The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: One - Constructive artistic ideas are valuable contributions to society.
August 26, 2007
We are continuing the series of expansions and explanations about the Code of a Creative Artist in order to provide people with more insight into the value of these points. Point One of this code states:
Constructive artistic ideas are valuable contributions to society. Protect, persist with and perfect them in order to attain their optimum communication.
In the 30 or 40 years of my life that I have been creating in the field of art & entertainment I have been so often discouraged from the business and task of creating by “well-meaning” individuals across the spectrum of humanity that at times I despaired of ever receiving any encouragement or support. I think in part this is because one of the ideas present in the society of that time was that the arts were of little or no value, that they did not lead to fame or fortune or sustainable lasting careers. Tell that to the Rolling Stones whose career in music and entertainment has spanned more than 40 years! Tell this to Paul McCartney whose career also spans the better part of 4 to 5 decades.
To those who constantly create and discard ideas…
The generation preceding mine and even my own generation did not value the arts. I know that seems ridiculous today, in the age of celebrity, but it’s true. Those ideas die hard, despite the evidence to the contrary. It is amazing how fixed ideas can become in the mind. To those who constantly create and discard ideas, whose very business is the business of ideas, it is rather remarkable, though we can be extremely tenacious when we fasten on to some idea that demands of us our most stubborn determined effort. How ideas can be at once so powerful and so fragile and weak, is one of the truly great and perplexing notions.
In some respects I think it is the constructive nature of such ideas that holds their appeal and gives them longevity. There is excitement attached to such ideas. It is the excitement that comes with what those ideas may mean to others when they are understood. The sure and certain knowledge of what these ideas will do to change the awareness of our fellow man, and of course there is the desire, in those who hold hard and fast to humanitarian perspectives, to have some small part of advancing mankind.
“You’re a dreamer…”
Offering new ideas to mankind is a risky business though. Mankind is not yet apparently mature enough to give new ideas more than brief consideration which usually results in fast and immediate rejction without even a fair hearing or anything remotely approaching consideration. I should know, I’ve received such consideration pretty much my entire life. The epitome of such expression has been for me contained in the accusation, “You’re a dreamer,” so often heard by Creative Artists and others who dare to dream of possibilities outside the arts, or beyond the current reality and its appreciation by those who are so wed to it, that their imagination is a dead thing. But the expression of such ideas and the response to them, tells you a lot about the respondent. A band I grew up listening to captured this so well in one of their songs, Dreamer, which contained the line “… but can you put your hands in your head, oh no!” Intellectual property today is the most sought after, fought over and valuable property of all. It is, truly where the real value of humanity will utlimately be found to lie.
The problems great communicators have…
I put my hands in my head every day. Occasionally, when I need a rest from the folly of humanity, I put my head in my hands. Every now and then I permit someone else to take my head off, because it’s important for me to find perspective where I have lost it, and ultimately, when the person who took my head off gives it back to me (the good ones do), I’m usually grateful for I’ve learned something valuable from the experience. But not always. Usually I find that the loss of my head is because of their misunderstanding or deliberate unwillingness to understand. If it’s the former I know I’m responsible for failing to find the way to articulate what I’m on about. The problems great communicators have communicating is one of the conundrums I’ve spent a lifetime trying to resolve. When it is the latter, I know it is malice talking.
Once you’ve found…the media of communication that work for you…
Malice is destructive of that which is constructive. But then again, the problems great communicators have in one medium are not always the problem they have in another, and sometimes it is just a matter of recognizing the mediums where you can excel and communicate best. It can take a while to make this discovery, and there are a lot of different ways to communicate and interact with the world. Once you’ve found the right media of communication that work for you, then you should seek mastery in those media.
…forward an idea that has merit…
The courage to embrace and forward an idea that has merit with consistent determination and persistence is a rare quality. Einstein spoke of it, alluding to the fact that the only thing that separated him out as a “genius” from his fellow man was the fact that they gave up, where he did not. I do understand this. Winston Churchill alluded to this when he said, “Kites fly highest against the wind, not with it.”
Doubt is healthy when you use it…
You must have incredible commitment to a worthwhile idea. You must nurture that commitment while doing your utmost to break it down and make it wither in the face of the scorn and ridicule which will surely be heaped upon it, and you for daring to entertain it. Doubt is healthy when you use it constructively to test your resolve and the merits of your idea and the observations which support it. There are those not capable of seeing, and the petty envy they will heap is the mark of their singular lack of reason, which they fear will be discovered, and of course their failure to recognize reason and to heap scorn upon it when they do catch a glimmer of it, is the sign of their unreason and lack of intellectual rigor. Their only useful purposes are:
(1) to help you test your resolve, courage, determination and to find the fettle of your mettle
(2) to help you test the value of your idea.
This does not mean the experience will be pleasant. On the contrary, it will be arduous, and as unpleasant as they are themselves. Lest they think their methods are being lauded and given justification here, let me reassure you they are not. Their methods are odious, for all that they prattle on about how important it is for your own good that they subject you and your honest intentions and valuable merits to such abuse. These petty few are the refuse of humanity.
The masses are almost invariably lead…
It is not they who test, you see. It is you who test. They are not capable of such test. If they were, then they would discover the merits of your idea. They are incapable of this, or unwilling to do so, for whatever self-serving reason they entertain; and it is always going to be a self-serving reason. Take for example the ridicule to which those who took up the cause of planetary ecology, saving the whales and so on were subjected to, and yet they were right: catastrophic climate change is now a reality. The masses are not right. The masses are almost invariably lead in the wrong direction by those who serve more venal interests.
It is well to be aware of these things, to understand the mechanisms by which this sort of despicable and loathsome behaviour is accomplished. The value of the idea must be strong if it is to sustain you and ultimately realize its full value and recognition, even if that occurs after your death. This does happen. History is replete with example. The world does not learn from such experience, apparently, and this too is the sign of its singular lack of intellect. But it is time for the world to realize, that it must pay closer attention to those who eschew all to bring about that which will benefit it most. It is time, long past time, for the intellect of man to mature in full.
Prior to the advent of the internet…
That society, because of cultural lag, has failed to embrace such ideas has largely been because of the lack of mechanisms by which to disseminate such ideas fast enough to all mankind, so it can honestly evaluate the merits of those ideas for itself. Prior to the advent of the internet, mass channels of communication have served those who controlled them, who used them as filters to block and prohibit and ban and destroy, or corrupt those ideas that threatened their power. Well, that age is at an end now. Those old hegemonies and oligarchies are failing. The smoke that has covered the wrack and ruin they have created is disappearing, and a new set of values are beginning, here and there, to emerge. Some of these are the old values, given new value in the modern age in which we find ourselves. Others are new ways of thinking, and these will take hold as and where we set about understanding the means by which to compare and evaluate ideas, their merits and benefits at every level.
The Free Articulator is a place where we entertain such ideas, and begin the process of looking at what they may mean, through story and song, poem and image, moving and still. You, and your valuable ideas, are welcome here.
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