But one of the things that I learned from, where I kind of learned how to create and see and perceive, O'Hanlan Center for the Arts in Mill Valley, was that it's all about seeing and perceiving and kind of [00:39:00] developing that, and letting go of what we've learned in school and the media, whatever that art is, this one thing and it's perfect and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I would throw all that out the window or set it aside depending on, on your feelings on it. And let mistakes happen and let them be a part of your piece.
Because it's a part, you're creating a part of you, you're creating a journal entry. And so you can, you know, there is no… I used to know an artist who if she didn't like something, she would stick it in the the sink and then turn on the water and, and let the stuff wash off until she's kind of saw a cool part of it that she wanted to keep.
And then she would pull it away and dab it dry and, and then continue. The erase tool can work like that. But I think that I've spent most of my now 24 years drawing, and creating, hardly ever using an eraser and just building on and [00:40:00] incorporating mistakes. And if, if you really like something, don't let it rule the painting or what you're creating.
And, you know, kind of have fun with this and let it, you know, choose your grid size carefully because it makes a big difference in how long it's going to take.
Thomas: Yeah. Sure does.
Michael: But I'm fascinated by what I've, I would, uh, not in my lifetime would I ever create something like this unless I had agreed to do it with you. Because I would've lost interest and I would've like, you know what I, this isn't for me, but because you asked me and we, I agreed and we, you know, made this challenge for ourselves. I stuck to it.
So make it so that you know how much time is going to take and then give yourself the time to do it, because it's a really fun process.
Thomas: And what’s embedded in what you just said there is to make it a collaboration.
Michael: Yes.
Thomas: There's something about creating art in collaboration that [00:41:00] really is a little bit different than when you're just sitting by yourself in your studio. I mean, we did this by ourselves, but we were still doing it in collaboration and it makes all the difference in the world.
Michael: I one hundred percent agree!
Thomas: Yeah. and I also wanted to say that there is really something personal about doing a self-portrait. You know, it's different. It really feels different. It's…
Michael: Yes.
Thomas: … you know, that's me. It's, it's…
Michael: Yeah! Is that, is that what I look like?
Thomas: …a picture of me.
Michael: Yes.
Thomas: Well, Michael, thank you so much for this. This was, this was a real delight and I'm glad we went through this. I'm looking forward to seeing how yours evolves. Let me know as it evolves and at some point if you say, okay, I'm done with it, then let me know as well. I'd love to see it.
But this was really a fun project and, and thank you for, sort of guiding us in this [00:42:00] direction of Chuck Close. I'm so delighted to have learned about the artist and what he did so thank you very much.
Michael: Thank you for inviting me, uh, Thomas. It's been a delight.
Thomas: That's all for today's episode of the Creative Shoofly podcast. I hope you've enjoyed our conversation. The goal of You And I Make A Thing is to step outside our comfort zone and embrace the uncertainty of trying something new. I hope we've inspired you to take a leap into the unknown. Thank you for tuning in. And I look forward to sharing more insights and experiences with you in my next episode. Keep creating and never stop exploring

In this episode I explore Artificial Intelligence and some of the issues around artists using AI in their creative process. I hope you will enjoy hearing and thinking about these issues.
 
Links For Further Reading and Viewing
Tech guru Jaron Lanier: ‘The danger isn’t that AI destroys us. It’s that it drives us insane’
Bill Gates: The Age of AI Has Begun
IBM Technology: What are Generative AI models?
The ultimate list of AI tools for creators
How to use ChatGPT to improve your creative process
Generative AI for Makers: AI Has Truly Arrived — and It’s Here to Help You Make and Craft
Artificial Intelligence Art School Meltdown | The Looming Crisis
Eric Schmidt talks about concerns around AI
 
Links to books and websites mentioned in this podcast
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts, by Jaron Lanier
You Are Not A Gadget, by Jaron Lanier
Creative programming workshop with Sonic Pi
ChatGPT
DeepL Translator
Descript
Pixelmator
ProCreate
Hashtags #processing and #p5js
Some of the above are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission from them.
 
Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Creative Shoofly Podcast. I'm Thomas Beutel. In this episode, I ask myself, what do I do with all these AI tools that are becoming available? How should I use these tools in my creative process? And how do I maintain integrity as I do?
These questions might be on your mind too, and I hope that I shed at least a little bit of light on the topic.
I am recording this in March of 2023, and there's been an explosion of AI announcements. All of a sudden, AI is everywhere. Everyone seems to be talking about it, and it feels almost like it's being jammed on our throats.
Yeah, we've been using Siri and Alexa and Hey Google for years now, and we know that recommendation algorithms have been limiting what we get to see on social platforms and in places like Netflix.[00:01:00] But while those services are a form of artificial intelligence, we were quickly jaded about how mediocre and dull they were.
But the latest AIs come in the form of image generators like Stable Diffusion and chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT. And they seem lightyears ahead of those earlier tools. And scarier too.
The AI image generators in particular caused quite a stir in the art community when they were introduced in 2021. Not only were these AI tools creating an image in minutes that would take an artist hours and days to create, but the tools were trained on images found on the internet, including images that artists had posted themselves. That felt a lot like theft.
But these are clearly creative tools. And they have me thinking about creativity and the ethics involved. Can AI help me in any of my creative processes? And if they can, how should I be [00:02:00] using AI?
The recent hubbub really started when the latest version of ChatGPT was launched in November of 2022. That was ChatGPT 3.5, and people took notice of its impressive capabilities. ChatGPT gained a hundred million users in just a few months. To put that into perspective, Gmail took five years to get to a hundred million users.
In just the last few weeks, there have been a number of follow-on announcements. ChatGPT was upgraded to version four. Google announced their chatbot called Bard, and they're also integrating AI in their workspace tools.
Microsoft released Bing Chat as an alternative way to find information with Bing. They also announced that they would be including an AI tool called Copilot in their office suite, meaning that you'll be able to have AI assist you when you're creating content in Word documents [00:03:00] and PowerPoint slides, and also when you're sending emails using Outlook.
Many other companies announced that they're integrating AI generative tools into their existing products. Canva announced that they're adding AI so that you can use text to describe a design, and it'll create a Facebook cover page, a YouTube profile picture, YouTube intro and outros, Instagram post and story and so forth, all from one text description.
GitHub announced their co-pilot X that helps coders code faster. Ubisoft announced a dialogue generator for game development and Metahuman showed facial motion capture using just an iPhone, and this allows them to animate characters with very realistic facial expressions.
With all these announcements, it does feel like AI is taking over at this point. Artists are asking themselves a lot of questions.
How can I use these tools ethically and [00:04:00] morally?
How will it affect the marketplace for art and creative products?
Will it make me a dull person?
These are all important questions. So, let's first talk about what AI really is, and then we can see how we can adapt any of it into our creative process.
So, let's first get something out of the way. Artificial intelligence is not conscious intelligence. Some people describe it as an enhanced version of auto complete. I like that metaphor. All of these systems are trained on a large amount of data, and they create texts and images based on what they've been trained on. I like to think of AI as a statistics engine with some randomness thrown in.
ChatGPT has been trained on 300 billion words from around the internet. From that training, it is able to guess what word comes next for a given prompt. Bing Chat is based on the same engine, [00:05:00] and Google's Bard is based on a similar large language model called LamMDA.
Another example is the DeepL Translator. It translates from one language to another based on millions of translations it has been trained on.
Other AI tools are similarly trained. Image generators like Midjourney, dall-E, and Stable Diffusion are trained on large numbers of images that have been captioned with text. They're able to generate new images based on text prompts.
Transcription tools like Descript and Otter.ai, were trained on millions of voice samples to allow them to transcribe audio to text. Descript, PlayHT and others have text to speech capabilities that generate very realistic voices, again by being trained on millions of examples.
All of these tools have been under development for many years, but they have now gotten to the point where they're quite good. And technology companies like [00:06:00] Canva and Adobe are rushing to incorporate them into the creativity products we use every day.
So, these tools are now here and ready for us to use.
The thing that has me thinking about the impact of AI is what Microsoft and Google recently announced. They both are incorporating chat-based AI tools into Microsoft 365 and Google workspace. These tools are targeted at the workplace, and that means that millions of people will soon be getting very comfortable prompting these AIs for answers about their businesses, and also to generate text for emails and presentations.
AI generated content will become ubiquitous in a very short amount of time, and since it is in a business context, it will most likely not be marked as being generated. All of this will be widely accepted because the use of AI will increase productivity. Some estimates say that world GDP will increase by 7% over the next 10 [00:07:00] years. That's a massive amount!
But what happens if I use AI to create an image that is based on someone else's intellectual property? How do I as an artist give credit or even payment if the AI tool doesn't even have the capability to tell me what the source was?
I recently read a great Guardian interview with Jaron Lanier. He's a futurist, a technologist, an artist, and he's considered the godfather of virtual reality. He's been in the industry a long time.
His take is the danger isn't that AI will destroy us. It's that it'll drive us insane. In the interview, Lanier says that he doesn't even like the term artificial intelligence, objecting to the idea that the technology is actually intelligent.
Just because a chatbot can pull information from millions of sources and express ideas in a language we can understand, that doesn't [00:08:00] make it better than us.
Lanier's mission is to champion the human over the digital. In his book, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts, he argues that the internet is making us dull and uncreative. His worry is that we'll use technology as agents of manipulation. We become mutually unintelligible because we are slaves to the algorithms that corral our attention into silos.
So, he says that we have a responsibility to act morally and humanely. In spite of his view on what the internet has become, he believes that AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's Bard could provide hope for the digital world. A good AI can open us to ideas and knowledge that we weren't seeking before. A well-designed chatbot would spark both curiosity and play.
It could also keep track of the sources of information that it was trained on, and if the chatbot relied on something you created, [00:09:00] you could get paid for it. In a system where there is shared sense of responsibility and liability, everything works better. He calls it data dignity.
In his book, You Are Not A Gadget, he said that the point of technology was to make the world more creative, expressive, empathetic, and interesting. He reminds us to remind ourselves of our humanity.
What Jaron says is heartening to me. Like him, I do believe that the goal of technology is to help us be more expressive and more empathetic. I think we can use AI tools without compromising our humanity or our integrity.
I've already been using Descript for three years now, taking advantage of its AI-based transcription to make audio editing much easier for me. Descript allows me to edit the text, and it edits the audio waveform for me based on those text edits. It's so much faster than fiddling with the waveform [00:10:00] directly.
When I record my voice, I speak with a lot of ums and ahs. Descript automatically highlights all of those ums and ahs so that I can get rid of them with one click.
Descript even has a voice generation feature called overdub. I've trained Descript with my own voice, and it allows me to replace words and phrases where I misspoke or I want to say something with more clarity, and I don't want to have to set up the microphone again to rerecord it. Descript generates the new text with my voice.
When it comes to writing, however, like when I write a podcast script, I don't use AI to generate any of the words. These are all my own words.
That said, I often will ask ChatGPT for a word or phrase. I'll say, “Hey, what's a more precise word for this concept?” For example, I recently asked, “What is the Inc. Corp or Limited part of a company name called?” ChatGPT informed me that it was called the legal [00:11:00] designation.
It's the sort of thing I once used Google for, and then I would need to follow a link. But ChatGPT gives me the answer right away, and it helps my writing be clearer.
Another thing I do when I start a podcast script is to have ChatGPT ask me questions. I'll say, “I'm writing about this topic. What questions would you ask me if you were to interview me?” I find this a great way to jumpstart writing my first draft. I take those questions and either type out the answers or I just record the answers, and I use Descript's AI to transcribe them into text.
It's a real time saver. It gets me to my first draft much more quickly than by starting with a blank page.
Another way that I use ChatGPT is to critique my writing. I'll say, “Here's an idea that I'm trying to express. How well did I do?” ChatGPT at that point will usually [00:12:00] say, I did a great job. So not all that useful, but then I ask if I missed anything, and it will usually come up with a point or two that I hadn't thought of.
For me, that's a godsend. It's like having a friend look over your work and make suggestions. I feel this has improved my writing quite a lot.
Again, I'm not using AI to create any of the text, but it is making suggestions that I can then think about and write in my own words.
As far as AI image generation, I don't find myself very interested in it. I did once use an AI image generator to help me with a scene that I was drawing in a comic because I needed to have a reference to draw to.
So, I said, “Show me someone speaking at a podium with the audience in front of them,” and it created something good enough for me to then create my comic. The image I created was all mine, but the AI provided a reference.
I think this idea of [00:13:00] references is a good way to take advantage of AI tools in the creative process.
I do want to make a distinction about generative art that is created by writing an algorithm where I create the algorithm to make the art. That's not AI, and the algorithm is not trained on other artists' work. That's me thinking of a program to make and shape the image, and I enjoy that immensely because it's very challenging and creative to think of an algorithm and to figure out how to make the computer make the image that I'm imagining in my mind.
If you're interested in seeing examples of non-AI generative art, look for the hashtag #processing or hashtag #p5js. I'll put links to them in the show notes.
I think going forward it is important as an artist to have full disclosure. In the past, I've never disclosed what technologies I use to make a certain piece of art. In most cases, it was [00:14:00] obvious in context.
I mostly use ProCreate on the iPad and Pixelmator on the Mac for digital art. I use Processing for generative art. I use Ableton Live for my music and so forth.
But going forward I plan to fully disclose what AI and tools I use in making my art, including when I don't use any AI at all. At the end of my podcast, I'll disclose what AI tools I used, if any for that episode.
I think from now on, so many people are going to be using AI in their daily lives, and it's going to be hard to distinguish whether someone's used AI in the work that they did.
To me, that represents a real opportunity. Because the world's going to be flooded with content that was created by AI. And people are going to be seeking out art that was not created with AI. I think it's actually going to make that sort of art, the art created by an actual human, [00:15:00] more valuable.
I think artists have an opportunity to use AI technology to become more creative, more expressive, and more empathetic. But artists need to push for control over how their works are being used. and they need to insist that any AI that they use fully disclose the sources.
And I do think an artist needs to be very clear whether an art piece that they created was created by artificial intelligence, or if they just simply use AI tools to help them to create that artwork. I want to know that an art piece was created by a person, and I think the art world is pretty smart and will make distinctions fairly quickly about whether a piece of art that was generated by AI has any value.
I'm using AI in my podcast production process. But ultimately, these are my words. These are my thoughts, and I'm using AI just simply to help me be a little bit more productive, a little bit [00:16:00] more creative, and a little bit more expressive, and that's where I find a comfortable balance in using AI in my creative process.
How will you be using AI in the stuff that you make and what steps are you going to take to make sure that you maintain integrity in the work that you create?
I myself think that this is a really fascinating topic and in particular because we are now at the moment in time when all of these AI tools are being released into the world and we are just starting to figure out how to use them and how to live with them.
So, in preparing this episode, I consulted a number of different articles and YouTubes on this topic, and I've linked to them in the show notes. So please refer to the show [00:17:00] notes and take a look at these. I think you'll find them very interesting.
And so, onto my disclosures. All the words in this episode are mine, except for some paraphrasing that I did from the Guardian article about Jaron Lanier.
I did all of the post-production using the Descript tool, and that does use AI for transcribing my voice. And I also used ChatGPT to ask me some questions about this topic and that helped me to get to my first draft.
The cover art that I'm using for this episode was created by an algorithm that I wrote specifically for this episode, and I assembled the cover art using Pixelmator on the Mac.
The short melody that I use at the beginning and between segments is a Sonic Pi program called Play Pattern Fun, that is part of the Me Hack It Sonic Pi programming workshop.[00:18:00]
That's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you like these episodes, please consider subscribing to the Creative Shoofly wherever you get your podcasts.
And that's it for now. Be well and be creative.
​

In this episode I talk about how I use mind maps and why I find them liberating. Mind maps are an important part of my creative toolbox, but my mind mapping process is a bit different from the traditional form. I hope you will enjoy hearing about it.
 
Links mentioned in this podcast
A Writer's Time, by Kenneth Atchity
The above is an affiliate link and I may earn a small commission from it.
 
Mind Map Examples
My original mind map for this episode. I wrote the first draft directly from this mind map.
This second mind map is for a podcasting workshop that I will be giving at Hunt and Gather in May 2023. I developed this into a traditional outline and from there I created slides for the presentation.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Creative Shoofly podcast. I'm Thomas Beutel. This podcast is about exploring the creative journey as an artist, and in this episode, I want to talk about mind maps and how I use them in my creative process.
What I like about mind maps is they're quick, they help me discover connections, and they help me overcome my inner self-editor.
I don't know about you, but I get stuck a lot. I get blank page syndrome when starting a new project. I have a vague idea of what I need to do, but I don't know what I should write down first.
The tool that first comes to mind is outlining. I think most of us learned outlining in school and outlines can be good, but I find myself spending a lot of time thinking about the order. What comes first and what's next, and does this belong in a sub-bullet or in its own thing? And does this thing even belong here? Outlining is one hard decision after another, and I find that trying to make an outline from scratch is a big struggle.
So I find myself avoiding starting the whole process. I distract myself with something else like surfing, YouTube, or seeing what's been posted on eBay today.
But a while ago I discovered mind mapping. It's not a new technique. It was created by Tony Buzan and became popular in the ‘60s and the ‘70s. I think I first picked it up in the ‘90s when I was reading a book about creative writing.
I don't recall the name of the author or the book, but it emphasized that mind mapping promised a better way to organize ideas. It promised speed and ease. it also promised liberation from that voice in your head that was always saying no, which I thought was quite a claim to make. How could a breakthrough tool for making organizing easier also free your mind?
And if it really does that, why isn't everybody using it?
I think there's a natural reluctance to try something that few people are talking about. No one I know or met was using mind maps, and if they were, they weren't telling me. I don't know if mind mapping is taught in school today.
It certainly wasn't in my day. I imagine that a mind map would be a hard thing to grade as a teacher because each mind map is so unique to the person making it.
Some folks probably also wonder how it is relevant to the creative process. They might ask whether anything is really wrong with the standard approach of outlining and making simple lists as an organizing principle.
When I mention mind mapping, others also say that it's far too complicated. When you go online and look at examples of mind maps, a lot of them look like works of art, like a beautiful tree with a thick trunk and gorgeous multicolor leaves. People have also told me that mind-mapping software is too complicated and too expensive.
My answer to all of these concerns is to just keep it simple.
For my mind maps, I use paper and pen, and they're definitely not works of art. I rarely use color and unless someone asks, I don't show them to anyone. In fact, once I'm done with them, they usually go in the trash.
You're probably listening to me now thinking if they go in the trash, how can they be useful?
Well, let me explain. For me, mind mapping is about getting as many ideas down on paper and out of my head as fast as I can. I start in the center of the paper and I write down the idea that I want to explore. I'll draw a circle around it, and then I draw a line to another part of the paper. I write down whatever pops into my head, and then I draw lines from that and write down more related ideas.
There are really no rules. I just draw lines from idea to idea wherever there's space on the paper. Eventually, my paper is filled with a mess of circles, lines, and ideas, and it looks like a crazy spider with big padded feet. In fact, another name for this is Spider Diagram.
The goal is to brainstorm, make connections, and most importantly, avoid my inner editor. It's that inner editor that is always getting in the way. You know the voice that says, “Don't you dare write that down! That's silly! You'll look like a fool! That's not important! That's irrelevant!”
When I'm outlining, my mind naturally tries to organize, and organizing means editing. But when I mind map, I'm not organizing. All I'm doing is connecting. And I do this as fast as I can. As I'm writing things down and a thought occurs and I find myself hesitating, I tell myself, “Don't edit! Just write it down.”
There's usually a point when I slow down and I can't think of any more ideas or connections. It's at this point that I notice which parts of the map attract more of my attention. There's a moment when I look at the map and realize, oh, this part over here is really interesting.
The map is showing me what I should pay attention to and what I should work on first. When the mind map is done, I usually know what my next step is. Sometimes it might be making a formal outline or maybe a project plan. It all depends on what my mind map is about.
It was British educator Tony Buzan who created mind mapping, and I want to emphasize that I don't follow his exact method. He emphasizes that each branch should be labeled with only a single word and that you should incorporate images and color.
The principle behind the single-word rule is that single words are likely to conjure more connected ideas. In other words, if you put down phrases or whole sentences, you potentially limit yourself to fewer connections.
I see the usefulness in that approach, but in practice, I have not seen my approach of writing whole phrases as a limitation. In fact, when I learned mind mapping, the emphasis was not so much on connections as it was on speed. I learned that the main goal was to get down as much as you can without editing yourself.
For me, it's the quickness that makes mind maps effective.
And I do sometimes draw images and use colors, but not at the expense of being fast. Buzan emphasizes that mind mapping is a great tool for taking notes at lectures or while reading a book. I do that sometimes and it is true. It is actually a great tool for those things. The visual and connected nature of mind maps makes them great for recalling ideas later, but I'm not using mind mapping for taking notes. The goal is to get ideas stuck in my head out and down on paper.
There's a technique using index cards that's very similar to how I do mind mapping. Kenneth Achity in his book, A Writer's Time, talks about how the mind contains a multitude of voices.
In his model, there's a continent that represents the unconscious mind and its memories.
There are islands that represent the thoughts, ideas, and perceptions that the conscious mind is currently aware of and actively engaged with.
And finally, there's an inner editor who mediates the conversation between the islands and the continent and who will often prevent those connections from being made.
Atchity suggests using index cards to help make those connections all while setting the inner editor aside.
For example, if you're writing a short story, you can write individual scenes and snippets of dialogue on each card, even if you don't know yet what order the scenes will occur, or if a particular scene even makes sense.
Once you've collected a number of scenes, you can arrange them in order to see what would make sense story-wise. In the process of putting them in order, you might surprise yourself with a scene order that never occurred to you. And often the process of putting scenes in order will spur more ideas for more scenes and dialogue or help clarify something that was missing.
I tried this with a short story that I wrote recently for the B0ardside zine, and I was delighted with how well it worked. The key to this method was to start explicitly by not concerning myself with the order of the scenes.
Just as I do with mind mapping, I just thought of as many scene ideas as I could, in a short amount of time. Only after I had exhausted myself of ideas did I allow my inner editor to join in the fun of creating a story.
For those of you who do creative writing, I'll post a link to the book in the show notes. I've been using mind mapping and Atchity's index card technique for many years now. And what I now know is that the key for both of them is to sidestep my inner editor.
The breakthrough for me was when I realized that my inner editor is a trusted partner in the creative process, but I needed to delay or hold it off until the time was right. I need my inner editor to take a vacation at the start of any project until I had enough ideas on paper from which I could make new and interesting connections.
Ideas are there inside of you. You need a tool to get them out on paper.
I like mind maps for this process because they're quick. They help me make connections, and most importantly, they help me overcome my inner self-editor.
When it comes to your inner editor, make a deal with it. Send it off on a vacation. Get all of those great ideas out of your head and onto paper. Make connections that hadn't occurred to you before. And then when you're ready, call the inner editor back in to do its job.
The mind mapping process does not need to be complicated. I took the basic ideas of mind mapping and made them my own. I encourage you to do the same. I hope that you'll give mind maps a try in your creative process.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Creative Shoofly. If you're interested, please visit creativeshoofly.com and you can see a few examples of mind maps that I've done recently, including the mind map that I did to create today's episode.
If you like today's episode and want to hear more about the creative process, please consider subscribing to the Creative Shoofly wherever you get your podcasts.
That's it for now. Be well and be creative.

In this episode, I'm continuing my improvisational experiment that I call You And I Make A Thing. I invited my friend Tara to come up with a theme or project that we could do together. I hope you will enjoy hearing about our project as much as we did doing it.
 
Links mentioned in this podcast
Tara’s SoundCloud album: My Favorite Things, Sacred and Secular Seasonal Music
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Issa Rae Teaches Creating Outside the Lines on Masterclass
Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence by Nick Bantock
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
Some of these links are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission from them.
 
Photos
The fallen cypress tree in Golden Gate Park
 
The fallen tree in Westchester NY near the reservoir
 
 
Transcript
Thomas: My guest today is Tara Bahna-James. Hello, Tara.
Tara: Hi, Thomas.
Thomas: How's it going?
Tara: Great. Great. Thanks so much. I'm happy to be here.
Thomas: Yeah, I'm happy that you're here. Tara is a playwright, singer, and performer, educator and essayist. She's co-authored six musicals and her shows and songs have been performed at theaters and festivals across the United States. And [00:01:00] about a year ago, Tara released an album on SoundCloud called My Favorite Things, Sacred and Secular Seasonal Music. And I've listened to it and it's wonderful. It's so beautiful. You have a, you have a beautiful voice, Tara.
Tara: Thank you.
Thomas: Before we get started with You And I Make a Thing, I want to ask you, Tell us about a creative thing that you are making at the moment or something that you're planning to make soon.
Tara:  So right now, I've been spending a lot of time outdoors recently, in all seasons just because, just before the pandemic began, I moved to sort of a more rural area than I was living before. And so there have been actually surprisingly, lots of opportunities to just sort of get out and hike and, so I've been thinking about trees a lot.
So at present, a previous collaborator of mine, Jonathan Portera, who I've, worked with several times on musical season, brilliant composer. He and I have been talking for a long time about beginning a new [00:02:00] work together and we don't know a lot about it, but we know that we're both fascinated with the life cycles of trees and the connections of trees to fungi.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Tara: And so I exactly where that's gonna take us.
But I think that's kind the direction that we're going in right now.
Thomas: That's great. That's wonderful. I mean, there's, there's a lot there to study and research and talk about and create from. Trees are like us and they're also very different from us in some ways. And, you know, in the sense that their lifespans can be much, much longer than ours.
And they have these, beautiful connections. You mentioned fungi and many trees have that symbiotic relationship with fungi. The fungi give them nourishment and the trees give the fungi nourishment in a different way in return. It's very [00:03:00] interesting.
Tara: What I'm also, what I'm in particularly fascinated by is that, just like from what I said, from spending time outdoors more often, just the way that wilderness affords you simultaneously a real stillness and also company at the same time. And I'm reading Braiding Sweetgrass right now for the first time and there's this beautiful quote that I just came across. I don't have the book in front of me, so I'm not gonna get it right, I'm sure.
But it was something about how the land recognizes you or knows you even when you don't necessarily recognize yourself. And immediately that resonated for me as something that I feel like I experience, even if I'm in a very new place. There's when I'm out hiking, if it's by myself or with dogs, I always, there's just this, this sort of sense of being recognized and not alone in the world. You know, even when in one's solitude.
And that's [00:04:00] just, that's something that feels, um, it's funny, I wanna say it feels very songful to me. It feels very musical, but that's not quite what I'm getting at because it's actually the stillness and the quiet of those moments that I so love.
But there's, there's something in there I guess, that speaks, that I want to give voice to that experience. So I think that's where that's coming from, that desire to write to that place.
Thomas: A little bit of like validation of the self when you're with the trees,
Tara: I dunno if it's the self, it's the family, I guess. Right? It's like the, yeah. The connection to all things. The mystic nature that poets love so much. So, yeah.
Thomas: Well, wonderful. I'll be looking forward to seeing how that evolves, and I'm sure you'll let me know when you've manifested it.
Tara: Yes.
Thomas: Well, [00:05:00] Tara, I'm so excited to be doing this episode with you. And specifically the idea of You And I Make A Thing. And I have to admit, I have some butterflies at the moment, which of course is the whole point of this exercise is to get together with you, to collaborate with you on something and we don't know yet what it's gonna be.
So, for those of you listening, Tara and I have not decided on something ahead of time. The point of what we're doing right now is to be in the moment and to improvise an idea. But I did, Tara, I did ask you to think of three things that you've thought about doing at some point and you haven't tried yet, and maybe it's something you might want to try.
And I've also have three things that I came up with. And I was thinking that we could sort of bounce back and forth. You could say a thing, I could say a thing. And then, you know, once we have both of our three things said, then we can sort of, I guess just sit with it and say, [00:06:00] oh, you wanna try that?
Tara: Sounds good.
Thomas: Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?
Tara:  I don't mind going first. I don't know if my ideas are meant to, well, I just, I felt a lot of freedom in the invitation, I'll just say that.
Thomas: Yes.
Tara: In terms of whether what I pick is thematic or about form or technology. so I just sort of riffed on that. I think my three are very different from one another.
So the first. also inspired by the book I'm reading right now, was for us to make some kind of natural art existing in either time or space. And the ideas that we would create it as kind of a call and response. Like either outdoor art, and it could be temporary art. It could be the kind of thing that maybe we document with a photograph or something, but then it sort of gets washed away. Or perhaps a ritual that is, informed by our [00:07:00] distance.
So the ideas behind this are basically the two ideas are, one, that it exists outside in some way. And two, that our working from so many miles apart collaboratively enhance the experience and the project rather than be you know, any kind of debility in creating what we're creating. So that it sort of informs the whole process.
The fact that we're, we're doing this in two different times and places. Yeah.
Thomas: I love that idea. I mean, there's already like sparkles going around my mind here. That's a fantastic idea. And we are on opposite coasts. I'm on the West Coast and you're on the East Coast.
Tara: Right. This way.
Thomas: And are, are you, are you close to the shore. Are you close to, to the Atlantic? There where you are?
Tara: I'm not too close. I'm close enough. Certainly. It's about an hour's drive for me, I'd say. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Thomas: All right. I think [00:08:00] that actually sort of, ties into two of mine, believe it or not.
Tara: Oh, great. Great.
Thomas: So I've had this idea, so thank you for that. And let's bookmark that and let's see what shows up with these other ideas. So I have this thing that I've been thinking about wanting to do, and I call it skewer quotes. And in my imagination, what I do is I take an old typewriter. I actually have access to an old style typewriter. And type out a thought. Cut it out, paste it onto a skewer, you know, like one of those, things that you get Maraschino cherries in a cocktail, or a small skewer. And then go out to the dunes here at the beach and just plant it in the dunes for somebody else to find.
Tara: Oh my. I love that. That's interesting. That does feel very close to what I thought, doesn't it?
Thomas: Yeah.
Tara: [00:09:00] So what do the skewers part come from? Is it just for a way so that you can sort of, so that they won't blow away basically, so that you can attach them to something?
Thomas: Yeah, so you can stick 'em in the ground.
Tara: Okay, got it.
Thomas: So in my craft shop, my garage, with all these materials that I have, I have a lot of crafty items. And whenever I go to some of the local little tchotchke shops, we have a lot of Asian stores that sell teacups and bowls and, and strainers and you name it, right, for the kitchen.
And it's all very inexpensive because it's just, hey, you know, this is for daily use. It's not fine China or anything like that. And in those shops, I'm always looking for things that I could repurpose for crafts. So in my craft box of tongue depressors and swizzle sticks and all that, [00:10:00] I have like bundles and bundles of skewers that, you know, normally would be in the kitchen, but they're here in in my craft studio and waiting to be used.
So that's where the, skewer comes from. And I just thought skewer quote also has a ring to it. Like there is a little bit of tension when you say skewer.
Tara: Mm-hmm.
Thomas: Because you're poking something.
Tara: That that, honestly, that's what strikes me too, and it sounds aggressive in that way, I guess. Or not aggressive, but you know what I mean, or something. I don't know. I guess I'm trying to find a way of interpreting that. But why? I'm not gonna look for ways to interpret anything.
I'm gonna let it unfold. But I found myself sort of looking for a way into that part of it.
Thomas: Well, there is the cooking metaphor, right? I mean, you're taking your piece of onion and your piece of mushroom and the piece of, you know, bell pepper and all that, and making it into something that looks a little bit decorative and then you put on the grill.
Tara: Right, right, [00:11:00] right, right. That's so funny. Yeah. Yeah.
Thomas: All right, well that was number two. We still have four more to go. Let's see where this goes.
Tara: So my next idea was, so I've done some visual art in the past, not very much. I sketch a little bit, but it's probably the art form that I do least frequently. Or the one that I've heard of that I do least frequently. So something visual, and I was thinking, I've always wanted to make functional art.
Once I made a cup in a glassblowing workshop that I had. And it was just, I was so delightfully proud of it forever ever and ever. It's just such a special experience. So this thought was just that we would take some functional thing that we both decided to make, and then like either decide on a functional thing that we would then each reinterpret with our own choice of material.
Or that we would create together based on sort of part problem solving and talking [00:12:00] through, maybe making our ideal, you know, form of the whatever. Like form, like newfangled form of a chair say, or whatever. And just yeah, like approach it in a sort of a problem-solving way so that the end result was a new creation of some kind.
Thomas: And so when you say functional, that could be. like any, just anything that a person would use,
Tara: Like, when I was little, I always wanted to, I told my mother, my nose was always cold in the winter. And I had this idea that somebody should make nose cozies, like instead, like just for your nose, you know? Now of course I'm aware of all these hats and things that exist to like cover the nose. But like you know, but just the idea that there was like a little, almost like just like a tea cozy, like a little knit fabric that would sort of sit on the end of your nose that you could wear with maybe straps and you know, maybe it would look like little animal noses or something like.
Thomas: I love that.
Tara: Yeah, it could be something that you've wanted to exist too. It doesn't have to be [00:13:00] typical.
Thomas: All right. I like that. Let's see. Now you got me thinking. All right. Before I start thinking too much, I'm gonna propose my next idea. I've been wanting to make something called a mini box assemblage. An an assemblage or a box assemblage, is an art form where the artist takes a box and then basically makes like a three-dimensional collage.
It's like collaging, but using found objects, right?
Tara: Mm.
Thomas: But I'm thinking of more of the mini version. And, you know, when you get jewelry in a small box. It's usually these white little cardboard boxes with a piece of cotton in them.
Tara: Okay.
Thomas: You familiar with those?
Tara: Yeah.
Thomas: I was thinking what would it be like to take a box like that and make a collage from that, like [00:14:00] find smaller three-dimensional things and create, an assemblage, a collage out of that. And that's something that I've been, considering.
Tara: This kinda reminds me of dioramas. Do you make those in school?
Thomas: I do, I do make dioramas, and it is sort of like a diorama, except that it's usually less representational, it's more abstract. It's more abstract in, in the sense of a collage, like when you do a paper cut collage.
Tara: Okay. Hmm.
Thomas: All right, so how about you? You have one more thing, right?
Tara: My last thing, yeah, so this idea is probably the least developed and it, oh, do you know, it's so funny. I had, one of the ideas that I took off my list was collage. So there's that resonance with your three-dimensional one actually. So there, there's resonance there too.
But anyway, the third idea was just to use a technology, or a format in writing that I don't typically [00:15:00] use. So I've always wanted to, I like the idea of working in film or video, but usually the technology's intimidating to me to the extent where I sort of put off working with it. But I know you're much more tech savvy than I am.
So I guess if there was some technology that you've been curious about that you haven't tried out yet that we could sort of play around in. Or like, I write a lot of scripts, but I don't typically write scripts for film and video. So maybe something like that. And something I, another idea that came to mind along those lines that feels kind of goofy to me, but fun is to actually write a pilot.
Like write a TV pilot or something like that. Like come up with a situation and then write the first episode for whatever show that would be.
Thomas: Oh, that's cool. I subscribe to Masterclass and one of the artists that I follow there is Issa Rae. And she's done, you know, a fabulous job with her series. And her class all is all about that. It's all about creating a pilot and how do you go [00:16:00] about it and how do you create the characters and stuff like that.
Tara: Hmm.
Thomas: Yeah. I'm gonna tell you one more here and then we can step back a little bit and make a decision. So the last one is, have you seen the book Griffin and Sabine?
Tara: Oh, I've heard of it, but I can't remember. Is it, is it letters to one another?
Thomas: It's letters. So the idea is that there's an artist that lives in England, his name is Griffin, and he gets this mysterious letter from Sabine. She's in New Zealand, and she reveals that she can see him. So they're writing letters back and forth. And of course this unnerves him as like, how in the world is this person, Sabine able to see me? Like, she can visualize him.
And the book itself is basically you open a page and there's an envelope, and then you open the envelope and open the letter and there's the [00:17:00] letter, right? And I thought, but that's such a terrific way to tell a story of, you know, these letters back and forth.
So anyway, one of these days I want to attempt something like that.
Tara: So is the idea that we would create kind of an epistolary novel, or is there the idea that we would write letters as ourselves back and forth to each other and then create some artwork out of that and, I don't know. And I guess I'm curious as whether we're writing, if that's the case, are we writing as characters or we're writing as ourselves as you say.
Thomas: I would think we're writing as characters. I think we would decide, okay, let's do a story around this thing, this topic, and then decide what the letters are going back and forth. So anyway, that's my third idea.
Tara: Hmm.
Thomas: There's so much here, isn't there?
Tara: There really is! Eager to pair this with the TV pilot idea since the other two [00:18:00] seem to go so well together. You know, although I guess maybe the three dimensional collage is not so much like the functional art but it feels like, each of our three ideas in our set were divergent from one another in similar ways. Does that make sense?
Thomas: It is. Yeah, I agree. Definite similarities there. I have to say that, I mean, they all resonate with me and I'm sure they're resonating with you as well, but I have to say that your first idea of going out into the wilderness and making something ephemeral really did resonate with me. What about you? how's this all hit for you?
Tara: I feel open to them all, but I think I agree that, that one, I think that first idea really resonated in a way that felt like it was, I could see it taking shape. Does that make sense? Like, I feel like it was probably the most developed idea that I had.
And also, I [00:19:00] think of your three, it was also your most developed idea. So, I guess I'm blending them. You're talking about the first idea and I guess I'm talking about one and two as a unit for some reason. So when you say going down to the dunes, are you talking about combining the skewer quotes with the first idea or, exclusively like diving into the first idea to try to see what comes up.
Thomas: Well, how do you feel about the skewer quotes?
Tara: I like the skewer quotes except that I don't know how I feel about the skewers, but I mean, I could also use tongue depressors or something like that.
Thomas: It doesn't have to be a skewer.
Tara: And I also, yeah, and I also don't know how to wrap my mind around I'm trying to sort of wrap my brain around how we could do it in a way that didn't create trash ultimately. You know what I mean?
Thomas: Yeah, well, we don't have to leave it there.
Tara: Right.
Thomas: In [00:20:00] this sense, it's like we could create something that is literally ephemeral and we just go down there, we photograph it, or interact with it or do something with it.
Tara: Or we could, we could, place elements that are already in the space, in a way that, that leaves behind some kind of message or some kind of communication.
Thomas: Like an echo or a shadow.
Tara: Yeah.
Thomas: like that.
Tara: Yeah. And I also like, so part of the first idea was that there's that call in response element to it.
So I don't know if that means yet that one of us creates something. I mean, there's also, you know, we could, because of modern technology, we could literally be doing this at the same time and communicating about it. Or we could go into the space and have an experience or create something and then share it with the other [00:21:00] person so that then the other person would respond to it.
Thomas: I like the idea of call and response.
Tara: Mm-hmm. Maybe that's our theme. Maybe that whole, that's our theme call and response. And that's the idea that we're creating around.
So we could like pick a space that we're each gonna go into and then respond to the notion of call and response. And then listen for what's in the space and then respond to it or listen for our art partner on the other side of the coast. And then respond to what we're picking up, you know?
Thomas: I like that. That's great.
Tara: Cool.
Thomas: We have our idea.
Tara: Good, awesome.
Thomas: Fabulous!
In just a moment, Tara and I will return what the results of artistic adventure to the outdoors. But before we do that, I'd like to play for you. One of Tara's songs on her album. [00:22:00] My Favorite Things, Sacred and Secular Music. It's called Riu Chiu and it was arranged by Mike Magatagan.
https://soundcloud.com/tara-bahna-james/riu-chiu
Thomas: That was Tara Bahna- James singing Riu Chiu. And I'll put a link to her album on SoundCloud in the show notes. Now, back to our conversation about You And I Make a Thing.
Thomas: Well, Tara, welcome back! It's been a while since we've last spoke.
Tara: Indeed, indeed. Thank you. It's great to be here.
Thomas: And thank you for playing along and doing this thing with me. The You And I Make a Thing. I am just so delighted with what we both came up with. And what I thought we would start with is to talk a little bit about what we were thinking before we got started with our adventure to the [00:25:00] outdoors.
Tara: Mm-hmm.
Thomas: And I'll start. When we did our first conversation, it was just before New Year's, and right after that, we had a quite a bit of weather come through here in California. We had a number of storms that just, you know, came through one after the other.
So I was waiting to find a break in the weather to go out and do something. But I have to admit that I was a little struggling a little bit to try to figure out what it is that I wanted to do. You know, we said that we wanted to create some sort of ephemeral art. And my initial thought was to go down to the beach, but with the weather we were having, it just didn't make sense to go there.
Tara: Mm-hmm.
Thomas: So I couldn't figure out what I was gonna do, you know, was I gonna go down to the beach and play in the sand, do some sort of dance, make some images in the sand or whatever? I was struggling for quite a while to come up with [00:26:00] something. And before I proceed with how I sort of found what I wanted to do, I'm just curious about what you were feeling going into this.
Tara: Yeah, I guess I had a kind of similar experience. I also envisioned myself on the beach, somewhere in Sanford maybe. And the reason it didn't work out that way, is more because of what came up for me when I saw what you had done initially, which is great. I'm glad it worked out that way.
But I also wasn't really sure of the direction I wanted to go in. I tend to gestate things for a while before I create an artistic piece. I'm waiting for influences from all the parts of my world to sort of gather. You know, it takes me a while to figure out what themes I've been turning over in the various parts of my life, what wants to be birthed, you know?
And so, so I think that's where I was with [00:27:00] it. And also, as I mentioned in what I wrote for you about the work after I had done it. I think what was particularly challenging for this piece was that it really wasn't restrictive at all in terms of what we were supposed to bring to each other.
I also felt like, okay, it could be experiential, it can be the form of something. I guess I had a feeling after our conversation that what we were talking about doing was leaving some mark of an experience in nature that we had had.
Like not necessarily leaving something behind, because I think we wanted it to sort of live in the landscape and not become trash.
But I did feel like it was, you know, it was like the meeting place between an experience and an artifact, but it wasn't fully an artifact.
And I think that definitely presented a challenge in terms of conceiving it from the beginning. Because I felt like going through [00:28:00] it was going to reveal what it was. If that makes sense.
Thomas: I want to pick up on something you mentioned about it just being so open-ended. Art is hard when it's open-ended right?
I mean, that's why if you look at Instagram and places like that, everybody's always doing like daily prompts. Someone comes up with a list of the prompts for February and today you're gonna be doing something about oranges or whatever it might be. And having it not be so open-ended actually stimulates creativity. Right?
Tara: Yes.
Thomas: So this was a challenge in that way. It was really open-ended.
There was a point where I said, oh, you know, I think I'm actually gonna go to Golden Gate Park instead of going to the beach. And so I started imagining like, what could I take with me that I could do something [00:29:00] with, but I wouldn't leave it there.
And I have this huge coil of jute rope and I was thinking of taking the rope and stringing it from tree to tree and maybe even having me in as part of it.
And then what happened was someone posted a picture of a tree that had fallen during the storms that we had. And this particular tree is actually fairly well known to me. The reason is, it was growing right on the edge of a lake called Metson Lake. And it was a hundred year old cypress tree.
And the way it was next to the lake, it was almost like leaning into the lake. The the tree was leaning a little bit and it looked like it had one foot, if you will, one, big root right into the lake itself. And it toppled during the storms. When I read that, the first thing I felt was a kind of sadness.
Because of the [00:30:00] way the tree was positioned almost over the water, it always had this amazing reflection in the water. So it was almost like a part of the lake, or a part of the scene.
And the lake is only a 15 minute walk away from where I live, and so I would go there often and just sit in one of the benches.
And so it was an integral part of that scene, if you will, even though I don't think that I had created a a personal relationship with the tree, if you understand what I mean.
And now to see this tree toppled, all of a sudden it's like it felt personal, right? Is because it's like, oh, that scene will never, I'll never be able to see that scene again.
I'll never be able to see that tall tree and the reflection as well.
So after I learned about it after a couple days, I actually took a walk over there and took a look. And what struck me about it is, you know, first of all, the tree had fallen directly [00:31:00] into the lake. And the base of the tree is six feet or more in width.
So it was laying on its side, but underneath the tree was all sand because this area that used to be all sand dunes, right? And so this tree had grown on these sand dunes and yet the roots hadn't gone straight down at all. The roots had just simply gone to the side, which is I guess what Cypress trees do.
They don't send a big tap root downward at all. So I was a little bit surprised to see that a big patch of sand, just where the tree was standing. And so after I'd seen that, I went home and thought about it more and thought about our project here. And that's when it occurred to me. I said, you know, that plot of sand, would be a good canvas to do something with.
And as we had talked about in our previous conversation, I wanted to use materials that I found there. And the thing that [00:32:00] occurred to me is like a galaxy. And reason I thought about that is because it's been on my mind.
I've been thinking about the fact that we're in this great big Milky Way galaxy on a planet circling the sun and the solar system is circling in the the galaxy.
So it just was on, on the top of my mind. And so that's what I did. I went out and I was hoping to find some flowers, which I did. There was a lot of little yellow oxalis flowers blooming. And I got a few of those, put them in the center, and then I took pine needles and did a sort of a spiral around them. And then I was just noticing a clumps of lichen everywhere. So I just had to sort of finish it with having lichen on the outside.
I know that galaxies don't have lichen, but you know, it spoke to me for whatever reason. So that's what I came up with. I felt for me it was sort of a way to honor the tree and come to some sort of internal peace about the fact that the tree is now no longer standing.
[00:33:00] And, and it brought up a lot of feelings for me, but we'll get to that in a little moment. So now I'm curious to know how you felt when you received my email with the pictures.
Tara: Yeah, it's so interesting to hear you talk about them too, because it's different. It changes. I'm glad we didn't talk about it more before I received them.
Cuz it was really lovely to just take in the images and the story of the tree falling and your relationship to it without the background of what brought you to those ideas.
So, I also just wanna say, I love what you said about it helped you make peace with the fact that that experience of the landscape in that way with the tree standing was gone.
That there was, there's like an element of specifically of grieving, but I'm more thinking that it just speaks to me how [00:34:00] often, you know, there's an event and, I mean, if I can assume that we have a relatively similar culture. Our North American culture in this day and age, as United States citizens, has less acknowledgement of those rights of passage and the human need to like do some kind of ritual to really fully process.
Thomas: Right.
Tara: You know, so I love that because I feel like although mine was more of a gratitude ritual rather than for mourning, although it was also around a dead tree, or dying tree.
It's funny, it feels even funny to use the word dying with trees because I'm just so aware of their part of the circle of life. It's just so evident when you see them beginning to decay and other life forms like growing on them and the mushrooms and the spiders sort of taking them over. And moss or whatever. Yeah, it's just such a, such an interesting thing to think about from the perspective of this human life.
And, but anyway, I felt like [00:35:00] that was also a really strong part of it for me, that I was trying to show up for feelings, that it may not have occurred to me to stop and process if we hadn't been doing this.
Cuz it was such a peripheral, you know, like that tree, like your tree as well, it sounds like, it's not like you communicated with it directly or saw it every single day. But it was still in your world and it was still another being that you had a relational experience with, you know?
Thomas: And that I had reason to have gratitude for.
Tara: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Right, right.
So when I saw your photos, the image of the fallen tree definitely spoke to me first because I saw in it this fallen tree that I was familiar with here on the East coast, that I frequently passed when I was walking dogs. I've worked part-time as a dog sitter in addition to a bunch of other [00:36:00] things.
And so I have occasion to go hiking with dogs very, very often. And this is one of my favorite places to go hiking with them by the reservoir in Westchester County.
And so the tree, I knew that for me, that image of your tree was connected to this particular tree.
There's no other tree that I see so frequently where I'm like staring at its root system, just sort of like right in the path. It’s a landmark. It's sort of how I mark how far I've gone along the path when I'm walking with these dogs.
And there's something kind of ominous about it. It's like, you know, having fallen, it symbolizes death in some kind of way, but it's also, it's just very underworldy, literally, literally.
I mean, it's teaming with life, right? It's like all of these sort of, all of these sort of creatures living in the, in the dirt, hanging from its roots.
You know, it's an area that, I do have [00:37:00] relationships with several trees that when I pass them, I move to, you know, to touch them or hug them or sit by them or what, you know.
This is a tree that I always kind of kept my distance from because it was sort of gnarly and muddy and like, you know, like the dogs love running and smelling and eating and chewing everything on the path, but I'm like taking my dainty little steps to sort of stay on the straight and narrow and not step in anything too gross, you know?
And so I didn't. I had sort of distance from the street, and yet it was, as you say, it's like, it was a part of my world and something to have gratitude for. It was something that I recognized. It was something that helped to create the space that was this sanctuary for me and it's like playground for me.
So that was the first thing, is that your image is, immediately gave me clarity about where my part of the project was gonna take place. I knew I was gonna have to go to the tree.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Tara: The reason I was also very interested to hear you talk about the galaxy is [00:38:00] because, I didn't realize it at the time, I think, but to me, the notion of the galaxy also has that sense of like, there's so much life within it.
Right? It's this, it's this sort of visual structure. It's like when we look at galaxies, we're so far removed from them that they become really abstract and geometric, when in actuality it's just teaming with life. I mean, at least ours is.
And so that also sort of spoke to the experience of the tree. That the underbelly or underfoot of the tree is kind of this, you know, I see it as this sort of one round, like this one geometric experience that I have this kind of distant relationship to, but an actuality, it's an entire ecosystem.
So, that was really meaningful to me. And then also I mentioned just the visual of looking at the galaxy that you created, it really brought up the image of a nest to me, there was something that felt very [00:39:00] nest like, and I think it's the needles, the pine needles.
It just felt soft. It felt like the kind of like, if I were a bird, it felt like it was the kind of materials that I might gather, be interested in, you know. And there was something that was so, it was so contained and round and it was a, you know, it felt like a kind of civilized expression of emotion. And, to me, that evoked nest also.
So, and I don't know that thought made it into my creation as much. But anyway, but I thought it was interesting and it definitely, I guess, colored how I, what I thought was going on with the project.
Thomas: One thing that occurs me to me too as we're talking about this is, you know, when we behold trees, we are in awe of them because they are so tall and they're so much larger than us.
Tara: Mm-hmm.
Thomas: And when a tree falls down, at least for me, that root structure, seeing the underside [00:40:00] and the roots just splayed out is awe-inspiring in a totally different way, you know, because it is, it's still large, right?
I mean, the foot of this tree was, it was more than six feet, because that's, now I'm thinking about, it's taller than me. So it's like a different type of awe. To see a tree in that state. Because it's like, wow, even the base is so large.
Tara: Absolutely. And when I looked at my tree again that day that I was working on the project, I also, for the first time, really stepped back and saw how much ground its trunk covered sprawled across, you know, just. I don't even, I can't even fathom. I don't spend that much time measuring things.
But I mean, it was just much, much taller than I ever envisioned. I took a panoramic shot of it before I left. And what was remarkable is like there were branches that I hadn't [00:41:00] realized were part of that tree until I really intentionally stepped back and took it all in and recognized how much of the landscape was made up of that tree.
Thomas: So Tara, tell me a little bit about the ritual that you performed at the tree.
Tara: Yeah. So I while we were working on this, I was reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass. Which is just such a tremendous work of everything, of memoir, of meditation, of honoring the plant life and ancestors in her life. It's just a beautiful, beautiful book.
I'm still not finished with it, but I just love it. And she has a chapter in which she talks about how when she was a child, her father would like, they would camp. And in the morning her father always made sure to pour the first cup of coffee out to the earth as an [00:42:00] offering.
It's like an echo of this, I hope I'm saying it right, Potawatomi ritual. And so that chapter talks a lot about ways in which the ritual life of her ancestors survived into her little nuclear family that was much more modernized and integrated.
But that there were these things that remained. And one of them was this sense of the importance of living with gratitude and reciprocity with the land and, you know, relationship. And that that's one of the ways that it lived for her in this ritual that she sort of took for granted it or, didn't, you know, realize the depth of it when she first experienced it.
So anyway, so I guess what happened for me is that when I realized that the images that you took brought me to this tree in my mind and made me want to go to this tree.[00:43:00] I realized that what I had for, you know, if I were gonna go to make an offering to this tree or in that space, it would be one of gratitude, because that's land that I've used for so often.
I'm years now, and I just not, I just never quite had, you know, I mean, I think I probably even do say thank you sometimes. I'm just a really verbal person and I'm a singer and it's very rare I go walking in the woods without singing something or, you know, talking to myself or the dogs or whoever I'm with.
So I'm sure at some point, you know, said some kind of thanks, but it wasn't for its own sake. It wasn't like I was making the trip to do that. And so I thought I'm gonna make this trip to say thank you. I'm gonna go to that space and just experience it differently, consciously reflecting on what it's meant to me and saying thank you.
And so, I borrowed her ritual and I took my [00:44:00] morning beverage, some of my morning beverage, which I did not prepare on the spot because I hadn't camped there.
Lately I've been drinking this delicious, this, you know, fad of mushroom coffee, which doesn't actually have coffee in it. And I just love this, this morning beverage. It's got like a cacao and turmeric and all these mushrooms and it's quite delicious and spicy and...
Thomas: That sounds delicious.
Tara: It is totally delicious and so I thought, okay, I'm gonna take some of this with me. And I was looking for, for the right day for a while, because while we have not had the kind of storms that California experienced, we have had, severe drops in temperature. Like within 24 hours, it'll go from 60 degrees to 20 degrees or something like that.
So I've been sort of waiting for the right time when I would wanna linger in outdoors and, and I got that opportunity.
And I just, went to the reservoir and I went for a hike by myself And I stopped at the tree.
And then while I was [00:45:00] there, also in homage to your galaxy, I created my own galaxy of pine cones. There was an abundance of these beautiful pine cones. Many, many different sizes. And so I made this little swirl of a galaxy and I said a prayer of gratitude to the tree and to the space, to the water and to the trees and to the wind and everything that created this beautiful landscape that I found myself in.
And then I poured out the mushroom brew and I also said a Buddhist metta prayer, um, like loving kindness prayer. And that was it. And then I just sort of stayed for a while and took that in.
Thomas: I did too.
Tara: Yeah. And listen, there's so much to, I just love to listen to the wind.
It's one of my favorite ways to write my morning pages. For those who don't know, and probably your listeners do, I'm talking about the, the Julia Cameron's morning pages that are part of the Artist's Way.
So [00:46:00] I, whenever I write my morning pages, I try to do so outside so that I can listen to the wind while I'm writing and it completely transforms my experience.
It just brings you present so immediately, and I feel instinctively that there are messages on the wind and that there's some part of my unconscious mind that understands what those are, in a way that I could never articulate or quite understand consciously.
And so I just listened and then I walked the length of the trail that I usually walk and saw it with different awareness.
And also at a different time of day, I should say. That was really nice too.  Because I wasn't going on the schedule I usually go on. It was just sort of the middle of the day and it was a beautiful slant of light. That everything was like golden and glimmering.
Thomas: Yeah. The light was different.
Tara: It was really lovely. It's a good experience.
Thomas: Yeah. I did the same thing after I made my piece there. I went and sat down and just took it all in.
Tara: Hmm.
Thomas: And it was a [00:47:00] wonderful thing to do it. You know, we're talking about gratitude. So I do want to express my gratitude to you for coming up with this idea because it's something that, um, I would've not have done otherwise.
And it was way more profound than I expected it to.
Tara: Aw, I'm so glad. I felt like it's so funny that you say that. I don't even, I'm not, I haven't even registered that it was my idea. It feels like it was sort of organic.
Thomas: Yeah, I mean, we, yes, we sort of went back and forth with it. But I guess what I want to say is I'm just so full of gratitude for us having done this together. Because it's not something I would've experienced.
And what this really drives home for me is that especially when it comes to making art that you've never done before, I always find that I am going to experience something, I'm gonna discover [00:48:00] something about myself that I hadn't discovered before, and it becomes so much more about that than the actual piece itself, the actual art itself.
So that's something that is wondrous to me. I think it's just magical that you can say, oh, I'm gonna do this piece of art that I've never done before. And in the process of doing it, you've just find out about more about yourself than anything else.
Tara: Mm, absolutely. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. Yeah. And it's such a relief in its way when you realize that that is part of the point.
Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Tara: Because it just frees you to be process oriented.
And I don't think art ever really works when it's not process oriented, but somehow I still manage to, I don't know.
There's always deeper into that awareness to go for me. Like there's always some part of me when [00:49:00] I'm creating something, I guess that needs to be reminded of that.
I guess that I realized that that is a way, like that's sometimes finding my way into a piece of work can be just about like committing to the process and not, you know, I don't have to have decided what forms something will take. I like the notion of a letting the theme decide the form makes a lot of sense. Like the content I think often decides the form.
But I felt like this sort of took it to another level and that it's also fine to just sort of dive in, with your process being your prompt, essentially.
Thomas: Yep.
Tara, thank you and thank you for this wonderful project. And for our listeners, I will post a couple of pictures in the show notes so you can see what Tara and I did come up with. [00:50:00]
Tara, in your writing to me. I really loved your closing thoughts and I'm wondering if you could read the last paragraph that starts with, “It feels like a privilege…”
Tara: Sure.
It feels like a privilege to me now. That there are still places on earth where we humans get to leave behind the world. We have built and spent some time with the feeling of being outnumbered by other species. It's how I feel when I spend a lot of time among dogs too. What a gift to be outnumbered in this way. An infant among giants.
What is there to do, but do our best to learn their language? What begins out of necessity becomes a portal to new perceptions and experiences. I wish for this fluency from time to time. I wish it for all of us in time.
 
Thomas: Thank you [00:51:00] for listening to this episode of the Creative Shoofly. I'm Thomas Beutel. Be well and be creative.