Adapting to the Paintbox
EPISODE 054: ADAPTING TO THE PAINTBOX
While 'thinking outside the box' is short-hand for 'let's be really creative!' It is thinking inside the box, within our constraints and limitations, that gets our best work started. What do painter Paul Klee and a heavy-metal band called Okilly Dokilly have to do with this? let's talk about it.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
At the end of the 659th episode of the animated TV show, The Simpsons, the credits roll and are interrupted by what anyone might be forgiven for thinking was a clever gag: a music video by a heavy metal band, all the musicians dressed like Ned Flanders, one of the characters from the show. You'd have to be a Simpson's fan to appreciate the humour of Ned Flanders singing death metal. His character on the show is an irrepressibly cheerful, straight-laced, and pious neighbour who always wears a green sweater over a pink shirt, and is prone to saying things like "Okilly dokilly", which, it turns out, is the name of the band in the video.
Started in 2015, Okilly Dokilly was founded on what has to be the most unlikely premise on which any band, heavy metal or otherwise, has ever been conceived. It began with a conversation between the band frontman, later stage-named Head Ned, and the original drummer, who eventually went by Bled Ned, and the question they were batting around was this: what's the most ludicrous name a metal band could have, which led to the name Okilly Dokilly, which led in turn to all the members of the band dressing like Ned Flanders, sporting the Ned Flanders moustache and glasses, and writing songs based on quotes from Ned Flanders. Billed not as a metal band but as a Nedal band, they are surprisingly popular, and the music video that played at the end of episode 659 was more than a one-off spoof. They've toured nationally in the US and have two studio albums to their credit, Howdilly Doodilly, and, you guessed it: Howdilly Twodilly.
What's this got to do with, well, anything? I'm David duChemin and this is episode 54 of A Beautiful Anarchy, a podcast about the joys and struggles of the everyday creative life. Let’s talk about it.
Music / Intro
"You adapt yourself," painter Paul Klee said, "to the contents of the paintbox." In other words, you work with what you've got. And if you think what you've got is limited, as most creatives and artists do, then the very existence, and relative success of, a heavy metal Ned Flanders tribute band should bring you some comfort because next to the need to restrict your lyrics to the words that come out of the mouth of an animated character, while also adapting it to whatever conventions you need to restrict yourself to in order to still be considered heavy metal, well, compared to that everything you or I do is going to feel wildly unconstrained and full of possibility.
But having fewer limitations or restrictions on your work than Okilly Dokilly does, doesn't necessarily mean it will be any easier. It's counter-intuitive, but creativity works best within, not without, constraints; when the challenges are clear and well-defined and when the problems we're trying to solve can be articulated. And the more vague they become–or worse, when there are no constraints at all–the more we tend to flounder in what becomes an endless bog of possible choices, or what some have called "the tyranny of choice." Studies show that there's a point at which more choices are not only not better but lead to anxiety, even paralysis. The choice of a metal band to limit itself to such narrow, albeit bizarre, constraints, might be not only a clever marketing gimmick but a brilliant catalyst to creativity, and a helpful reminder to us when our choices become limited, or when we've got too many choices and need a hand with getting started.
More choices, not only in our creative pursuits, but in life in general, mean higher opportunity cost. In others words, when we have more options and have to make a decision from among 20 different possibilities, the cost of making that one decision is, or feels like, the 19 we aren't choosing. When we are given too many options in our creative work, and have to choose one, there's an emotional and mental energy spent wondering if we'll regret what might have been, and the choices we didn't make, instead of just getting on with our work. Too many choices leads to a fear of missing out, and the paradox of the fear of missing out is that when it paralyzes us into making no choice at all, we miss out on everything. Futurist Alvin Tofler first gave a name to this in the 1970s, calling it 'overchoice', and it's a very real cognitive impairment.
Overchoice brings increased complexity and confusion to our lives and our work. It imposes higher opportunity costs and greater feelings of risk. Worst of all, it's a waste of time, stalling us at the starting gate while we try to decide which path to take. But give yourself some constraints, take some of the options off the table, and this is where creativity kicks in and forces us to engage the question: what can we do with what we've got? This is where creativity shines. This is its home turf advantage: not outside the box but within it.
Everyone wants to think outside the box; somehow that idea has become shorthand for what it means to be truly creative. But the box isn't the problem. How we think is the problem.
I think the box is the where the best work happens, and the smaller the box the better. The same kind of thinking outside the box, with no constraints, won't generate nearly the same results as thinking differently, more creatively, with tighter constraints and fewer options–inside the box.
As a photographer if you gave me a bag of cameras and lenses and told me to go make a photograph of something, anything, it would take me forever just to decide on one subject or idea over another, and then longer to decide on my approach, weighing all the options, considering all the possible directions. If you gave me my one camera, one lens, and a roll of black and white film and told me to make a self-portrait, I'd have something more specific to work on. It might still take me a week, but it would be a week working through a very specific creative challenge, and gaining traction on the direction I want to take, rather than deliberating on this choice or that. But if you further introduced a time-limit and told me it had to be done by the end of day, I'd get on it, and I'd be even more focused. And I bet the results would be better. Why? The added constraints would be enough to introduce greater challenge and demand tighter focus.
If you've been listening to this podcast for a while and just thought, "hang on a moment, he just said 'challenge and focus', aren't those the key conditions needed for flow, that state in which we do our best creative work?" then you get to move to the front of the class and grab a handful of gold stars on your way past. The big value in embracing or even creating constraints in our work is that they bring challenge and focus.
When someone, even when that someone is myself, tells me to think outside the box, tells me the sky is the limit, as if they're doing me a favour, I get nervous. I see my options increase from what I can see and wrap my mind around, to nearly infinite. And when that happens the problem I'm trying to solve gets slippy and harder to hold on to. My mind runs in too many directions and the sudden proliferation of possibilities dilutes my focus and the challenge becomes not the work itself but finding, or settling on, a starting point and that can take forever.
This is why I've long favoured the simplest tools and the fewest options to get me started. I think tighter constraints and the choice of smaller paintboxes, at least to start our work with, is incredibly liberating. Don't know how or where to begin? Tighten the constraints. Give yourself a better challenge, something with fewer options.
Now, is this practical? What if you give yourself a month to write a book and by the time you get there you've got ideas for making it even stronger and need another month? What if the song you wrote with the constraint that it be only 3 chords, what if it's good but could be so much better if you used 5 chords instead? What if, in following Klee's advice to adapt yourself to the paintbox you realize you need another colour? Well that's a different problem isn't it? At least you've started. At least those initial constraints got you challenged and focused and doing the work. You're no longer at the starting gate wondering what path to take, instead you're way down the path and gaining speed, and if the initial constraints are no longer the tool you need, now that the work is taking shape, then loosen them up. The tool you needed to get started and pry yourself loose, to get past the paralysis and the procrastination, it does not have to be the same tool you need to finish that same work.
If all you need now, now that you've started and the work is taking real shape, if all you need is more time, additional chords, or more paint, then do that. Find the right tool for this part of the process. If those additional tools are available, great. See where they take you! But it's possible they aren't. At some point we all bump up against constraints that won't be budged. And then what? Well then, you'll find a way to work with that particular paintbox. What choice do you have? Give up? You adapt. You get creative. The smaller the paintbox to which we must adapt ourselves, the smaller the box in which we are required to think, the greater the challenge and focus, the greater the chance of flow.
Is there such a thing as paintbox that's just too small? Could you make art with only black paint? Franz Kline did. Picasso's Guernica painting is almost completely black and white with only shades of grey in between. Could you write your poem if you only had 3 lines? The elegance of Japanese haiku suggests you could, as long as you also limit your syllables. Could you write a song with only one chord? The Beatles did with 'Tomorrow Never Knows'. So did Creedence Clearwater Revival with 'Run Through the Jungle,' and Aretha Franklin with 'Chain of Fools."
There are others, and while I concede you probably don't want to fill your iPod with one-chord wonders, it's encouraging to me to know it can be done. How? They adapted themselves to their paintbox. And they found other tools. Only one chord? Fine, let's work with that and focus on being creative with rhythm and lyrics. One colour of paint? You got it, let's use line and shape and as many tones of that one colour as we can. What can we do with that? Only 18 minutes to do a TED talk? No problem, let's focus on one key idea instead of 3 and use this chance to simplify the message for greater impact.
Constraints are the playing field upon which all creativity happens. Or they're the fence that defines the border of that playing field. They say: within this box, anything goes and you can ask "What if?" in any way you choose while you're on that field, and within the constraints you've got. There is incredible freedom in that. Now you know what you've got to work with and what you don't. What can you do with that? What if you do this? What if you try something else?
'What if?' is a powerful question full of possibility and it revolves around what you've got, not what you don't have. It's adapting to your paintbox. The alternative to 'what if' is much more common: 'if only.' If only I had more talent. If only I had better tools. If only I had more time or money. If only my paintbox were bigger, then I could really create something!
'If only' must be the two least-creative words we can think or say. They are the language of defeat and excuses. They focus on, and see possibility only in what is not and what we don't have. The 'if-only's' are never satisfied, and always waiting for conditions to be perfect. It's heartbreaking because every person who has ever said, 'if only...' could probably instead have said 'what if?'
In the big picture, most of us don't need to go looking for constraints. They already define the boundaries of who we are, what we've got to work with and what we are capable of doing. Some we are born with, some are thrust upon us. You will have a very different paintbox than I do. But whether the constraints of that particular paintbox are your biggest liability or your best asset, depends on whether you're asking "what if?" and exploring the possibilities, or waiting for conditions to be perfect, for that paintbox to conform to your wishes and expectations, while saying "if only...."
You're not alone if you've found yourself looking at the 'if only's' more than usual lately. I have. If only I had more options at the moment. If only we could travel. If only things were normal. If only I weren't so afraid. But they are what they are and I think it's important to see that, and to feel whatever it is we feel about the state of things right now and the confusion from living though something most of us have never lived through and worry we don't have the tools to cope with. It's possible your paintbox, like mine, has never felt smaller. And it would be so easy, and so understandable, to start thinking about the 'if only's' and never get past them, never adapt to the paintbox we have right here and now and to paint something beautiful with what we find inside.
Work with what you've got my friend. Let it transform you as you adapt to the contours and limitations of the paintbox. Our best work is done with what we have, not with what we don't. That has always been where the greatest creativity is found. Not outside the box, but within it. Not 'if only', but 'what if?'
Thanks so much for listening. I’m humbled by the response this podcast continues to receive and the emails that I’m getting. Please continue to share this podcast with those that you think might benefit from its encouragement and the conversations it might instigate about creativity. If you’t not getting it, I would like to send you On The Make which is like an emailed version of the podcast that I send out every four weeks when the podcast takes a break. Just go to StartUglyBook.com, scroll to the bottom and tell me where to send it. And if this or any episode lights a spark for you and you want to get in touch with me you can do that anytime at talkback@abeautifulanarchy.com.
Music in this episode: Acid Jazz (Kevin Macleod) / CC BY-SA 3.0