Month: March 2018

My series on the principles that enable the art of creating continues and concludes now with “Quality.” As mentioned in the two prior installments, I’m using a chapter from the fine book Everyday Greatness by Stephen R. Covey as the launching point for this article.

It seems needless to mention that our works of art should be possessed of quality. Who doesn’t want that? What we’re exploring here is a presence of quality before the work starts. This comes with the nature of the artisan, or at least the person’s own demand for quality. Some have truly high standards and could not conceive of giving anything but their very best effort in bringing their creation into existence. The degree of care that Beethoven exercised in composing a symphony must have been beyond the conscious scope of the run-of-the-mill classical composer. The insistence on excellence separates the master from the journeyman.

I can’t help but add a short comment here on something that just came up which entertained me at least. I ran a search on the term run-of-the-mill to make sure I was correctly inserting the hyphens. A definition I found on Dictionary.com stated: “unspectacular,” 1909 in a literal sense, in reference to material yielded by a mill, etc., before sorting for quality. The metaphor I see is the mill being the journeyman and the material the piece of art. The run-of-the-mill journeyman grinds out unspectacular material. Part of being a master is having the vision, innovation and intent on high quality before starting the actual physical work.

There are certain pitfalls to avoid in the quest to make our creation first-rate. To name a few for starters, my list would include laziness, lack of attention to detail, making the destination more important than the journey, and poor planning. Your dream may be dazzlingly clear in your mind, but if it isn’t put into action it will never see the light of day. Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.” Sculpting a body that practically comes to life is tremendously hard work. If the sculptor’s energy isn’t there for the enormous task, the result won’t be much to behold.

Lack of attention to detail has to be a close cousin to laziness. A fine painting displays wonderful detail with everything from brilliant shaping to deeply inspiring color. I recently saw a remarkable painting at the Tucson Museum of Art. It’s called D.H. Lawrence Tree and was painted by Ellen Wagener. There was more detail in her drawing than any I’ve ever seen. I don’t have the rights to post it, nor do photographs do it justice. The branches and the leaves were innumerable and painstakingly individualized. The artist had an incredible eye and apparently no limit of patience. The quality of this painting so impressed the art world that it landed in a museum. Deservedly so, I must add.

The third pitfall occurs when our thirst to finish our project outweighs our analytical intention to do our best. I’ve felt this many times, especially with menial tasks. I have occasionally fallen prey to the urge when writing a manuscript. Once we slip into our work routine, we may tend to ramp up our speed in order to meet our production goals. Writing a certain number of words per day can become an obsession. It feels great to churn out the pages and gulp down the outline in massive chunks, but there is danger lurking in this approach. Deadlines and overwhelming schedules can make us want to hurry and cause us to compromise our standards. I was reminded of this earlier this month when I attended a talk at the Tucson Festival of Books. Touching on this subject, Stuart Horwitz said something to the effect that the busier you are, the more you should switch from quantity to quality in your writing. It makes sense. Focus on fashioning the most exceptional work you’ve ever done, piece by piece.

Finally, let’s take a look at how poor planning can affect the quality of your chosen medium of art. Obvious, right? How about an instance in which a person thinks they’re planning well and they simply aren’t? I do some work for a local book publisher that is excellent at making quality designs and covers. I learned from Alicja Mann, Director of Word Studio, that many printers and publishers do not know how to bind a cover so it lays flat on the front after the book has been opened for reading. I sure was unaware of this standard of quality. We need to educate and inform ourselves adequately to minimize ignorance preventing us from planning properly. Just because we don’t know about something during our careful planning doesn’t mean it can’t hurt us.

Behold! Yonder comes the bard, singing songs of novelty is his inimitable innovating style. Whence does his store of ideas burst onto the face of the earth? Why has no mind given birth to such avant-garde melodia in the memory of man?

I wrote last about one of the principles that enable the art of creating, according to a book I’ve been referencing a lot of late, Everyday Greatness by Steven R. Covey. That principle was vision. I wish to bring further understanding of the art of creating now by exploring innovation. I hold in the highest esteem those who dare to bring something new to their art, whether they hit the mark or not. When they do manage to elevate their own preferred medium, whether it be music or literature or graphic design and they tap into the consciousness of the masses to their collective benefit, I applaud their success. The ripple they generate across the universe must, I believe, bring the Mind toward Its ultimate resolution. But I must not get ahead of myself with some spiritual grandiloquence that agitates half of my audience of two and distracts the other. How is innovation an integral part of successful creativity?

Quoting Mr. Covey once again: “It is said that Greek mathematician Archimedes solved a particularly vexing problem one day while taking a bath. His joy was so immense that he ran naked through the streets of ancient Syracuse exclaiming, ‘Eureka!’–I have found it!

“The act of innovating can generate many emotions. It can bring agony, sweat, tears, and exhaustion. But, yes, it can also bring great thrills, satisfaction, and joy–though we hope it will not cause everyone to run naked through their community or workplace.”

Let’s see now, what was it like when you had a part in bringing about an original idea, action or object into this world. Before anyone gets off into a tangent about there not being any original ideas or anything else under the sun, let me just say that stuff doesn’t matter. If you never heard of it, it’s your idea that didn’t exist for you until you thought of it. The mechanical gears of innovation have turned and you have come up with something new for whomever has not been exposed to anything like it. Congratulations! My wife has an amazing ability to see solutions for practical problems that are seemingly beyond my mechanistic aptitude. She can jerry-rig with the best of them when it comes to handling some unworkable household situation. Someone may have already solved a similar problem, but that doesn’t diminish her penchant for innovation.

For my part, when I have sought to come up with a musical piece different from my past compositions, I reach into a non-place in my mind. It may not even be my mind, but some state of being beyond description…the land of ideas which exist only in potentiality. Anyway, I feel my way there and back, retrieving the seed of creation. Innovation is the vehicle on which the art rides.

One of the most exciting aspects of fashioning new works of art or invention is when it does strike a chord with a wide swath of humanity. When this occurs, it’s a cultural phenomena that sweeps across countries or even the planet. Examples of note include the Beatles, the personal computer and harnessing electricity. In the Beatles’ case, pop music and fashion moved like a whirlwind that coincided with a cultural revolution affecting lifestyle, ecology, women’s rights, politics and general social issues.  Synchronicity and serendipity, in my opinion, go beyond coincidence. Julius H. Comroe, Jr. said, “Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering the farmer’s daughter.”

Byron C. Foy wrote in Scientific American the following account: “A French scientist named Benedictus accidentally dislodged a bottle from his laboratory shelf. It fell to the floor with a crash and shattered. But to Benedictus’ astonishment it retained its shape. None of the particles was scattered. He recalled using collodion solution in the bottle. By chance the solvent had evaporated, leaving a thin, invisible skin on the walls of the bottle. Shortly thereafter, he read of an auto accident in which a young woman had been seriously cut by flying glass. The two events connected in Benedictus’ mind, and laminated safety glass was the outcome.”

Don’t be afraid to innovate. It is essential to evolution. There are undoubtedly brilliant ideas waiting to be discovered in your personal field of potentiality if you will but dare to look. Be alert to synchronistic signals and serendipitous surprises. And don’t expect it to be easy. I would suspect that the more we innovate, the better we become at it. It’s a practice. Without the practice, our creations will fall far short of perfection.