I meet with a group of artists every month, and the most basic and frequent question we probably deal with is this. How does an artistic mind function at a high level creatively... AND practically? It's easy to feel like these two qualities are constantly at war with one another.

I think a lot of the answer is identifying the constraints that need to go. And the ones you need to add.

Limitations are necessary. As a parent, I apply this all the time... you find that without solid boundaries, your kids will not truly be happy. What's funny is that it's not obvious at first... my kids buck and whine about every new boundary my wife and I lay in place for them. What they don't know, is that once they've run up against the fence and fallen back down, they'll actually find contentment and stability. They can't embrace the healthy freedoms w/out knowing exactly where the fence is.

Don't we, as artists, do the same thing? We buck constraints, we try to jump the fence, we hate anything that gets in the way of our "creative freedom". When you have a built in artist-imagination, the sky is the limit to where your mind can go and you just want to let it. It's a beautiful thing... that's where we come up with the ideas that change the world.

However, that freedom we've allowed ourselves is often also our undoing.

TWO FENCES

The trick is that creative limitations are not black-and-white, and most of us have a lot of trouble telling a good one from a bad one. We're either too scared to jump any fences and our ideas never grow, or we ignore every voice of practicality in our lives in favor of our creative voice, becoming slave to that instead (and therefore never actually getting anything done).

So let's talk about two different fences; the type to embrace, and the type to avoid. Part 1 here will deal with the former.... part 2 we'll hit next week.

WHEN TO JUMP?

The bad fence is anything that keeps us from functioning at our optimal creative level. Its' most frequent form is fear, aided by people telling us we can't do those things we're afraid of. Stop daydreaming, what if it doesn't work? Focus on what's "important", be "realistic"... which of course will shut down the creativity before it has a chance. Too often, people & societal systems in our lives have held us down. Sometimes it's our own practicality we're fighting.

If you have an idea and someone tells you you can't do it.... that might actually be a sign that you should. You may not be able to do it right now, or in the way you'd like, or completely on your own, but SURE you can do it. It's just going to take some work.

I told my son that just this morning. Don't tell me you CAN'T learn to tie your shoes. Tell me it's HARD to learn to tie your shoes. That's true. And it's something we can work with.

LET'S LOOK AT THOSE STALLIONS ON THE OTHER SIDE

I think the proof is in the pudding- whenever we feel it's an impossibility to buck conventional systems in favor of pursuing a new idea, we need examples of those who have gone before us. Here's a few of my favorites.

-Jack White is notorious for limiting his musical creation process in extreme ways. Outdated, minimal recording equipment- only allowing so many instruments on each record- recording in his attic- crafting numerous albums w/ primarily just he and one other member.

The proof that it's intentional is that he continued operating this way even after turning down a promising record deal w/ a rising band, feeling that would limit his creative freedom in ways he couldn't control.

He went on to become one of the most famous & respected musicians of all time- completely on his own terms.

-Robert Rodgriguez became a legend for directing "El Mariachi" on a $7,000 budget (unheard of at the time). He didn't even intend it to be a "real movie"... it was made as a learning exercise. His budget, crew, equipment, and time were all severely limited. And then the film became huge at film festivals bc of its' creative spark, launching a career.

To this day, Rodriguez is constantly bucking the industry that tells him he can't do things the way he's always done them. He was kicked out of the Directors' Guild (not just once) for unconventional behavior- like messing up the standard way that director credits are layed out, by doing "too many job"s on his own films. The prestige and the chance to be eligible for revered awards (through the guild) made his fence shinier, sure... but he still jumped it w/ no regrets.

-My photographer buddy Brian has photographed hundreds of models, been featured by international fashion magazines, and spoken at photography conferences around the USA & Canada. His studio is in an old warehouse, he often uses items like little Debbie boxes as light modifiers (yes, there's one in this photo), and when a photography company wanted to feature him in an instructional video, they tried to force him to switch cameras bc his wasn't "pro" enough.

if you look closely, you can see the duct tape, Brian's actual favorite piece of equipment

Brian doesn't care. He shouldn't care. He embraces the good restraints and he makes fantastic work in spite of (or because of?) them, continually winning respect in the face of those who called him a hack bc he didn't stay in the fence.

-Orson Welles directed "Citizen Kane" knowing very little about the camera. The fence he jumped was simply the thought that he had to know every standard and limitation of camerawork in order to make a film. Those legendary shots that had never been done before this film? They happened bc Welles had them in his head and didn't "know better". It worked because the cameraman happened to be both loyal and talented- he vowed to always make it work, w/out arguing why that "wasn't done" every time Orson brought in a new idea. The result is a film featuring techniques that changed cinema forever.

Orson Welles continued this pattern as well... why was his "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast such a historical event? Because it caused mass hysteria. Why? Because people believed the broadcast was real- he convinced a nation that aliens were invading the United States. Why on earth would they believe that?

Because no-one had done it before.

-The band Gungor was basically just another standard band in their genre. As they began to experiment with their sound & l lyrics more, the producers and radio bigwigs w/in that market would increasingly respond to new ideas with "well, I mean it's great... but we don't think our target audience will "get it".

So they gave up. Not on making music, but making it within the normal parameters of the genre they'd always sought success in. The dream of making it "big" was replaced by creative freedom and powered by a smaller but much more loyal fan base. They recorded the ideas they wanted, got completely dropped from the "market" and went on to make the most innovative music of their career.

Image by Jeremy Coward, a favorite photographer of mine who's also a frequent fence-jumper.

All of these examples embraced one fence [being practically limited] and abandoned another [mainstream tradition].

This is why once revered indie filmmakers and musicians often become "boring" and "too mainstream" after they make it big; they are no longer forced to operate under the constraints that actually made them who they are, creatively. Those limitations are traded in for the constraints of producers and market standards. The wrong fence.

THE NEXT FENCE HAS SPIKES AND SENTRIES WITH SNIPER RIFLES

What we have to realize, at this point, is that bucking the standards is... well, it's terrifying. If you're forging a new path outside the norm, beyond the fences and gates that you've been trained to know... you suddenly have a new reason to be confined to the [wrong] pen; fear itself.

And that's the last fence to jump. From Steven Pressfield in his book, "the War of Art":

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

We'll talk more about those good restraints next time. For now, think about this: what fences are holding you back? What ideas are in the back of your head that you've dismissed as impossible, too frowned upon, or too scary?

Maybe it's time to turn an idea into a plan.

-Mark

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NEXT WEEK:: What a healthy fence looks like...

[For creatives]: CREATIVE CONSTRAINT