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 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

We’re working our way through the advice given in The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, and today we get to answer the question, “Why me?”  In other words, why am I the person to write this book?

As I said in the Introduction, I’ve been a creative person my entire life, and my entire adult life has been spent giving others permission to be creative people themselves.  Sometimes I taught the knowledge, skills, and attitudes directly; other times I’ve provided the framework for that to happen.

For example, one of my favorite memories at Newnan Community Theatre Company was our 1995 production of The Winter’s Tale.  Our Hermione was a professional actress from Atlanta, Equity even, whose personal goal of playing all of Shakespeare’s queens overrode her concerns about union rules.  (She did perform under an assumed name.)  She was amazing to work with and had a great time with us.^[1]

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At the cast party after our last performance, I was looking at my large cast running around enjoying themselves, congratulating themselves on a job well done, and Jen walked up and said fondly, “They don’t know they’re not supposed to be able to do this, do they?”

“No, they do not,” I replied.  And they didn’t.  They had no clue that tackling one of Shakespeare’s late romances was out of their league.  But I had provided the opportunity, and not knowing any better they jumped into the deep end without a second thought.  And they did it!

So my commitment to the creative process is absolute, and I’ve developed lots of mad skilz in encouraging it in others.

EGGYBP also asks whether I have anything to say that’s new and different about the topic.  I believe I do.  Lichtenbergianism (as I state clearly in Chapter One) is nothing ground-breaking; the creative process is the creative process, after all.  What’s new and different about the book is the whimsical attitude of the Lichtenbergian Society towards productivity. There are some hardcore ideas in the Nine Precepts, but essentially it’s a way for the reader to stop worrying about getting it done and to step back and see the larger picture.  There are strategies for getting started, there are strategies for TASK AVOIDANCE, there are strategies for stopping—but over all, it’s all about permission.

Give yourself permission to create.

—————

^[1] I have two other favorite stories from that production.  Three—I have three more favorite stories.  Story #1: One reason I chose the play was its very unfamiliarity to audiences.  How would they take a sprawling play that they didn’t know anything about?  In the final scene, Hermione (who died in Act I) ‘s lady-in-waiting Paulina is showing King Leontes a statue of his dead queen.  She claims to be able to make the statue move, if he will pardon her use of magic.  Every night, when Paulina charged the statue to speak, Jen would do this amazing “come to life” bit, shivering up from her diaphragm as the statue appears to take a breath for the first time.  Every night I would watch the audience, and every night they were visibly shocked.  It was great.

Story #2: This was the first Shakespeare we did in full Elizabethan drag—and what a show to choose to do that on!  The play spans 16 years, covering two completely different fashion periods, and ranges from royalty down to peasants.  We went full out, ruffs and corsets and bum rolls and satin and brocade and everything.  A week or so before we opened, Becky Clark (goddess) came down from the second floor, where we had chained actors to sewing machines and ironing boards.  She was distraught.  We weren’t going to be able to finish the 60+ costumes before opening.  At that very moment, Act I began onstage: Leontes and his court swept on, everyone wearing as much of their costumes as they had available.  Becky was electrified.  “That is so beautiful! Yes, we can do this!” and went back upstairs to whip the actors harder.  (Corollary story: about a week later, we were running the show and I was out in the seats taking notes.  It was Act V, and on came Jennifer Sodko as some lord or other, and I realized with a shock that I had done something I had sworn never to do: create a complete and complex costume for a character who is seen once for less than a minute.)

Story #3: The show is long, very long, and late one night in the middle of Act IV, I heard a huge roar erupt from the bar next door.  I think it is a testament to the quality of the performance that none of the audience even tried to get out to go next door to celebrate the Braves winning the World Series.  (The cast, who had been following backstage, announced the win during curtain call.)

Story #4:  All right, I have four more favorite stories.  My son Grayson played Prince Mamillius.  He was seven at the time, and I needed a Mamillius who could read and whose television privileges I could threaten.  My mother volunteered to sew his costume, but she balked at putting on the codpiece—so that night at dress rehearsal I’m safety-pinning a codpiece onto my child when he objects. “What is this?”  I explained it was called a codpiece.  “What’s it for?”  I explained its origins as a “safety valve” from tight leggings in the late Middle Ages, but that at this time period it was merely decorative.  “Do the other actors who are male have one too?”  (That is literally what he said.)  Yes, I said, they all do.  He considered for a moment, then announced, “I can use this in my scene: ‘No, my lord, I’ll fight!’” and waved his little codpiece about. I proposed that that might be funnier to spring on his fellow cast members backstage rather than as a bit of onstage business.

Today I got serious.  I emailed the permissions department of The New York Review of Books to start the process of securing the rights to use some of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s aphorisms as the chapter headers.

I use The Waste Books as translated by R. J. Hollingdale as my source.  Here’s where it gets funky:

• Translation, introduction, and notes copyright ©1990 by R. J. Hollingdale
• First published by Penguin Books 1990
• This edition published in 2000 in the United States of America by The New York Review of Books, 1755 Broadway, NY NY 10019

Normally, the copyright holder gives permission for this kind of thing^[1], but the problem here is that Reginald John Hollingdale died in 2001.  I have no clue who holds the copyright at this point—heirs and assigns, sure, but who are they?

So the permissions department at NYRB is as good a place as any to start.

Lichtenberg is now more famous today for his aphorisms (written in his waste books) than his scientific research.  (He discovered the principles of xerography, for example.)  It was one of his aphorisms, in fact, that led to the founding of the Lichtenbergian Society in 2007.

Here are some of them:

• Every man also has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum. (B.12)
• Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure.  To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure. (E.36b)
• If you want to make a young person read a certain book you must not so much commend it to him directly as praise it in his presence.  He will then go and find it for himself. (F.141)
• It is good when young people are in certain years attacked by the poetic infection, only one must, for Heaven’s sake, not neglect to inoculate them against it. (L.69)
• It is true I cannot say whether things are going to change for the better, but what I do say is that things will never be right unless they do change. (K.102)

The epigraph for the book itself is “Let him who has two pairs of trousers turn one of them into cash and purchase this book.” (E.16)

The epigraph for the first chapter, “Introduction to Lichtenbergianism,” is “If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.” (L.23)

You get the idea.  It’s kind of important that I get permission to use the material.^[2]d

In other news, technology reared its ugly head this morning when my actual Lichtenbergianism file caused Scrivener to crash repeatedly.  I was beginning to panic at the thought that those particular 21,635 words were screwed, but (tl;dr alert) opening a copy warned me that the original file was “in use,” which of course it wasn’t.  A shutdown and a restart of the computer sorted out the confusion there, and we’re back in business.  Whew!

—————

^[1] Which is how I got permission to set Nancy Willard‘s A Visit to William Blake’s Inn to music: she owns the copyright to the text and said “yes” with no hesitation at all.

^[2] Or, of course, translate them myself, or have my German-Studies-degree son do it, or even my good friend Jennifer Schottstaedt who translates for money do it.

Today let’s look at one of the basic premises of writing a book and getting it published: do I have a good enough idea for a book?  We will pretend that we do not already know that this is the best book idea ever and explore the main questions as listed in The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published [hereinafter EGGYBP].

Audience. Who would be interested in reading a book about procrastinating and how to use that to become more creative?

Excellent question. As we’ll see when we go check out the competition, people really want to be more creative.  They are under the impression that reading a book will help with this—and who am I to disagree?  The current craze for adult coloring books, for example, feeds off this basic urge to MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT.^[1] I talk about the genesis of this book in Chapter One as springing from a seminar I did at the Governor’s Honors Program in 2013—if the students’ response to the Nine Precepts is anywhere close to representative of a populace hungry for permission to create, then I think the audience will be solid.

Who knows?  This could be a niche book that only my friends and family will plow through, or it could become one of those freakish trends: “Become more creative by not doing anything!!”

Competition. If we go and look for books on creativity, there is no dearth of available titles.  Why add this one?

Leave it to an independent bookseller (hi, Janet!) to immediately link to a book about the benefits of procrastination, apparently also written in an entertainingly humorous style.  Missed that one in doing my research.  However, in the overall philosophy of Lichtenbergianism procrastination is really just kind of a gimmick to hook the reader’s attention.  There are eight additional Precepts that form a framework for getting your work done.

Also, most of the other books on the creative process are focused on specific fields: drawing, painting, writing, etc.  Lichtenbergianism is a concept that is usable in every field—and not just in artistic ones.  You can increase your productivity through TASK AVOIDANCE no matter what your job, hobby, or avocation is.

We’ll put off Marketability, Authority, and Salability until tomorrow.

—————

^[1] In the book, I intend to set all our Precepts and Key Concepts in small caps.  Since my blog doesn’t do that, I’ll put them in ALL CAPS.  Ugh.  Bear with me.