Vomit, then edit

Creativity disgusts me, and it’s wonderful. The beauty of creativity is how unattractive and unformulaic it is.

I learned this the hard way in creating the Idea Machine Podcast. It was an attempt to capture the beautiful moment of creativity on audio. Hundreds of hours of recording and editing, and I learned that there is no beautiful moment of creativity. The process is ugly, boring, unphotogenic (audiogenic?).

Capturing perfect creativity is like taking a Polaroid of a lightning bolt.

This week the topic of creativity came up a lot. Worth mentioning some of the cooler sources:

Watched the first episode of Netflix’s Abstract, a show about design, and ran across this quote:

“Be a careless artist, but a ruthless editor.”

This came from the artist Christoff Niemann. Myself an uneducated swine, I’ve never heard of him, but after the show, I’m a big fan.

Then it happened again. Listening to Tim Ferriss interview Jerrod Carmichael, Ferriss mentioned Evan Goldberg’s creative process, where he throws awful curses and crazy ideas out there, without filter, then “edits the fuck out later.” Literally.

And this morning, reading writing tips from James Altucher, and he mentioned the same idea, “… I write and rewrite…”

Vomit creativity, ugly, smelly, dirty, creativity, then clean the mess up when you’re done. You filthy, beautiful animal.

[No Chaga]