Chispa's Shorts

The more talen­ted some­body is, the less they need the props.

Mee­ting a per­son who wrote a mas­ter­piece on the back of a deli menu would not sur­prise me. Mee­ting a per­son who wrote a mas­ter­piece with a sil­ver Car­tier foun­tain pen on an anti­que wri­ting table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY sur­prise me.

Abraham Lin­coln wrote The Gettys­berg Address on a piece of ordi­nary sta­tio­nery that he had borro­wed from the friend whose house he was sta­ying at.

James Joyce wrote with a sim­ple pen­cil and note­book. Some­body else did the typing, but only much later.

Van Gough rarely pain­ted with more than six colors on his palette.

I draw on the back of wee biz cards. Wha­te­ver.

There’s no corre­la­tion bet­ween crea­ti­vity and equip­ment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.

Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more suc­cess­ful, his num­ber of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expen­ding men­tal energy on stuff was­tes time. He’s a man on a mis­sion. He’s got a dead­line. He’s got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks lear­ning how to use a rou­ter drill if he doesn’t need to.

A fancy tool just gives the second-rater one more pillar to hide behind.

Which is why there are so many second-rate art direc­tors with state-of-the-art Maci­notsh com­pu­ters.

Which is why there are so many hack wri­ters with state-of-the-art lap­tops.

Which is why there are so many crappy pho­to­graphers with state-of-the-art digi­tal came­ras.

Which is why there are so many unre­mar­ka­ble pain­ters with expen­sive stu­dios in trendy neigh­borhoods.

Hiding behind pillars, all of them.

Pillars do not help; they hin­der. The more mighty the pillar, the more you end up rel­ying on it psycho­lo­gi­cally, the more it gets in your way.

And this applies to busi­ness, as well.

Which is why there are so many fai­ling busi­nes­ses with fancy offi­ces.

Which is why there’s so many fai­ling busi­ness­men spen­ding a for­tune on fancy suits and expen­sive yacht club mem­berships.

Again, hiding behind pillars.

Suc­cess­ful peo­ple, artists and non-artists alike, are very good at spot­ting pillars. They’re very good at doing without them. Even more impor­tantly, once they’ve spot­ted a pillar, they’re very good at quickly get­ting rid of it.

Good pillar mana­ge­ment is one of the most valua­ble talents you can have on the pla­net. If you have it, I envy you. If you don’t, I pity you.

Sure, nobody’s per­fect. We all have our pillars. We seem to need them. You are never going to live a pillar-free exis­tence. Neither am I.

All we can do is keep asking the ques­tion, “Is this a pillar” about every aspect of our busi­ness, our craft, our rea­son for being alive etc and go from there. The more we ask, the bet­ter we get at spot­ting pillars, the more quickly the pillars vanish.

Ask. Keep asking. And then ask again. Stop asking and you’re dead.