The Opposite

In season four of the classic sitcom “Seinfeld”, George Costanza has an epiphany while eating his usual lunch at Monk’s: Every action he has ever taken, every time he has done “the usual”, it has only brought him disappointment and failure. He decides from that point forward to do “the opposite” of everything that his conscience tells him to do.

What if every conscious action we made was the opposite of what we are typically inclined to do? If “the usual” is fish, we order steak instead (if landfood is the opposite of seafood). Instead of huffing gas we read a book (or vice versa?). If we usually SHOOT animals the animals we are hunting, we instead try to catch them to give them a big, friendly hug (if hugs are oppositional to slugs). It works for George, who in one moment of radical will changes from a reactionary, emotionally neurotic, lying bald guy living with his parents into a cool, calm and collected toupee-wearer (living with his parents), becoming at one (or rather, at complete odds) with himself and with the universe.

I recently read a book about creativity which examines the lives and working habits of people who are eminent in their fields for their accomplishments. The book surveys famous scientists, painters, inventors, writers, actors, businessmen, activists—all of whom go above and beyond the call of duty. Actually they go far above and beyond the 99.9% of us who don’t believe enough in our potential to do more than merely become successful consumers. It is they who are responsible for positing big theories and working new methods, setting trends and molding the future of art, science, and society.

How do they achieve this? How do they ostensibly create something from nothing? Well aside from the obvious answers of “hard work”, “genius”, “persistence”, “organization”, and “luck”, there are elements of character to consider. Whereas most people tend to be one kind of person or another—are either good at linear problem solving or at brainstorming; sociable or solitary; playful or serious; arrogant or humble—creative people exhibit traits from both ends of the spectrum of a given character set. In other words they are bi-polar, flexible, complex, self-contradictive, and in many ways superior. They inherently do the opposite all the time.

Of course, creative people can’t be truly capricious. If they were they wouldn’t even be able to feed themselves, let alone map the human genome, write a symphony or classify every species of ant known to man. But caprice is just what the author suggests we embrace (those of us whose eminence has yet to blossom). Although very few of us have the right combination of factors to become socially creative or change the world in a big way, we can aim for another target. We should “do the opposite” in order to gain a level of “personal creativity". I suppose “personal creativity” is the same kind of creativity that parents recognize in their semi-autistic children when they bring home paintings of vague scenarios of birds and houses and spaceships. I guess we all gotta start from somewhere.

The theory is that if we can surprise ourselves by changing our behavior, we can shift our orientation to the world. If I’ve been shy my whole life and a situation calls for public speaking, I can overcome that by becoming outgoing and maybe trying out a swagger (or donning a Hitler moustache, just for hyperbolic humor effect). If my aggressive demeanor is making it difficult to engage in interviews or research, I might want to listen more, sit back and play deaf-mute (again, hyperbole).

What does doing the opposite look like on a situational level? For example, if at a party you are the type that usually just sits in the corner and stares out with creepy Ted Kazinsky eyes at all the happy people socializing, you should do the opposite: Go and chat up the group of hipsters wearing neon spandex and standing ironically next to the keg. They might ignore you anyway, but it will add some cred to your otherwise pathetic social oeuvre.

Or if at cultured social gatherings you usually contribute by talking [loudly] like this:

“Oh, I just was not feeling good about my life and so I Skyped my mom and I felt waay better. I don’t usually like using Skype at my place because it’s got terrrrrible connection. Oh my god, guys, I had a crazy dream last night! I was on this ladder that went up really high to a bright light, and the bright light was God. Which is reaaally weird because I was JUST thinking about how I should be going to church and I was feeling bad about it, you know?! Whatevs. I was so hammered last night I felt like I was in a dream, too. I don’t usually have dreams. But I do really wanna fuck Brandon Foley! He’s sooo hot. Hey, where’s the toilet? Oh, there it is. Laters.”

If your modus operandi is to engage in non-sequitor soliloquies about base activities and inane personal views on life, then doing the opposite might involved just shutting the fuck up and listening.

Let’s look at another character trait: organization. If you plan everything so much to a T that you know how much butter and soap you will need to buy in March of 2033, you should do the opposite and rip up of all your shopping lists and just go to the grocery store hungry, stoned and with no idea what you have left in your fridge. The amount of useless, unhealthy trash-food you come home with will be liberating and could stoke the fires of creativity. Besides, most junk food has enough preservatives to last until at least March of 2033.

If you have the opposite organizational tendency and you don’t know whether you are supposed to work tomorrow morning or not, you forget your own birthday, and your apartment looks like it is being lived in by a family of raccoons, you might consider doing the opposite. First, find a memo pad and write down the following in list form: gasoline, matches. Then proceed to the nearest store that sells these provisions. Take your purchase home and immediate put them to use on all of your belongings. Fire will purify and thus simplify your life, making room for creative thoughts to take wing and grow into tall trees of ripened mixed metaphors.

The raging inferno burning up your misplaced garbage might spread to other apartments, some of which will undoubtedly be occupied by more organized individuals. But this shouldn’t be a cause for complaint; a life-altering event will only create for these people exciting new opportunities to make those plans for the future which they so crave, such as finding a new place to live, replacing vital documents, and setting aside pockets of time during which to grieve over irreplaceable mementos of life and family destroyed by desperate, disorganized strangers.

Here are a few more ideas to shake things up and get the creative juices flowin’; some are more specific than others:

-Instead of drinking coffee in the mornings, enjoy your java just before bedtime.
-Don’t take the elevator, take the airplane.
-If you are going to say something stupid, think about it first. Is it stupid? Then don’t say it.
-If you use a wheelchair, try walking to work once in awhile. The exercise will do you good,.
-Instead of black, white. Instead of day, night. Instead of wrong, right.
-If you are a cat person, try dog instead. It has less fat than beef or pork.
-Walk, don’t run.
-If you are anti-religion, start preaching Leviticus and Revelations on the street in the afternoons.
-Usually you pay for things you get from a shop. Try just taking them instead.
-If you are usually a goody two-shoes kind of person, spend a day barefoot or maybe in one shoe or in ski-boots. Don’t be pigeon-holed!
-Instead of giving the middle finger, give someone the middle toe. Reach for your potential!
-If you love your office-mates, put laxative in the canteen coffee and write them anonymous hate letters. A new perspective can give you the confidence to take on anything!
-If you usually give spare change to the homeless guy in the park, next time steal his shoes from him. You never know how someone feels unless...

George Costanza’s experiment with battling intuition leads him to sex with attractive women, a job with the New York Yankees, and finding a $20 bill on the sidewalk. I’m not sure if that it makes him any more creative or productive. But perhaps if he kept it up he would have revolutionized the architecture world and made a name for himself as the greatest of oppositional post-modernists: the great Art Vandalay.

If I had to do the opposite tomorrow, this would a brief glimpse into my anti-schedule:

1. Set my alarm for noon and wake up at 6:00
2. Say I will not go to my empty office at work and then actually go
3. Not shout obscenities in Korean out my window at passers-by
4. Eat a balanced diet at an appropriate time to maintain healthy metabolic activity
5. Clean my house
6. Get a bunch of work done and celebrate afterwards
7. Write a fantastic and tasteful blog post about an issue that people want to discuss
8. Not take over the world with my newly invented reverse-ion-ray canon

I have a lot of spare time to do things the RIGHT way in this alternate, creative, opposite universe.

Back with avenge ants!

Sooooo, it was some three years ago that I created a blog out of the perceived need to have someplace to write that was quasi-public. I don't know what prompted this desire. I suppose the slow, rising realization that I wanted to write. To be a writer. To write enough and in the right kinds of venues that I might be considered a writer.

Well, to my chagrin I learned that I didn't (yet) qualify. You see, writers aren't so "meta" when they produce. They generally focus of things of substance and don't refer to the writing that's being written all the time. This is the mark of an amatuer--or perhaps a saboteur. Well, at least someone who doesn't have it all down quite yet.

The last couple of months in my life have felt like crossroads to me. Of course, this isn't the first time I've had this feeling. But being in a foreign, having a relationship, playing in a band, doing a job I don't want to continue doing for year--it all adds up to a big question mark. And that question is "who the fuck am I?"

Reading a book on creativity recently (entitled "Creativity" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) has given my profound insight into the nature of creative people, people who change domains, invent things, put out a lot of work. Essentially, creative people are those people who are inherently dedicated to their art, craft, domain, career. They are not motivated by external rewards like money or fame, although these things can be sweet. They are not deterred by unfortunate events or by criticisms or sickness. Their work is THE driving force in their lives and they live it as such.

To be such a person, it seems, is not a choice. They seem different from the rest of us, besieged by a dedication so ardent that society almost always views them as strange, odd, bizarre. The fruits of their labors are the product of years upon years of hard work, learning the rules of the domain, swimming in the waters of the field and then, as if by some radical coup de grace, rebelling against these rules and creating new things--new ways of playing, new avenues of exploration, new rules about the structures of things. We tend to consider these people "geniuses". But we should not be tricked into thinking that these individuals exceed us in intellect. In fact they succeed most everyone else in Will.

Knowing what I now know about how creative people operate--that they spend most of their time thinking and working, focused on problems; that they don't waste time on unproductive things; that they are hard-working and tenacious; that they are usually brilliant at least--it feels that for me to make a mark in any domain is like pulling down the sky. It can't be done. But the ingredients are so seductively simple--hard work, energy, love. And knowing what I know about the radical Will-- that we all are endowed with any attitude we choose to view life with, which implies that our actions can change as well--I am instilled with hope that, with Will and action I may achieve truly great things.

I have started a regimen of exercise, diet, study, practice, and focused writing which I am still working to perfect. But the point is that the work will never end and one must love the work one does. We don't wake up every day hoping to see the beautiful sunset at the end. In the same way, we shouldn't live life hanging on past achievements or future promises. All that matters is luxuriating in the moment, and this includes work. If my attitude towards work becomes one that is positive, if I'm confident that what I am engaged in is leading to what I want....But even that is a perilous thought!! If I am engaged in it, is IS what I want. If I am not sure about the outcome, that shouldn't matter. The confidence of a creative person is omnipresent, omnipotent. It pervades the activities they do.

And as I write this I get a sense of strength and know that, if I write tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next, I develop a positive feedback loop that can bring me to the place of artistry I seek. To not succumb to idleness or entropy, to not sit around when there is beautiful work to be done, marks to be etched upon the walls of life, this is the fiat I hear in my head these days.

So I say I am back, but in truth I was never here before. This is new ground, a new day, and a more compelling voice that speaks to me and tells me what I need to do with my time, with my life.

Permission to Rant?

*This long overdue post is dedicated to Gabrielle (because I'm a man of my word...from now on)

There’s a saying somewhere that goes “To fight and fail is to have lived; but to miss chances, to cower in the corner when opportunity knocks, though having ample chance and choice to do otherwise, this is akin to dying in the womb.”

Okay, there’s really no saying that goes like that. This has been completely made up on this page. I’m sure there are great and valiant words etched in stone somewhere, some of them present here. Words about brave men and women who charged against death, who created new worlds of possibility, who foresaw the future ripeness of their labors—such words usually precede the heroes for whom they have been written. In fact, one wonders if and if so how humankind ever summoned the courage to conquer its fears, especially the fear of inadequacy, of failure. Is there a greater dread for someone who cares about life than to fail at it utterly? Well, if my new quote holds any truth, the answer is “no”; however, the only way to fail here is to hesitate in the face of fear. So—deep breath—now is always the moment to proceed somewhere, anywhere, if but cautiously.

Perhaps this is a lame first topic for an essay series: the author shouldn’t have to justify why he is in the act of writing in the first place. Or should he? What if most of the writing in the world is done purely for the pleasure of the writer? Or, worse yet, what if it’s done out of boredom, like masturbation—the writer deriving no real lasting pleasure from the act, merely gratifying himself through the release. Well, so what? In the end it isn’t about the writer but the message. And here and now the message is the need to write. But what about? Does it make any sense to conjure up motivations for writing? Isn’t the point of writing—like masturbation—to get something out that NEEDS to be gotten out? An artist who employs mental motivation exercises is pathetic and useless—like a long-distance runner who really just wants to get where he’s going but doesn’t like the journey. “Anathema!” I shout.

Perhaps writing should be conceived thus: “a solitary activity, an amassing of pensive moments, and a large lump of material content to mold and sculpt into a meaningful output.” I think my fear and that of so many apprehensive writers is that our content is unwieldy or to monumental, that our tools of insight and zeal will not do justice or add anything of value to the areas we attempt to illuminate. Spaces have been filled by hundreds of thousands of writers throughout history, filling millions of books—where do we belong? And the result of this self-doubt is indefinite paralysis, failing to live up to our potential in many ways.

It is self-doubt, the doubting of our worthiness to add anything to the Edifice, which causes this paralyzing fear. And if this is true perhaps what we need is a kind of affirmation that will give us the encouragement to continue and to produce our desired fruits of labor. But what kind of affirmation will give us this courage? I think we first need to be aware of a few truths about the world around us before we can say anything about our abilities:

First, let us acknowledge that the whole of society that we live in is comprised of flesh, blood and minds, and of these things alone. Whatever resources we use and materials we fabricate are not compositions of our society, but products of it. It seems that many of us forget this in our obsession with objects, even mistaking our gadgets for friends (in a sense). For example, a car is a nice thing to have, but it is certainly not a member of any society, nor is a cell phone or a pair of jeans or a house or an airplane. None of these things can think or do for themselves. But even our household pets and farms animals have the ability to move and eat, to play and suffer. This kind of being can be considered a member of a society, but if and only if humans recognize them to have these characteristics. The moment we forget that cats and dogs can feel misery is the moment they cease to belong to our society. Also, we did not create these abilities in them, so they cannot be products of our society. In addition, few people would consider the earth and its resources to actually be “part of society”, though they are essential to every society on the planet. Let us thus construe society in the broad sense as containing only those elements which are living and capable of suffering.

Second, let us acknowledge that the evolvement of our society is important in who we are as actors. Certain societal systems can limit our freedom and our capacity to create and to investigate the world. But let us not fall into thinking that there is some measurable “progress” that has been achieved in our modern society with regard to the centrality of the value of personal creation within societies—importance must be somewhat relative. What do I mean by this? Just that in both ancient kingdoms and modern democracies, in Communist states and feudal hierarchies, creative products—be they writings, oral stories, artifacts, music—have played equally relevant and integral roles. Of course they have played extremely different roles in each kind of society in every era of history. Technology and infrastructural development have always shifted the ease of creation and the motivations for creating: In Ancient Egypt, the few that could write and create art were the Scribes; in Rome this honor was extended to the politicians, poets and record-keepers; in Renaissance Europe it was the upper-echelon of society and those artists who had patrons; more and more the resources dictated who could create, usually out of simple availability of supplies—the laws of supply and demand. On the other hand, throughout human history the freedom to create was deliberately stolen from members of society by those in power in order to stay in power.

As much as we have been shaped by our society, we must admit that our creative role as individuals in any place at any time whatsoever throughout history is always equal, always transient, and always pregnant with possibility. We can always add to that great edifice of ideas that humanity has built throughout history, although the availability of resources has increased (statistically) our opportunities immeasurably. Whether it was in the days of the Pharaohs when an elite scribe etched into the face of an obelisk his own slight augmentation of a story about the annual wheat harvest, or today as some lower-income shlub hovers over his PC in the middle of the night critiquing the latest independent film—itself a masterpiece of felicity and Will—on his blogsite, a dark and complex genius at work beneath the figurative citadels of power. He has faith in himself and knows that his efforts amount to something meaningful because of their inherent value: their artistic merits, the timeless forms that have been thrown into the work—the precise, the painting, the palimpsest.

What has been considered incidental is in fact profoundly important—the Truth of the work. What had seemed meaningful and rightly authoritative has been denuded as vulgar pretense—that endless stream of so much safe and marketable pap, the citadels. The cities of Power and control of creation that tower on top of that lowly mad scientist need not necessarily be ugly and artless; but they reek of self-importance and assumed permanence, as if the moment of all moments in the history of creativity were always and at once to be determined by their next fiat. This arrogance should be reserved for something truly eternal, not transitory. And because all societies and moments of great historical import are felicitous and transitory, we should hold this notion of permanence to be, thankfully, wrong.

Ahhhhhhhh…To return to the affirmation we need to eliminate fear of worthlessness, to get off our asses and create…I suppose a brief illustration would work best. If we imagine in the world all the writers working on basement computers, all the studio [apartment] artists holed up in their offices/living spaces, all the budding rock stars laying down riffs on pirated software in their parents’ houses, the sum of all independent creative output, contained in a single bell jar within the walls of an exurban industrial office complex—how would the fusion of this erstwhile constellation of ideas impact the future of art and thought? Would these felicitous moments that have given us such a rich history still occur? Is it even fathomable that a Jimi Hendrix or Tennessee Williams or Lao Tsu could be birthed by such a monoculture, a national or international “School of Thought”? Of course it is not. And the idea of such a commune is absurd. But then this should help us to appreciate the position of the free-agent artist. And it should tell us that not only is it okay and useful to lob your ideas and art into the public sphere, but that it is essential that many people with creative insights do this in order to move our society in meaningful human directions. Creative bursts and brilliant acts of faith are the stuff of history and our current state of society affords us just as much opportunity to take these actions. Despite the seeming saturation of the market, regardless of the fact that everyone and their dog is a blogger or vlogger, and not to mention that most people in this 3-second download culture are too busy screaming and browsing to listen to anything but the competing screams and beaming browsed banner ads of others, talking to themselves on the street and in their cars and on buses and subways, spitting out incessant vacuous vague straws of meaning called “Tweets” into overpopulated social networking glory-hole gossip parties while pornographic pop-ups shatter our already fractured focus!….(whew)—despite this chaotic reality, unreality, surreality that the many-most of us subject ourselves to on a daily and nightly basis, we can take solace in the existence of our shlub. Because even if the genius shlub is indistinguishable from the babbling incoherent shlub population, his Work isn’t. And all it takes is time and effort before the shlub produces an oeuvre worthy of notice—even if that oeuvre is a blog.

This might be a little long for a daily affirmation, but in felicity it has been written.