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surplus

Creative Surplus — Season 1

by Matt Blair on May 6, 2009

in Life Cycle of Ideas,Process and Workflow

I have more posts drafted for the creative surplus series, but there are other topics that I’d like to be writing about, too, so I’m going to save those ‘surplus’ drafts for a continuation of the series at some point in the future.

Think of it as a series that has been renewed for a second season.

Until then, here are links to all of the posts in the first batch of the series:

I began the series by asking if we can have too many ideas. (And yes, my last post did encourage you to write down 20-40 ideas in ten minutes! Note to self: write about the value of contradictions…)
Next, I pondered the process of choosing our work when there are so many worthwhile projects and ideas to explore. (Do we have to choose? And will we know if we’ve made the right choice?)
I considered creativity as an ecosystem of ideas, and described two phenomena that can occur within such ecosystems: blooms and dead zones. (Don’t worry: recovery is possible.)
Then I claimed that inefficiency is culture. (With a visual assist from heirloom tomatoes.)
I made a distinction between the price of a particular art object and its long-term value. (And resisted bringing Duchamp’s Fountain into the post.)
And finally, I celebrated peculiarity. (Not much of a cliff-hanger for Season One. I’ll work on that.)

Throughout May, I will be doing more writing about the practical aspects of a creative life, including an exercise a week.

Which do you like better? The more abstract essays, or the more practical exercises and posts on process?

Please let me know in the comments, or by email.

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Disposable Culture

by Matt Blair on April 29, 2009

in Meaning,Perception,Publishing

As I was working on the next piece in the surplus series, I found the following quote in an article by Michael Pollan:

“But even with more than half of the 10 billion bushels of corn produced annually being fed to animals, there is plenty left over. So companies like A.D.M., Cargill and ConAgra have figured ingenious new ways to dispose of it, turning it into everything from ethanol to Vitamin C and biodegradable plastics.”

I’m highlighting other aspects of the quote in my next post, but in this one, the word I want to point out is dispose.

If you are a hungry person, corn has intrinsic value. It has nutrition, and your hunger is telling you that you need nutrition. Corn doesn’t lose value and become something that a society needs to “dispose of” until there is far more supply than demand.

Faith -- by The Cure

I was recently going through old records (the musical kind, not the financial statement-kind) that I have in storage, thinking about selling some of them. The Cure’s “Faith” came out in 1981, and though it is still one of my favorite records, I don’t necessarily need the physical object in my house anymore.

It’s old enough that I figured a collector might be interested in it, until my thumb felt something at the lower right corner of the sleeve: a precise cut, about 1 cm into the cardboard.

It had been remaindered before I bought it.

You’ve probably encountered cassettes or CDs or DVDs that have a cut in the plastic container, or books that have ink from a marker across the bottom of the pages, and are selling for a third of the original price.

Remaindered Books

At some moment in the past, there were 20,000 too many units sitting in someone’s warehouse. Their solution? Mark it down, and sell it off as cultural scrap. It was an inventory management decision, a change in accounting status at a particular time in the life of that physical expression of an idea.

Such intentional damage is a minor humiliation compared to the common practice in the book publishing world of pulping unsold copies.

Price and Value

Physical surplus makes culture seem cheap. It creates an illusion of valuelessness.

The price of a particular cultural product is only a comment on that product at a specific moment, and not an indicator of the real value of the ideas the product conveys.

Not long after the vibrations caused by vinyl grooves have been dutifully transcribed by iTunes and saved on my phone, I won’t remember that the sleeve of that Cure album was cut — that someone somewhere years ago thought it was only worth half of what it was the day before.

As I listen, I’ll remember what it has always meant to me, regardless of scarcity or surplus.

Price is often a false or ephemeral indicator of true, long-term value.

Want a more corporeal example?

Paper is relatively cheap. Paper masks are relatively cheap. What is the value of a paper mask that keeps someone from getting sick?

Related: This article is part of a series on creative surplus.

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That Initial Edit

by Matt Blair on April 2, 2009

in Exercises,Life Cycle of Ideas,Process and Workflow

It takes an instant to have a thought, a few seconds more to cast it into words or symbols, a few seconds after that to admire it or refute it or disregard it. My mind makes a quick set of clarifications, and then I have a decision: Is this idea a keeper?

I’m in the middle of washing dishes — suds to the elbows.

Rinse off the soap. Turn off the water. Dry my hands. (Ten seconds.)

I fumble for a pen and index card (a second or two) or find a clean page in a notebook (another three seconds) or go to the computer, wake it up, flip to the right window (add ten seconds), then page back through my memory to extract the idea, including all the refinements my subconscious has made while I was preoccupied with the mechanics of my “capture” technology.

I write it, save it, put it somewhere that matters, and that thought is saved — for a little while, anyway.

But what was the cost of all that? In time and energy? Forty seconds? Ninety seconds? Four minutes? Was it worth it?

Once I’ve scribbled an idea down, has this minor investment created an implied obligation towards this nascent idea: to transcribe it, put it in a system, review it, edit it, and connect it to everything else I’m thinking about at the moment?

Have I made a deposit in the bank of big ideas? Or have I incurred a debt that I’ll have to pay back? Can accumulating ideas leave us with more liabilities than assets?

Can you tell it is tax season by the financial metaphors?

Opportunity Cost

We often have our best ideas in the most inconvenient places or at the most inconvenient times.

Choosing which ones to capture is an editorial act — the initial edit. And this initial edit is the most essential, because each moment we spend on one idea is a moment that can’t be spent on other ideas or other projects, washing the dishes or listening to friends or living our lives.

Time and attention are the rarest ingredients of the creative process. Our use of them deserves the most thought, the most practice, the most consideration, and the most care.

We are finite. We can’t follow every idea to fruition. We have to let some thoughts go.

How do we decide which ones?

Questions

How do you decide which ideas to write down or capture and which to let go? Does your approach consciously and deliberately change, depending on what you are working on? Or is it more circumstantial?
Do you find yourself running out of new material to work on?
What tools do you use to capture emerging ideas? Do these fit well with your creative process? Are you able to keep up with ideas as you have them?
How many ideas or sprouts of ideas do you have laying around on index cards or in notebooks or emails? Do you have a backlog? Do you feel any pressure or obligation to do something with them?

Exercise

Spend a day or two recording absolutely nothing. When a new thought enters your mind, mull it over, play with it, and then try to remember it without relying on any external “capture” or reminder system.
Spend a day or two trying to capture everything.
On the continuum between those two extremes, what works for you? When do you feel like you are capturing enough, without flooding your system? Consciously experiment with the balance between trying to keep every idea, and letting some of them go.

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