The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Fifteen - Room at the Top

by NDK Creative Artist

In this article discussing the 15th point of the Code of a Creative Artist, NDK discusses the myth that there’s not much room at the top of the industry. Joel Falconer, Editor-in-Chief

It has been said that there is “…not much room at the top.” This has driven us to compete with each other and counter-intend against our peers and fellow Creative Artists. But there is a tremendous amount of room at the top. People appreciate all kinds of artistic styles and forms for different reasons and motivations, their collections are eclectic. There’s room for you and you and you and you…. If you don’t believe this walk into anyone’s home and look at their music collection and the art that adorns the walls. Don’t buy this idea of “not much room at the top.” There’s as much room as you care to create.

Our society is mired in the idea of competition, that we are all competing for resources and that we must grab as much of whatever is around that is available while it’s hot and that we better get it all now, now, now!

Mindshare is a concept that frames this idea in corporate marketing speak. While it has some limited utility, it frames the concept in terms of yet another scarcity, which further reinforces the idea that we must compete.

There is only one thing I am in competition with. Well, a couple of things actually.

1. Ideas (and particularly bad ones) that are swallowed without any critical evaluation;
2. Myself.

I am not in competition with any other creator. If I am in competition with anything, then I am in competition with the very idea that says mine have no value, and that particular challenge I welcome, for it does what? It forces me to question my assumptions about myself, others, and to examine any notion I may generate for value to myself and others.

The concept of winning and losing is a way to keep us focused on making sure the other guy loses; it’s a property concept, an ownership concept, an “I’m better than” concept.

I learn most from the people who are better than me. And my self-image or self-esteem is not devalued by their ability in some area that is beyond my own scope, ability or talent. I am not less because they appear to be more, or have more.

My entire life it was not important to me to beat someone, physically, emotionally, intellectually, or otherwise. In fact the very notion of making another person lose so I could win has been and is anathema to me. Why? Because this is what separates us from from each other and the notion of art, as I’ve said often, is about joining together, not sundering, separating, or splitting.

The competition for me, if there is any at all, is around the notion of principle. Can I embrace a principle and demonstrate it in my life such that it is a good example of how to be, how to live, how to exist? Can I beat myself?

Noam Chomsky puts it this way:

“Sport is another crucial example of the indoctrination system…for one thing because it offers people something to pay attention to that’s of no importance…keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives, that they might otherwise have some idea of doing something about, and in fact it’s frightening to see that the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in sports, I mean you listen to radio stations where people call in, they have the most exotic information, understanding of all kinds of arcane issues, and the premise…I remember in high school, asking myself the question, ‘Why do I care if my high school wins the football game?’ I don’t know anybody on the team, you know, it doesn’t make any sense.

I’ve asked the same questions, early in my life, for different reasons, and I came to the following realization: If you have to beat someone, you are insecure in your ability, your person, and your place in the world, and you are insecure with yourself. Chomsky goes on:

“But the point is: it does make sense. It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind the leadership elements. In fact it is training in irrational jingoism. That’s also a feature of competitive sports. I think if you look closely at these things you’ll see that typically they do have functions and that’s why energy is devoted to supporting them and creating a basis for advertisers who are willing to pay for them and so on.”

That anybody may pay attention to my ideas at all is flattering, but that’s not important to me. Do they use the ideas? That’s important. If I write a story, is it read? Does the person who reads it find it useful? Helpful? Worthy of comment? Valuable to some endeavor upon which they are engaged? Does the idea itself make life easier?

A mind is not to be owned - it may be shared for a while

There is, in this notion of mindshare, the implicit idea of owning the mind. But there is also this notion of sharing. When you read about it in marketing texts you will find that mindshare is couched in terms and structures that make it the goal, the holy grail, the ne plus ultra. There is implicit in the term the concept of owning the eyeballs, owning the mind, and keeping it as yours. But the only way to do this is to offer value, which is why, as our editor, Joel Falconer, tells everybody “…blogging works.”

But it’s why anything works. You add value. And it’s not about competing with another guy, it’s about doing a good job and striving for excellence.

I like working with those who have not yet achieved a high level of communication skill, even though they have fantastic and obvious potential, because I learn more about what I know that I otherwise am unable to put a value on, or recognize as having utility, at least until a demand is put upon that particular aspect of my knowledge and experience.

An abhorrent notion

The idea of owning the hearts, minds and thoughts of people is to me abhorrent. Rather, I would invite you to review an offering and if you find it interesting then I expect that you, of your own accord, will assign an importance and value to the ideas.

If what I have to offer dominates your life to the point of obsession, then I would be horrified, because you will have abandoned yourself. As a Creative Artist, my work in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, songs, and visual art alone and with creative collaborators is not meant to dominate you or your life. It is meant to provide you with some insight into you and your relationship with yourself, life, the universe and everything.

Why?

So you can join together with it in a more responsible way and experience the value of doing so that helps you grow.

I don’t want to close your mind to anything. I want to open it to all sorts of other ideas, and most of all to its own ability.

I do not want my ideas to own you, your life or anything else. The idea is to liberate your thinking and expand your awareness. If what I create is not doing that then I don’t deserve to share your mind, and please: shut me out, take me off the shelf, and forget me.

Who does the “not enough room at the top” mythology serve?

This notion of “not enough room at the top,” this idea of there being limited positions at the top of the industry, is a myth. Conceive for a moment of a population of nearly 7 billion people on this planet at this writing. That is a massive number that is constantly and consistently growing.

As a medium, art & entertainment today is about owning mindshare. It is about box office receipts, chart positions, units sold, eyeballs, ears and it is most specifically not about the caliber and value of ideas nor their resultant effect.

The traditional, now corporate, art & entertainment industry is about capturing your attention and never letting it go.

In radio, it utilizes songwriters of immense talent and skill to sell products that you don’t need, in order to lock listeners into a consumption mode that has the broadcast industry selling advertising like crazy.

The things the public decide are good, are what the industry endeavors to capture and clone.

Those who can create this effect on people, generate, create and expand an audience, are the things that make the industry work for manufacturers of goods and services, most of which are not of any lasting value. And that puts the lie to the notion that artists need major companies to gain access to audience. They don’t. Artists create audience by being good at what they do. They create audience by being authentic. A box of soap does not create an audience. A loaf of bread does not create an audience. An insurance service does not create an audience.

You see, these products, goods and services cannot generate such attention on their own. They need art & entertainment products to do that. This need excludes real thinkers, imaginative creators.

A song will create an audience. A story will create an audience. A play will create an audience. These and other works bring people together to share an experience and the goods and services trundle after what they can never achieve on their own. It is important to keep that in mind.

It is worth considering the power this offers creators. But understand that the current industry is an exclusionary business for artists, a business that does not want people who can think, it wants only people who can consume and stay happy. Therefore, material (creative works) that encourage thinking are panned. The industry wants creators who do not have anything to say, anything that will challenge a society that has been carefully engineered and influenced to maintain a set of rules and class that keep more than 80 percent diverted from the things that really matter.

Art and entertainment works have become a part of manufacturing consent, rather than inviting it. This notion - the principle of Code Point 15 - then, is about freedom of choice, the liberty to choose, and the concept of not endeavoring to do anything more than invite the audience, of their own free will, to engage or not. It’s the art and entertainment equivalent of pro-choice, if you like.

But why does the art & entertainment industry want to own mindshare? Because art & entertainment attracts attention, people do not turn on the radio to listen to commercials. They want news, and they want information, and they want some sounds to keep their spirits buoyant and hopeful while most of them engage in work that would drive them insane were it not for art & entertainment.

By making talented creators who really do have something to say think that there is no room at the top, those who are capable of creating quality are marginalized and excluded from the top. The idea then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Accounting for taste”

It’s said that there is “no accounting for taste” but there is. The accounting for taste in the art & entertainment industry is about the amount of money made from works that destroy the ability to think. When the ability to think is destroyed, then you have a population that is more easily manipulated and controlled. Diverted from what is really going on to what is trivial, so that what is really going on can sneak up on and disenfranchise the public from some part of their lives that is the next target of the Elite.

This creates a false perception, a misperception, an illusion, that there is no room at the top, but there is plenty of room. It’s just that it appears to be taken up only with those who can maintain the dumb stupor of the modern age that keeps people disengaged from what really matters. That is very discouraging to people who have more talent, who truly do wish to serve humanity with ideas that liberate not just the mind, but our way of relating with life, the universe and everything.

The power of art to join people together around a single idea or experience is exploited by the Elite and now managed by them. This means that art and entertainment itself is subverted from one of its fundamental purposes and principles: freedom of expression.

And that is an assault on freedom itself.

Therefore, art & entertainment must be free and that means it must be independent and the only people who truly value that independence are the people who create the original works; the songwriters, storytellers, poets, painters, photographers, choreographers, scriptwriters and others without whom life would be one homogeneous (dull) existence.

The preservation, protection and support of Creative Artist independence is therefore a civilizing act, an act to preserve individual, civil, cultural and social freedom.

Failure to support independent Creative Artists is an act that destroys by omission the very rights of every man, woman and child who would be, or should be, free. It is an abnegation of one’s own freedom to take a work and not pay an artist for what they have created. That very act of piracy is an act by an individual citizen to give away his or her freedom to articulate what is on their mind. It is the act of a person who wishes to be, and is declaring themselves…SLAVE.

When society itself wishes to enslave its artists, then that society is well on the way to abandoning all decency, all fairness, each and every notion of freedom and independence. That individuals who pretend to value their freedom are unaware that this is what they are doing is a sign of the barbarity to come, and one of the first steps of offering holding up their arms and legs willingly for their owners to shackle and manacle.

As this point of the Creative Artist’s Code states, “people’s tastes are eclectic.” They have infinite room in their minds and pretty much the same in digital storage today for anything. So shelf space is no longer an issue. The point is that the more diversity of material there is the more assurance we have of freedom being maintained.

The marketing of new material is mainly through social marketing media, which used to be dominated by word of mouth, but is now dominated by mouse.

But it’s still the same thing, artists promote to friends, who promote to friends, and an audience is generated. But it’s not an exclusive owned audience. It’s a free audience, an audience who are shared.

Audiences have an appetite, and their minds, hearts and souls are best served a variety of interesting things of varying degrees of substance and the only people who should arbiter their taste, are the people themselves.

Divided we don’t fall - we fail

You cannot fall from a height you have not attained. Ascending heights, metaphorically or otherwise, is not accomplished alone.

This notion of there not being enough room at the top, that we must compete with other artists for eyeballs, ears, ’scarce’ contracts, and attention wastes energy and resources that we should be directing towards cooperative endeavor that brings the independent industry of art & entertainment together, restoring autonomy, maximizing skill and developing our collective resources so we can achieve economies of scale and no longer be fulfilling the stereotype of starving artists.

The only caveat we need to embrace around this notion is that what we do together, with and for the public, is full of integrity so that we really have an industry we can trust.

~

When I first put this Code Point Article together, I felt that the point itself was pretty much self-explanatory and that I did not have much to freely articulate about it. I’m very grateful to Joel Falconer, for prompting me to expand upon this particular Code Point and hope you have found it valuable.

Thanks for your attention.

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If you'd rather we did all the hard work, you're in luck. Here's a list of articles that are related to this one:

• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Eleven - The business of art & entertainment is your business
• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Fourteen - Creating Ideal Scenes
• The Declaration and the Traditional Industry - How Creative Artists want to do business
• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Two - Communicate only that which you truly know about in your art.
• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Thirteen - No one ever said you have to agree