Ostensibly, Edgar and I have been writing about aesthetics in this blog as we wait for Alex to finish his honeymoon and finish putting the podcast up (we're not impatient; the wedding was lovely, and we wish our friends all the happiness and rest they can get.) However, we (or I, at least) have drifted from that a bit and talked about politics, ethics, gender theory, and similar topics. The idea behind the original project was to work out our ideas on aesthetics and hopefully start some important and productive conversations on how to approach the arts.

Earlier this year, I wrote about bisociation, I want to retread that and cover some additional ideas. My hope is that these extend beyond simply ideas that are applicable in narrative and poetry, but touch upon other forms of art – including those not traditionally held under the aegis of the arts (i.e., things that evoke complex pleasures.)

It is too easy to get caught in the nostalgia trap. Ideally, this will also lay out tools that allow us to escape it.

Bisociation

Bisociation, previously covered on this blog, is the technique of holding two unrelated ideas in mind and allowing cross-pollination between them. Examples of this include the original Star Trek (which was Wagon Train considered alongside popular science fiction of the time,) the first Star Wars (which was early serialized fiction considered alongside both the films of Akira Kurosawa and Star Trek,) The Matrix (cyberpunk, gnosticism, and the Hero's Journey,) and Lord of the Rings (all ancient epics that Tolkien was familiar with and the Shakespearean canon.)

While bisociation can shade into the nostalgic mode, it doesn't have to. Nostalgia hinges upon a desire to return to something, either by evoking it directly or evoking the media and feeling of a time. Moreover, despite what I've said, not all nostalgia is necessarily bad, nor is (necessarily) all corporate-produced media: I've got a strong affinity for Thor: Ragnarok by Marvel. The reason for this is the strong aesthetic, the subversive content, and the strong perspective of the director, Taika Waititi (who brought a particularly Maōri sensibility, especially to the dialog and humor of the movie.)

Part of the reason this worked is that it wasn't simply using a nostalgic aesthetic, but actually interrogating a number of assumptions. Films about memory often deal with nostalgic aesthetics (See: Blade Runner 2049, though that movie had other aesthetic baggage to it. It handled it fairly well, though.), if only because film opens up a different way of seeing (the camera is, of course, not the human eye, and does not function according to the rules of the human eye), and reckoning with an imperialist past requires addressing a nostalgia for a time of greatness.

The Red Markets core book. Click through for link to Drive Thru RPG page. — The *Red Markets* core book. Click through for link to Drive Thru RPG page.

So, Bisociation doesn't necessarily lead to anything particularly new, but it can. Consider the tabletop game Red Markets, released by Hebanon games: an RPG which examines the financial and political world of a post-zombie North America. The player characters seek to manipulate a futures market by recovering identification papers and wills from the dead, because it allows for identifying those who have already been deceased, and thus whose property can be passed on to next-of-kin or debt-holders. It is the hybridization of horror RPGs and finance.

Creative Analogy

We maintain that it is very useful for artists to work in multiple kinds of art. I cook (I've also done theater, but it's been a long time,) and Edgar (who does their fair share of the cooking, I hasten to add) is a working fiber artist who makes their own clothing and has many thoughts on the subject as a result. Our approaches are shaped by these other arts that we have engaged in, because they teach us to think in different ways.

We both have also done stand-up comedy, and learning to do a tight five minute set (as open mics train you to,) is a valuable skill for learning to be both brief and to quickly connect with your audience.

There are any number of writers who are also amateur chefs, musicians, visual artists, and actors; everyone else, of course, thinks that they can write (some of them are even correct; the vast majority of people who try need more than a little help. I'm looking at you, every artist who ever thought “I should make a comic.”)

Just remember: simply because you're doing another art doesn't mean that you're automatically good at it. You certainly haven't mastered your first one (I know I haven't mastered writing. Or cooking) so don't assume the second one will be any easier. Of course, different arts have different approaches to forming their various paradigms.

Paradigmatic Reasoning

I've written about Paradigm and Syntax before, but I will retread that here very briefly with a metaphor. Sometimes when cooking from a recipe, you determine that you lack a necessary ingredient. Say you lack yeast and you're trying to make a loaf of bread. You have to substitute – but if you're substituting you don't need to go for something that looks like yeast, you don't need to go for something that tastes like yeast. No, your only hope is to think about what the yeast does and then find something else that works like yeast.

This is thinking paradigmatically. The string of functions you need to get something that looks like your desired end-result is the “paradigm”, the individual ingredients is the syntax.

So let's use something I heard about from Edgar earlier this year. Say you want to play a cover of a song by Belle & Sebastian, but all you have is a mandolin. You're going to invent a new way of approaching the paradigm of the song.

Boredom

One of the most creatively nourishing things I've done recently is turn off my computer, plug in my phone, and go lie down in the other room. It's easy to fall asleep like this, sure, but if you can remain awake, you'll discover that, while everything is boring, you've not really encountered boredom before.

Neil Gaiman in 2009 — image taken from Wikipedia.

It's almost an extinct experience: all of us have so little free time and carry with us a tracking and monitoring device that provides endless amusement. Take the time to not be amused. Let your brain kick out strange fantasies and images, and then take them down on paper.

This is honestly how most of creativity happened in years past, and Neil Gaiman (at least when I saw him speak in 2010) swore by day dreams being the point of origin for most of his stories. While not all of them have landed for me, the majority seem to do quite well.

Trust the method.

The Sturgeon Method

This one is possibly more useful for writers, but it is entirely possible that others can make use of it. This method is basically rooted in an interview with Theodore Sturgeon, the author of More than Human and screenwriter for at least two episodes of Star Trek – “Amok Time” and “Shore Leave” – as well as the namesake of “Sturgeons Law” (“90% of everything is crap, but the other 10% is worth dying for.”)

The basic dictum of this method is this: “Ask the next question.”

What questions are implicit in what you're working on? What questions are you failing to ask? How can you push it further? What is left unsaid?

Consider these and get back to your project.

Interrogate Your Assumptions

A corollary of the Sturgeon Method is the importance of interrogating your assumptions – instead of asking the next question, ask how you answered the last question and examine why that was your answer. A lot of creative people set up rules for themselves that they cannot bring themselves to break, and yet don't recognize that's what they're doing.

This doesn't mean to throw out preexisting rules. It means to ask why they're there and decide whether or not to follow them based on that analysis. Why end a superhero movie or comic with an all-out brawl over a city where everything is bathed in blue light and things are floating upward? Why introduce a ring of invisibility? Why have the villain turn out to be the hero's father?

These assumed rules, these tropes that people reach for without thinking, are not necessary. As I have said before, everything is contingent. Art presents you with a great empty page, and you are free to fill it with whatever you want. So why fill it with what's already been done?

Abandon Genres

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of rock music and an unsung heroine of American pop culture (Image from wikipedia.)

Genre, now, has expanded into an all-important concern. It defined sections in book stores, record stores, and video stores. People are convinced that you have to know the genre of a project before you sit down and hammer it out. Marry Shelley didn't give a shit about genre conventions when she wrote Frankenstein (she had originally been trying to write a ghost story, but the story had other ideas,) nor did Sister Rosetta Tharpe when she introduced the electric guitar to R&B and Gospel (giving birth, indirectly to Rock and Roll,) or Bob Dylan when he did the same thing to folk (electrifying it into folk rock.)

All of them laid the groundwork for something new, and they did it by ignoring the rules of what they were “supposed” to do. If you're beholden to a list of requirements created by an advertiser, you're not making art, you're making a product for an advertiser to sell.

The problem with making a product, for purposes of our discussion here, is not that it's commodified (given my inclinations, I do think that's a problem, but it's a problem bigger than you, the artist,) the problem is that it's going to turn out uninspired: it's going to just be the same as everything else.

This is because advertising, when you get right down to it, does great with novelty but is quite bad at true innovation.

Consider Complex Pleasures

As I've discussed previously, art is whatever evokes a Complex Pleasure, which I define as “feelings that are not necessarily good or bad, but which you find yourself drawn into for reasons other than necessity or biological/chemical dependency.” At some point, I'll have to write a taxonomy of these pleasures, but for now, consider the biting pleasure of tragedy or the burn of a well-spiced morsel. If you can instill your work with a pleasure of this sort, then you are succeeding in creating a work of art.

This is a somewhat more abstract concern, but I feel it is an essential one: far more than creating something that is necessarily consistent or well-formed (which are both things which should be pursued, mind you. Both are important.) your goal is to make your audience feel something. If the thing they feel is a complex pleasure, it can elevate the experience and make it truly artful.

The Authenticity Concern

This is an open question, and one which I feel I will need to cover in more detail at another point. A great deal is made these days of authenticity, and much like pornography (or art) the idea is that you know authenticity when you see it.

American IV: The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash. — *American IV: The Man Comes Around* by Johnny Cash.

For me, this is insufficient. I feel that artists always bring an element of themselves into their work, whether it is intentional or not, and it seems to me that this should not be avoided but cultivated. You need to think a great deal about how you present yourself in your work. This isn't to say that an author retains sole ownership over their work after it is finished – David Bowie effectively ceded ownership over “The Man Who Sold the World” to Kurt Cobain after Nirvana's performance on MTV Unplugged in New York in 1994; “Hurt” no longer belonged to Trent Reznor after the release of American IV: The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash; it is an essential component of film creation (the writer cedes to the director, who cedes to the actor, who cedes to the editor, and back to the director, each adding something in the transition) – but you need to leave your fingerprint on your work.

For this, I feel that the best method is to reveal something of yourself in the course of your artwork. I would say that this self-revelation is essential, but that it is an essential secondary component. It should never overwhelm the artwork to the point where enjoyment of the artwork is contingent upon the disclosure. It is entirely possible that, should you do this properly, the audience isn't even aware that it has been done.

The only thing that goes beyond this is if you manage to capture the audience's attention and investment, while simultaneously using the artwork as an opportunity to work through and process your feelings. If you do this, it can become a sort of secular rosary, a ritualistic reenactment of healing that could allow someone else to follow in your footsteps – either as an artist or as a healthy person. For a more in-depth analysis of this, see my write-up on watching Neon Genesis Evangelion in 2019.

However, I think that one of the perfect examples of this is the more recent work by the Minneapolis-based rapper P.O.S. (Stefon Alexander), specifically his album Chill, Dummy and his collaboration with fellow rapper Astronautalis (Charles Andrew Bothwell), Four Fists. (links are to music videos of my favorite track off the respective albums, in an official playlist of that album.)

In Conclusion

These are not the steps to creativity, nor are they merely tools that you use as you proceed in your own acts of creation. They are options that I hope you can make use of as you work on your art. Anyone who purports to offer you a foolproof guide to creativity is just as suspect as someone who is offering you a foolproof guide to critical thinking. Anyone you believe on this topic is going to (unintentionally?) sabotage you.

So you have to work on it.

It is not a milestone: you do not achieve it once and have it forever afterward. To be a creative person means doing creative things or doing things in a creative fashion: it is a skill you have to practice when you get the chance.

And if it's important to you, then you have to make time for practice. You have to clear your schedule. Because the other option is just not doing it, and if you've made it through this piece I'm going to assume that it is something that's important to you.

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Doing Art: Some Ways to Unshackle Creativity