More fun in international emailing.

In addition to trying Frances Hollingdale’s email—which may or may not be current—I have emailed the permissions department at Penguin Books.  (Note to Penguin: it took me five minutes of clicking through to find anything like a contact email.  Giving us the Underground stops near your three London offices and what the neighborhood used to be like and what it’s like now is… shall we call it quaint instead of twee?  Sure.  I’ll be sure to stop by when I’m on my book tour.)

But there’s more.

Way back in the 70s, I stumbled across an article somewhere about the Danish mathematician Piet Hein.^[1]  It focused on his winning a design contest for a traffic roundabout by using a curve that he called a superellipse. I seem to recall that the article claimed he “invented” the shape, but that is not the case.

The article also mentioned that Hein was a poet, whipping out these aphoristic little poems he called “grooks.”  I do not remember whether this one was in the article; I don’t remember where I came across it.  But it struck me very deeply, to the extent that I memorized it instantly and it has remained one of three poems that I’m sure I will be able to recite flawlessly in the Home.^[2]

At the risk of jeopardizing my standing in requesting permission to include this text in Lichtenbergianism, here it is:

TWIN MYSTERY

To many people artists seem
undisciplined and lawless.
Such laziness, with such great gifts,
seems little short of crime.

One mystery is how they make
the things they make so flawless;
another, what they’re doing with
their energy and time.

(To make up for this transgression, I offer links to go buy all of Piet Hein’s Grooks. Ironically, when I searched online to see if there were an official site I could link to for the poem, one of Google’s offerings was me, in the SHAKESPER listserv way back in 2001, when as a part of some long-forgotten discussion I posted it, targeting Terence Hawkes for some reason.)

Obviously I would like to include this little gem as a sidebar in the chapter on TASK AVOIDANCE, currently under revision.  The official Hein website warns me that there will be a fee involved.  We’ll see if it’s worth it.

While we’re waiting, go check out the Hein website.  Click on the Games & Books section.  I like the Super-Egg, the three-dimensional version of the superellipse.  Be advised: they’re only 1-1/4″ tall, which for the price (plus shipping) is something I’ll have to buy with my lottery winnings.

But also notice the Soma toy.  I had completely forgotten that Hein was the inventor of that one!  I had one, in blue plastic, and it survived long into my adult years.  In fact, it may still be up here in the study somewhere, just buried under the archaeological layers.

At any rate, we have more for our waiting game.

—————

^[1] Maybe Martin Gardner’s reprint of his article in Scientific American, Sep 1965, in Mathematical Carnival, 1977, although that seems late for me to have encountered it.  I thought I remembered the grooks in college; I am very probably wrong.

^[2] The other two are “Jabberwocky” and “Sonnet 18.”

Part of getting your book published is making sure that someone else hasn’t already beaten you to the market.  Today’s candidate is The Art of Procrastination: a guide to effective dawdling, lollygagging and postponing, by professor of philosophy John Perry.

If you squint at the subtitle, you can see an asterisk, which footnotes to the text under the path of the paper airplane.  It says, *or getting things done by putting them off.

Well.

You can understand my trepidation when I discovered this book, which only increased when reviews mentioned its wit and charm.  Is this the book I thought I was writing?

It arrived yesterday, and it’s quite a slim little volume—fewer than 100 pages, generously spaced—and therefore shorter than I think Lichtenbergianism is meant to be.  Quite readable in one sitting, which I sat down to do.

It is indeed witty and charming, delightfully written, and the basic premise is precisely the heart of TASK AVOIDANCE, the first Precept of Lichtenbergianism. “Structured procrastination,” as Dr. Perry has named it, is exactly what has led to the productivity of the Lichtenbergians: put off one project by working on another. As I say in the chapter on TASK AVOIDANCE,

This very book (at least at the time of writing this sentence) is being written to avoid the pain of writing music.^[1] Not only that, but in the process of writing every section of this book, every other section proved a suitable distraction. Stuck on the AUDIENCE chapter? Jot down that note in your head on GESTALT that has been doing its best to distract you.

So has John Perry beaten me to the market?  No, thank goodness.  His book is perfect, but it is not an overview of the creative process, nor does it fulfill Lichtenbergianism‘s goal of giving the Citizen Artist permission to free him/herself of the fear to create.

Whew.

It does mean I will have to rewrite Chapter Three: TASK AVOIDANCE to reference Dr. Perry’s ideas, and I really would love to get a blurb from him for the book.  (More emailing to be done…)  But although he is (like I am) humorously letting procrastinators off the hook instead of browbeating them to STOP IT like all the other books on procrastination are doing, we are not competing for the same market.

This book, however, concerns me.  I’ll report on it after it arrives.

—————

^[1] The opera Seven Dreams of Falling, which Scott and I are going to work on again soon.  Ish.

As you may recall, I emailed the permissions department of the New York Review of Books for help identifying the entity holding the copyright to R. J. Hollingdale’s translation of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s The Waste Books.

Yesterday I heard back from Patrick Hederman, who inquired as to the extent to which I would be quoting the book, as in “exactly how many  words.” Whew, I thought, that was easy: the little I intended to use could scarcely present a problem.

It was easy to determine: open up a new little file in the Lichtenbergianism Scrivener file and copy/paste all the aphorisms in there—let the software count the words. There were 509 words contained in 21 aphorisms.

Ah, replied Mr. Hederman, we don’t actually hold the copyright, but that little amount of text ought to fall under fair use.  My thoughts exactly, I replied, but I want to make extra sure.

Mr. Hederman did not know who the owner of the copyright was, but had the email of Frances Hollingdale, representative of the Hollingdale estate.  He also suggested contacting Penguin, from whom NYRB had subleased the work.

So yesterday I emailed Ms. Hollingdale and today I will contact Penguin, although my copy of the book states clearly that R. J. Hollingdale was the owner of the copyright.

I will also bookmark the original German text, just in case.

As I work my way through the text of my putative book on the creative process, you might like to read the rest of the text so far here.  Also, the rest of my meditations on the process here.

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The Nine Precepts

To recap:

1. We are all creative.
2. Creativity is not genius.
3. Make the thing that is not.
4. Beware the impostor syndrome.

And what does procrastination have to do with any of the above?

Before we decided to give that seminar at GHP, there really wasn’t such a thing as Lichtenbergianism. The Lichtenbergian Society was just us Lichtenbergians doing our Lichtenbergian thing. But as I began mulling over exactly what we would be presenting in the seminar—you know, that pesky content thing—my over-organized mind found that within the Lichtenbergian membership certain mindsets and processes seemed to be the rule. So I categorized them into the Nine Precepts of Lichtenbergianism.

1. Task Avoidance [again, in the published book, these will be in small caps]
2. Abortive Attempts
3. Successive Approximation
4. Waste Books
5. Ritual
6. Steal from the Best
7. Gestalt
8. Audience
9. Abandonment

Each Precept is a loose collection of ideas and principles about the creative process, often overlapping into the others. Lichtenbergianism is incoherent, in the sense that there’s no rigor in its conception or application—you can pick and choose and ignore and embrace each part as it suits your needs.

Nor is it linear—you don’t “do” the Precepts in order. There is no “leveling up” from Precept Two to Precept Three. They all exist simultaneously in any project you choose to work on, each coming to the forefront of your consciousness as needed.

Lichtenbergianism’s value lies in its flexibility and its permission-giving: it gives you permission to create without the deadly threat of producing something “perfect.”

Only Mozart can do that—and he’s dead.

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” — Chuck Close^[1]

—————

^[1] Currey, M., & Currey, M. (2014). Daily rituals: How artists work (p. 64). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

As I work my way through the text of my putative book on the creative process, you might like to read the rest of the text so far here.  Also, the rest of my meditations on the process here.

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Chapter Two: Framework

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.  GCL, J.115

—————

Before we begin looking at the Nine Precepts, I want to lay out some basic ideas about creativity that are critical to the way Lichtenbergianism works.

We are all creative. Every one of us. It is inborn in us as humans. As I say in my Arts Speech^[1], every child on this planet sings, dances, draws, and pretends long before she learns her ABCs or can count to 10. This is true of you, even if you think it’s not.^[2]

However, most of us don’t see ourselves as having the ability to create because we are cursed to live in an amazing world. We have at our fingertips perfect performances of perfect pieces of music, perfect paintings or sculptures, perfect novels, even perfect photographs of perfect gardens—and we have allowed ourselves to believe that this perfection is the natural product of creativity.

It seems clear to us that only creative geniuses can produce such a level of perfection. Mozart is the supreme exemplar of that kind of creative genius, and I think it’s important to embrace this truth: mere humans can’t do it.^[3]

However, it’s also important to embrace this as well: creativity is not genius. We all want to be creative, and we all can create.

So what is creativity, then?

MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT.

It’s that simple.^[4]

That’s art. Where there was not a thing, now there is. A poem, a musical work, a painting, a sketch.

A dance, an algorithm, a solution, a book, a lesson, an exhibit, an article, a movie, a manifesto.

A drumming, a journal, a cocktail, a script, a mosaic, a website, a children’s story, a documentary, a photograph.

It’s all out there—except it’s not, of course. It’s out there, but not until we find it and drag it—often kicking and screaming—into our version of reality.

How do we do that? Or rather, more to the purpose of this book, how can we make it possible for us to do that?^[5]

Many years ago I encountered a very early version of an e-zine, created in Apple’s late, lamented HyperCard. I think it was called “The Bad Penny.” Its focus was on publishing work from people anywhere and everywhere, to give them an Audience. In its first issue, the editors wrote a manifesto that contained a key idea that has stuck with me: what the world needs is more bad poetry. Create with abandon. Create more and more poetry. Make it happen—flood the world with it. Don’t worry whether it’s good or not, just write it.

The point was to encourage people to create, and that’s the purpose of Lichtenbergianism.

But, you will object, I’m not really an artist. I buy those adult coloring books, but I can’t really create something new. I enjoy my Friday night sessions at the Sip ‘n’ Paint studio, but I can’t really paint a real painting. I scribble notes in my journal, but I’m not a real poet.

Right. So what do you call a person who paints or writes poetry or composes a song?^[6]

Before we even begin, we must beware the “impostor syndrome,” that still small voice in the back of our head constantly warning us that sooner or later all the Others will discover that we are not who we are pretending to be. “They” will take a good look at our work, realize that we are a fraud, and they’ll set up a hue and a cry to alert the others. (Don’t you have the image in your head of Donald Sutherland raising the alarm at the end of The Body-Snatchers? You do now.) Really, we all feel this way. I feel this way.

I cringe every time I post a new piece of music on my blog or refer to myself as a composer—or when I started posting bits of this book online and pretended to be an author—because I’m not really.

Pfft, is my advice to you (and to myself.) There are so many ways to put this: Assume a virtue if you have it not. Fake it till you make it. Just do it.

Just Make the Thing That Is Not.

Tomorrow: the rest of the chapter

—————

^[1] cf. The Arts Speech, Appendix B

^[2] Of course you think it’s true. You wouldn’t be reading this book if you didn’t think it was true.

^[3] (Professor Peter Schickele reminds us that this is why the completely incompetent P.D.Q. Bach is such a comfort to us: after encountering Mozart, we feel like inadequate parasites; after encountering dear P.D.Q., we feel as if perhaps we could do as well if not better.)

^[4] Ha. As if.

^[5] (Creativity is not limited to artists, of course; I will use the word artist to include and connote painters, designers, actors, composers, writers, scientists, programmers, teachers—et al.)

^[6] Answer key: a painter, a poet, and a composer. If Margaret Keane, Rod McKuen, and Coldplay have earned the title, so have you.

As I work my way through the text of my putative book on the creative process, you might like to read the rest of the text so far here.  Also, the rest of my meditations on the process here.

---

 

So what does the Lichtenbergian Society actually do? We meet around the fire pit in my back yard, we drink, we talk. We have our Annual Meeting on the weekend before or on the Winter Solstice. We go on Retreat in the fall to a cabin in the mountains. We share and discuss issues online, mostly in our secret Facebook group.

That’s it.

Then where does this book and its philosophy come from? A very odd thing happened after that first meeting in 2007: despite our claims of being committed to procrastination, every single active member of the Society became incredibly productive. We’ve produced books, plays, musical pieces, countless blog posts. Careers have blossomed; some have changed completely.

Our annual goals^[1] have gotten stronger and stronger, and often we achieve them.

How?

It was my honor to work with the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program (GHP) for nearly 30 summers, rising to the position of full-time director of the program, a position I thoroughly enjoyed for the summers of 2011-2013.^[2] That last summer, two Lichtenbergians—Turff and Jeff A.—took a week’s vacation to come visit, Turff because he had attended a similar program in Tennessee, and Jeff because he had helped supervise part of the theatre majors’ audition process for a couple of years; both wanted to see the program in action.

Since we already had four other Lichtenbergians on campus (myself, Jobie, Michael, and Mike), I posted a Lichtenbergianism seminar on the afternoon activity board for students and whipped up a brief presentation on the history of the group and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. The rest of the session was simply each of the Precepts in an elegant font on a white background, and the assembled Lichtenbergians talked about how they used that precept in their creative work and in their careers.

The room was, to my surprise, packed with kids, and the presentation went so well that I wish we had videotaped it, if for no other reason that writing this book would have been a lot easier. After it was over, the non-educator Lichtenbergians expressed amazement that “the kids were taking notes!” Of course they were, I said: #1, that’s who they are; #2, this is very important information and it’s the first time they’ve had it laid out for them. I myself began this process at GHP with my painting teacher Dianne Mize; this is the beginning of that process for these kids.

That’s when it occurred to me that our little circle might have something to offer the world. This book comes from that thought.

Lichtenbergianism is a philosophy we take mighty seriously. For a Lichtenbergian, nothing is more shameful than getting right to work and doing All The Things. It shows a lack of moral fiber, we think, not to be able to avoid one task or another at will. Only slackers like Pablo Picasso, Johann Sebastian Bach, or Anthony Trollope never take a day off.^[3]

It sounds completely counterintuitive, but Lichtenbergianism is in some ways like the description of Alcoholics Anonymous in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: a rickety structure that shouldn’t work, but it does.^[4]

Lichtenbergianism is not a prescriptive set of rules or procedures that, if followed, will make you creative. It’s not a way to become rich and famous, nor to quit your day job. This is not an instruction book.

Instead, Lichtenbergianism is a set of attitudes, of framing, within which it becomes easier to produce… something… anything. These attitudes/precepts give permission for the creative person to blunder^[5] their way through the creative process as a means of achieving personal understanding/satisfaction. And to write that novel. Eventually.

None of the Precepts are new. We are not reinventing the creative process here. Lichtenbergianism is making no claim of originality or exclusivity to any of its components. We are shamelessly STEALING FROM THE BEST.

—————

^[1] see RITUAL.

^[2] GHP was a four-week (originally six-week) residential program for gifted and talented high school students in all fields. I attended the program as an art major in 1970 and, as we say in GHP-Land, it changed my life forever. The level of intellectual, artistic, and personal empowerment provided by the program can hardly be believed.

^[3] Picasso created nearly 148,000 pieces of art over his 75-year career. Bach composed cantatas for three years’ worth of church services—that is, 209 surviving cantatas, and that’s ignoring the rest of his output. Trollope wrote for three hours a day, producing 47 big, thick, Dickensian novels; if he finished a novel before the three hours were up, he just pulled out a blank sheet of paper and started the next one. Do you really want to be like these guys?

^[4] citation needed—still waiting on Daniel to get me those page numbers…

^[5] see Appendix C: The Invocation

As I work my way through the text of my putative book on the creative process, you might like to read the rest of the text so far here.  Also, the rest of my meditations on the process here.

---

Chapter One: Introduction to Lichtenbergianism

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.   GCL, L.23

—————

What is a Lichtenbergian and why does it have an ism?

This is not actually a book about procrastination, as useful a strategy as it is.^[1] Rather, it is how a loose-knit group of creative men in a small town upped their game by forming a society the purpose of which was not to create anything.

This book will not make you creative—you are already creative, just as every human is creative.^[2]

This book will not free the artistic genius within you. It will not get you a record deal, a Tony Award™, or a one-man show at MOMA.

This book will not give you “creative exercises” to sharpen your skills. There are plenty of other books that are better for that and more specifically attuned to your own area of creativity.

This book is not even necessarily for those who make a living through their creativity. But if you are a Citizen Artist who thinks he/she might like to try writing a novel, or painting a portrait, or designing a labyrinth, but who keeps putting it off for fear of failing—that we can help you with.^[3]

In late November/early December 2007, I sent out an email to a collection of friends noting that the Winter Solstice fell on a Saturday and would anyone like to join me around the fire pit for an evening of drinking, conviviality, and earnest discussion on the nature of art? Since that date was the weekend before Christmas, I was amazed when all six men accepted my invitation.

Most of us knew each other through my time at the Newnan Community Theatre Company, where I had been the artistic director for 20+ years. Not everyone had been there at the same time, so there was an interesting web of relationships from the very start.

All of us were creative in ways other than theatre—composers, photographers, writers, musicians—and moreover were creative in our careers as well—educators for the most part, but also a reporter, a computer programmer, even a clown.

All of us were at a point in our lives, both personal and creative, where we wanted to sit around a fire and talk about the nature of art with someone like us. In the intervening weeks, discussion on my blog ebbed and flowed, until one day I posted a (very negative) review of the Bavarian State Opera’s production of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland.^[4]

Discussion in comments became vigorous as we defended/trashed the “old forms” like opera and and debated whether they were still viable. Good times.

After a particularly vibrant exchange, Turff intoned, “To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation,”^[5] and credited the aphorism to one Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.

I headed over to Wikipedia to find out who this Lichtenberg chap was and discovered someone after our own hearts: an innovative thinker who puttered around in many fields; a physicist and an educator; an Anglophile, who on a trip to England once visited the widow of the great typographer Baskerville to explore buying the designer’s elegant typefaces.^[6]

And then… there was this sentence:

Lichtenberg was prone to procrastination. He failed to launch the first ever hydrogen balloon, and although he always dreamed of writing a novel à la Fielding’s Tom Jones, he never finished more than a few pages. He died at the age of 56, after a short illness.^[7]

“He never finished more than a few pages.” Here, surely, was our patron saint. I teasingly assigned everyone the task of writing the first chapter in a “Tom Jones-like novel,” and we were off. Within a week, The Lichtenbergian Society had a charter, officers, and an agenda for the inaugural meeting.

Our motto: Cras melior est. Tomorrow is better.

Tomorrow: the rest of the chapter

——————

^[1] Instead, see The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing , by John Perry

^[2] See Appendix B: The Arts Speech

^[3] Of course, the professional who finds him or herself in the grip of “writer’s block” or frozen perfectionism will find a lot to like in this book too.

^[4] We were in Munich visiting our son, who was there studying German.

^[5] Lichtenberg is today most highly regarded in Europe for his vast collection of pithy aphorisms, scribbled down in his WASTE BOOKS.

^[6] Simon Garfield. Just my type: a book about fonts. Gotham, 2012. p. 98-100.

^[7] Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. (2015, June 29). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 19:35, November 10, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Georg_Christoph_Lichtenberg&oldid=669229256