Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Aback in black

Even creative people suffer from the herd mentality.

I got stampeded by it Sunday night when I took part in a gathering of the Cleveland-area literati - not a charity-ball kind of thing, but a series of readings by authors, journalists and other wordy types that was held as a benefit for a local library system.  

I wasn’t sure what I should wear. Even though I’m something of a creative writer, I don’t frequent literary circles much – I tend to hang more with the theater and newspaper crowds. I know how those people dress. Or don’t. They actually dress somewhat alike, which is very informally, but stage folks manage to make jeans and sweaters look somehow dramatic, while the press just make theirs look … unpressed. I am at home with that.

But a bunch of authors – what was I supposed to go as to that costume party?

I guessed I’d be safe with black, the protective coloring of all culture vultures. And, quel surprise! I was. But it struck me that safe is an odd thing for creative people to want to be. It makes us oxymorons.

I looked around the room and, though the variations on the dress code were several – from motorcycle chic and Beat Generation boho to the tweedy colorlessness of academics whose brown was their own kind of black - it was clear there was one. And the message it sent was: Looking arty and individual means looking like pretty much everybody else in your group.

Black leather, an earring and a ponytail - or  a shaved head - have become the uniform of self-conscious male counterculturalism as surely as a blue suit bespeaks a banker. Ditto black stiletto boots for the young woman or a black dress, handwoven Third World shawl and free-form silver jewelry for the over-60. And professors aren’t professors without an earth-toned jacket and jeans.

I guess this proves that no matter how boldly imaginative people think they are, they’re still terrified of looking different from their peers. Even after they leave middle school.

And yeah, me too. I regularly put on as much black as the next self-deluding art poseur. But with Geniocity.com, I’ve tried to resist the visual and content conventions of news websites for whom the grid is a box their creators can’t see beyond. Over the next weeks and months, you’ll see gradual changes in Geniocity that will start bringing the site closer to what I’m really aiming for: not just a  source of a different kind of news and opinion, but a medium that makes finding out about creativity an innovative aesthetic experience in itself.   I hope it will be an adventure for all of us.

So don’t wear your uniform, ok?