The Creative Shoofly Podcast

Thomas Beutel
The Creative Shoofly Podcast

An exploration of art and creativity with Thomas Beutel

  1. Interviews with Participants at the Everything Conference

    08/13/2024

    Interviews with Participants at the Everything Conference

    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 peopl

    21 min
  2. Busting Creative Blocks with Meditative Ideation

    03/13/2024

    Busting Creative Blocks with Meditative Ideation

    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 hav

    17 min
  3. Role Playing for Multipotentialites

    10/22/2023

    Role Playing for Multipotentialites

    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 fiv

    17 min
  4. Scrum for One

    05/27/2023

    Scrum for One

    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.

    11 min
  5. You And I Make A Thing with Michael Tarnoff

    05/06/2023

    You And I Make A Thing with Michael Tarnoff

    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 c

    43 min
  6. Should I A.I.?

    04/01/2023

    Should I A.I.?

    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 a

    18 min
  7. Mind Maps are Liberating

    03/21/2023

    Mind Maps are Liberating

    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 ow

    11 min
  8. You And I Make a Thing with Tara Bahna-James

    02/18/2023

    You And I Make a Thing with Tara Bahna-James

    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

    51 min
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About

An exploration of art and creativity with Thomas Beutel

Information

  • Creator
    Thomas Beutel
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2024
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2020 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    The Creative Shoofly Podcast

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