Creatively adapt or die

For 30 years now, I’ve written about different art forms in hopes of persuading readers to think about and discuss artistic creativity and so develop an appreciation for it and the incalculable good it offers us. It’s always appalled me that so many people believe the arts have nothing to do with them – people who watch television shows and movies, who enjoy photographs, music or even just a beautifully decorated cake or a handsome tie.

Many of these same people recognize the value of scientific invention - the creation of vaccines, the designing of better can openers, the devising of suspension bridges and cell phones – because science so often results in practical solutions to everyday problems. But they fail to see that science and art are merely slightly varying ways of applying human ingenuity to human life and experience of the world.

They need to wake up to the fact that we can’t survive without that ability to apply ingenuity. And here’s a word that may help them: adaptability.

We human creatures have taken over the world because we are able to change our ways to suit the climate, times and situations we find ourselves in.

The Smithsonian Institution Human Origins Program defines it this way:

The definition adaptability contains the definition of creativity. Both are essential survival skills.

Many normal Americans would laugh themselves off their convertible couches at the idea that, say, interpretive dance might enhance their survival skills. But they should look at their own lives and notice the ways that they themselves have adapted to change in order to get through their days sanely.

The way they’ve learned to weave a path around the kids’ scattered toys in the den? Dance. The enthusiasm they pretend at boring staff meetings and the cheery hellos they summon for their hated bosses? Theater. The little hum they use to calm the baby or themselves? Music. Their cleverly planted climbing roses and hollyhocks that hide the neighbors’ ugly fence? Art. 

Don’t these skills make their lives safer, pleasanter, better? You bet they do.

The word adaptability first came to me last night while I was contemplating the adjustments I’ve had to invent to survive running a start-up venture from my home - a home I share with a husband, a rabbit and two teenagers whose school schedules, social lives and computer demands frequently conflict with what I need to do to stay in business. 

Changing my own schedule so that I do a lot of my work late at night when everyone else is in bed was just the beginning. I’ve devised hiding places for the paper clips and Post-it notes that used to disappear from my (shared) desk; figured out how to get the electrical cords off the floor by rubber-banding them to the window locks, so the bunny can have a romp in the kitchen in the morning without chewing his way to a flash-fried demise before I exile myself to the office/guest room for the day; learned to live off handfuls of almonds for lunch so I can make meetings and be back for school pick-up at 3; acted positive and sung loud, therapeutic White Stripes songs when orthodontist appointments, school open-houses, music lessons, emergency shopping trips and forgotten gym clothes have totally and utterly blown up my goals for the day. 

And I haven’t bitten off all my hair yet or tried to smother myself with my little lumbar cushion. (Though I’ve come close.) So creativity really works. How do all those Americans think their convertible couches got designed in the first place?

Where we’re going

It was like this: My business partner and I were lost.

Actually lost, somewhere among the fields and woods of Northeast Ohio. We had driven east of Cleveland to a picturesque country village for a meeting a couple of hours earlier and, on our way back to the city, I had taken a wrong turn.

And now we were both a little wild-eyed, me clutching the wheel as we looped around the two-lane, blacktopped roads on a cloudy summer afternoon, staring hopefully at signposts and at masticating cows, neither of which gave us any helpful information. The signs stated only route numbers – not west or north or anything – and as far as I knew, cows didn’t grow moss.

We needed to be at another meeting, it was getting later and later and neither Dan nor I had any idea which direction we were going.

We were both rattled to begin with, which is probably why I missed the turn. Our meeting in the village had been with a twentysomething designer we hoped could help us with the web site that was to be the core of our new business. But instead of offering us design ideas, this young person had spent an hour and half telling us why he thought our business idea wouldn’t work.

Our reactions had started at surprised and defensive, intensified to dismayed and were building into anguished fury as I aimed the car for – I thought – Cleveland. Deep in agitated discussion, we scarcely noticed that we had traded a view of ruburban yuppie chateaux for 360 degrees worth of sugar maples and late-season corn.

Who the heck did this guy think he was? We absolutely believed in our idea, in the goals of our plan, in the viability of our services and products as moneymakers and good influences on society. Yes, we were first-time entrepreneurs – an arts journalist/creative writer/singer and an arts journalist/artist/teacher – but we knew our fields, we saw a real need for what we wanted to offer and many professional people we trusted had said they liked our concept. What gall this character had, telling us we were wrong.

But what if he was right? He couldn’t be. But … what if he was?

We didn’t really believe he was right. Not really and truly. Yet even before we realized that we had lost our way, we had lost our confidence.

Off course, unnerved and alone (not counting the cows) – if that car ride wasn’t a metaphor for a big part of the entrepreneurial experience in general, I’ll eat my annotated Shakespeare.

On the long, strange trip to owning and running a creative enterprise, I’ve constantly rocketed up and down between bone-deep discouragement and euphoria, but that frantic drive was both the lowest moment and the literal turning point in my attitude towards my project.

I learned a lot about myself in the two horrible hours it took us to make what should have been a 45-minute jaunt – I mean other than that I could use a GPS in my car.
First, I found I was able to get back on track by using common sense and looking for familiar landmarks. Second, I realized that, even though all the conflicting input Dan and I had been given over months of seeking opinions from different experts had been informative in some way, what we had to do now was trust our own judgment and heed only the advice that helped. Naysayers could sleep wid da cows.

And third, I figured out that business isn’t that different from arts or journalism or raising kids or working with humans in any of a zillion other ways you can think of. Everyone you have to deal with thinks his way is the right way. Many people will try to talk you out of, and even prevent you from trying, your way. The overwhelming majority of people don’t have the imagination to understand your way until you show them a working example.

And since finding the road up and out of my pasture-ized personal wilderness, I have decided this: Above all, don’t let anyone talk you out of being innovative. A great many people are comfortable only with what they know and have seen over and over again, but that’s not how humans make progress. I mean, are you reading this in charcoal pictographs on a cave wall?

So welcome to Geniocity.com, where we encourage those who dare to think up new ways of working, expressing themselves and solving problems. From our initial focus on entrepreneurism to the broader information on creativity and innovation that we plan to bring you in time, we hope you’ll find this site helpful, entertaining and inspiring.
And just wait ‘til you hear what we’ve been going through to get this far ….