On Originality in the Age of Weirdness: Part III
Preferatory note: I liken this post to how we tend to browse online: following hyperlinks, letting algorithms guide us through strange and nonlinear terrain. We may start with a Youtube video on gardening and end up at ancient aliens. This post therefore mirrors the chaotic, associative nature of modern life. Even if some critics would call the post rambling or unfocused, I’d like to establish this as a “process-based post”—an adventure, not a “polished product.” In any case, maybe this form of storytelling is better suited to the hyperlink age.
***
I’ve been thinking about making a book out of these blog posts on originality. Below is my list of fears that tells me why creating a book may not be such a good idea. This list is by no means exhaustive. I’m sure there are hundreds of additional fears lurking in the shadows that I don’t even consciously acknowledge. But here’s my starter kit:
What if no one reads any of this?
What if I turn this into a book, spend a lot of time and money on it and no one buys the product?
What if I could be using my time in more practical ways (like fixing the toilet) but instead, I’m just wandering off into a philosophical playground and getting lost?
What if all this is wrong?
What if I lose interest after investing a lot of time, only to not finish - and the whole project fizzles?
What if I miss out on everyday life because my mind is so busy thinking about this?
What if none of this is new?
What if this is all irrelevant in five years?
These aren’t special fears - meaning, they are pretty bland and ordinary as far as fears go.
I’m not trying to be original.
The list of anxieties is meant to serve as an honest assessment of what is floating through my mind at this moment as I think about these posts and a possible book project.
I realize some of the fears in my list are redundant.
I realize I could have edited this list to combine fears that are similar,
and included more “interesting” fears
~ but ~
that’s not how fear works.
Fears are redundant. They’re often ridiculously prosaic. They play on repeat.
Maybe I have hundreds of these fears that are more or less the same fear wearing slightly different color t-shirts.
All of these anxieties come from my product based mindset. In this product mode the value of whatever it is that I create depends on how I can monetize, exhibit, distribute, gain prestige or gain an audience through these posts and/or this potential book.
Truth is, I do want to be able to make money with my art. I’d love it if these skills could support me full time, but it would be nice to at least have it be my side hustle. But all that naturally comes with “how will it be received?”
If the purpose is monetary gain or social currency, I can’t help but think of an audience “out there.” I personally find it hard to be truly creative when imagining that “audience” on the other side of the partially silvered-mirror. I fret about how my creative product will be analyzed, judged, praised or perhaps worst of all - just ignored. I’m tempted to modify my work to aleviate these concerns and create something I think will be more accessible to a wider audience. I wonder how much of that imaginary audience is just my inner critic - or perhaps more accurately, my inner critic consortium.
When I am in product mode, I feel urgency which begats constriction which begats paralysis which begats me doing the dishes or organizing my hard drive because I’ve got to do something and if I do the dishes or organize my hard drive now, when the inspiration hits, I can be ready. Eventually, the spark does ignite until again, I feel the urgency which begats constriction which begats . . .
Why am I discussing this at all? What does this have to do with “Originality in the Age of Weirdness?”
Like many, I was hopeful during the early World Wide Web days that information and creativity would be democratized, that everyone would get to contribute their bit (and that things might get a little weirder). But of course the paradox is that as digital creative tools become more accessible, web content explodes and that democratic ideal is ultimately distorted by algorithms. You have to be louder, faster, easier to understand and more sensational right? It seems that way. There are of course exceptions to the louder/faster/easier approach. People also curate their content for specialized audiences, and I can say personally that I enjoy peering through some intellectually, conceptually and creatively stimulating windows that emerge on the fringes. But the catch is that, because these niche creators have more specialized (read: smaller) audiences, most of them it seems are constantly having to raise money to break even.
I feel pretty comfortable arguing that not only do we live in an Age of Weirdness but we also live in an Age of Information Overload - and not just information in the form of news and facts, alternative facts, pseudo facts, propaganda and that type of thing but also anything else that contributes to the sum total of creative human output.
We are drowning in a tsunami of media content.
It’s overwhelming.
As a creator, I find myself in a bit of an existential crisis, wondering if all I am doing is just adding my creative stuff to all the other clamoring voices in a steaming creative landfill. [Jeez, André. That went dark.]
Am I just creating more noise?
Of course, I don’t want to do that but if I want to turn my art into my livelihood (or at the very least that side-hustle) then I’ve got to do something bold to distinguish my work and make it into something that people benefit from and/or relate to.
This is the disquietude I have when looking at my creative output as - well - output, which - for me at least - makes it harder to be creative. Luckily for me - and I’m assuming for you - we can still be creative whether or not it’s our source of income and our lives depend on it.
***
I have - very slowly over time - become more interested in a process based mindset.
If my approach to creativity is process based, my orientation point doesn’t come from a concern about how my work will play with my “target” audiences, whether or not it will offend, confound, elicit boredom - or bring about no reaction at all.
In process mode, I don’t need to show my creative work to anyone. I don’t even need to finish it.
And, it doesn’t have to be original.
Originality becomes irrelevant. It can be original but there is no pressure to make it original. Like hiking a trail, which thousands of other people have already trekked, I explore the landscape for the immersive adventure alone. I am under no obligation to make it to the trail end. Once I’ve gotten what I like out of the journey, I can turn around and head back. Or I can continue on. Either way is fine.
I don’t know where I’ll end up. I’ll follow my gut and head in one or more directions - guided by my interest. In the creative adventure, I may draw and erase - draw and erase - draw and erase, leaving a palimpsest of stray faint pencil marks under an ever increasing mountain of attempts. The whole thing functions as a living map of the “trip.” Sometimes the results of creative bursts pop up like mini-civilizations only to become the ruins on top of which newer creative cultures live.
I’ve never done cocaine but -
I believe I can relate to that stereotypical scenario in which the coke user comes up with 100 “brilliant” ideas and then wakes up the next morning and realizes 99.5 percent of them are crap. If I am product based, the following “hangover” day, when the truth hits hard, is really depressing. But if I let myself relax into the process, I can appreciate the cocktail of endorphins, dopamine and serotonin that the immense creative rush provided - and then shrug off the not-so-awesome results when I “come down” - even as my body is readjusting from the chemical high and experiencing a brief creative postpartum. [ Side note: Having been down this road many times, I’ve come to realize that the percentage of good ideas is actually a bit higher than 0.5%—and whatever that number is, it then becomes the substrate for future creative breakthroughs.]
I find that I glitch back and forth between the product and process mindsets. I have not “transcended” the product based mindset nor do I possess the cool detachment of always living in a process-based state of mind. On an existential level, I feel that abandoning product for process completely is the equivalent of quitting society and going out to live in the woods. I feel a sense of responsibility to the world in which I live. This is not out of self-importance but a need to believe I have a purpose and that I am contributing - earning my place in the world. Perhaps this is a defence mechanism to stave off existential dread.
There’s a constant push and pull between product and process modes. In this Age of Information Overload, I’m either speeding along a product-mode freeway—cars flying past at 80 miles an hour—or I’ve pulled off the road entirely, stepped out of the car, and find myself on a quiet, ancient path that’s been there for millions of years. That “path” may only appear as one because I choose to see it that way. Unlike the highway, there may be no fixed trail—just open space in every direction.
Maybe that’s the point.
***
In this spacious, directionless landscape, I begin to tune into deep time—a shift in perception where a third mode reveals itself. I’ll call it transmission mode. I’m walking, exploring, under the sun—and as the old proverb goes, there’s nothing new under it. I start to really (as the hippies used to say) grok that. Primal natural patterns rise into awareness, flooding both the landscape and the sky. The ripples in the sand mirror the ripples of altocumulous clouds, and the rippling clouds, in turn, echo the sand. Tree branches reflect the branching structures within my own body—inside and out.
It’s all been done before. Over and over and over.
If I’m walking in this spacious landscape, it makes sense to mind the patterns. I’m not going to just walk in a straight line disregarding cliffs, lakes and obstructions along the way. I’ll snake along with the river for a while and then zig-zag up the hill to explore other geographical phenomena. So even though there might not be a trail in the human constructed sense, the more-than-human world dictates a web of options that may seem invisible until I’m ready to make my next step. The trail becomes visible when it needs to be.
Speaking of pathways, perhaps it seems like I have gotten off the road of my topic, On Originality in the Age of Weirdness, and am now wandering aimlessly in the more-than-human landscape. Sure, I may have ventured out into the woods, but I still have my car keys and I’ll hook back around and head toward the road, I promise.
But also, who cares?
Again, I’m feeling the pressure of my inner critic consortium, who have all reminded me that it’s better to have a tight, cohesive “argument” that holds together - that has a clear beginning, middle and end. “Brevity, André,” one of them advises. “You’re not saying anything that hasn’t already been said - and better,” another offers. “You can’t just go out and create a book without having done research. What are you basing this three-part model on? It’s fine if these just remain unpolished blog posts, but I wouldn’t spend too much time on this. Go back to making films.”
If I continue to see what I’m doing here as product, I eventually give into these “wiser, more practical” voices. But if I’m in process mode, I can see the product as bi-product - meaning - product is secondary. It’s not the most important thing. In process mode, I find it much more interesting to get in touch with the ever illusive transmission mode.
By the way, I’m also aware that I still haven’t defined transmission mode, even though I first introduced this term roughly 400 words ago. I’ll get there. Don’t worry too much about it.
Let’s walk across this log so we can traverse the stream.
***
In the wilderness it occurs to me that you can’t have originality without origin - which is weird because those two words seem to imply opposite things. Origin describes the source point whereas originality implies uniqueness, newness and something that has not been derived from anything else. If origin looks back toward the source, originality looks forward toward an infinite array of latent possibilities.
But it seems that the infinite array of latent possibilities is still grounded in something. It may be infinite in that you will never find an end to the number of variations - but at the same time finite in the sense that there are actually boundaries within which these variations play. There exist patterns and forms that appeal to us. There’s a long-held idea, for example, that there exist only seven different plots and if you take hundreds of thousands of stories throughout history, each of them could fit inside one of these basic plots: overcoming the monster, rags to riches and the quest - among others.
This model has been challenged for various reasons (“are there really only 7 plots and is this a Eurocentric view?”). Whatever the limitations of this model, it does illustrate the concept that there are patterns that appeal to us. Our pets appeal to us because they're modeled on the same blueprint as we thinly-furred monkeys. They have bilateral symmetry - like we do, four limbs - like we do, make noises out of their face - like we do and so on. If dogs and cats were just amorphous blobs with no distinguishing features, I think it’s pretty safe to assume we would not have struck up a multi-species agreement to cohabitate. Perhaps they would still inhabit our yard and we would cluelessly walk across them on our way to take out the trash.
With all this in mind - I’m now back on the freeway in a product-based mindset. I’m exploring web-based content, looking at the news, social media, streaming content and so on. There are patterns, for sure. But why does this glut of content make me anxious? Sometimes it seems we are being derivative in a way that’s primarily driven by a need to capture the largest segment of the attention economy we can. Are the executives at some top-tiered streaming platform saying, “hey, let’s as a species explore these archetypal stories so we can better understand ourselves which will eventually lead to self-realization?” Is it that - or is it like, “well, True Crime is a good dollar.”
It’s hard to assume the “good dollar” is not the driving force.
But, you know, I’m not an entertainment executive, so I’ll never know for sure.
Who's to say?
Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
Perhaps we operate multi-dimensionally - even if we don’t know it. Maybe on the surface, the hypothetical show runners are thinking “We know that it works. It’s tried and true. Let’s do it again - make some money. Let’s not take a gamble - we’ll take a gamble on that show but not this one.” But what if down deep there’s a subconscious conspiracy that we don’t even realize on the surface, where media creatives, from top executives to obscure solo creators are like, “hey we need to shine a light on our collective shadow side - excorcise some gunk in the human psyche in order to free ourselves from certain oppressive patterns.”
Of course this is purely speculation - wild speculation - but it’s speculation that’s based on my own experience as a filmmaker.
I’ve started thinking of the films that I create as my “film kids,” because, through I bring them into this world, they ultimately have a life of their own. I’ll watch one of my films long after completing it and discover a hidden meaning that I never saw before - as if, during the film’s production, I subconsciously planted seeds that would grow into fruit-bearing trees for future me to discover.
Well, if my creative babies are living things, maybe those true crime shows are also living things and we’re all unconsciously guided by certain patterns. Is that reasonable to assume? We all share consciousness in the same society. We’re living in the same operating system, as it were, right?
For some reason a visual pops into my head where I imagine we are all trees with our roots extending deep within the ground.
We are all connected to the same earth.
We are all plugged into the same source material.
We are all woven into the same more-than-human patterns.
Altocumulous clouds, waves, bilateral symmetry and intricate fractal patterns in plants and animals aren’t culture-specific. They don’t belong to any historical era. They aren’t human inventions. They are just part of the assembly language of reality on this particular planet - and who knows, maybe some distant exoplanets as well.
And so, while there may not be anything completely new under the sun (or suns if we entertain life on those exoplanets), there exist - I’m assuming - an infinate array of ever emerging variations. We too, though not special snowflakes, are unique snowflakes. I feel a little like Mr. Rogers, saying something along the lines of, “there will never be another you like you.”
But it’s true.
[If it’s not, and there are 100 other identical yous or mes out there, then we really are just living in the matrix and all bets are off.]
It makes sense that you/me + place + time + opportunities + chosen path = infinite variations. If I really let this sink in, then I don’t have to even worry about being original because it’s already baked into the formula.
The problem arises when I don’t realize that I have a unique window on the world (a window that is no more or less a unique window than anyone else’s) resulting in me imitating someone else’s something else because it resonates with the multitudes (e.g. it’s trending). In that product state, I’m captured by the belief that imitating is the fastest and easiest (and hopefully most lucrative) way to help me “get there.” Rather than realize the innate you/me + place + time + opportunities + chosen path = infinite variations formula, I try to find success in the reflection of someone else’s idea. That may or may not work in a material sense, but I would argue that it is ultimately unsatisfying.
On the other hand, I could also be completely wrong.
Maybe that good dollar is also a happy dollar - and I’ll just end up with a sad sack of nickels.
Ok, so I’ll finally attempt to define transmission mode. As I mentioned, it’s quite elusive - at least to me - since I am in the process of moving beyond the grip of product mode. I’ll try to illustrate transmission mode by discussing my relationship with a genre of music I know little about - one that has never much resonated with me - the blues. If you like the blues - if you love the blues - I’m sorry.
Even though I can be morose, I’ve never been into the blues. “They just keep playing the same chord progressions!” Every blues song sounds like every other blues song to me. And as someone who delights in novelty, this used to be incredibly frustrating. But as I got older and wiser, I started to realize there’s a subtle distinction here. There’s a difference between imitating work because it will get you something: money, prestige, clicks, likes, affirmative emojis and so on - versus riffing off something because you are tapping into a similar current as others (your creative ancestors) who have devoted their life to an art form. You then experience the essence of that current for yourself.
The blues is still not my thing. But at least I can appreciate that there might be a reason these musicians keep returning to the stream.
I’m also in no place to judge. I live inside my own set of “chord progressions.” For example - this thing about origin - it’s nothing new. In fact, as far back as I can remember a theme that ran through my creative obsessions were symbols of origin. I’ve spent about ten years (so far) working on an experimental animated Genesis Trilogy. You can read all about it in my Liminal Soup blog, so I won’t get into it here. Before that, I had this egg fixation.
This was prior to my life as a filmmaker.
It’s possible it started as early as four-years old, when I won grand prize in the Sebring (Florida) Public Library Easter egg coloring contest. It didn’t come easy, this win. My dad meticulously traced over the library-issued easter egg template - including the blades of grass on either side of the egg outline so that I could have trial runs before I drew on the library copy. Once I seemed ready, I was handed the real deal—and immediately drew something that made my dad mad and yell “sheet.” He was Portuguese, and if you “listen” closely, you might catch the actual four-letter word behind the quoted version, which is meant to reflect his accent authentically.
Despite the rough start, the egg became an early masterpiece.
This was not a traumatic event, by the way. And I don’t think it had anything to do with my egg-themed oeuvre as I got older - despite the assessments of those to whom I’ve told this story. I live in somewhat of a mythological landscape and wonder if the obsession with eggs, and by extension origins, was already latent even before I was four. Perhaps I had crafted fabrigé eggs in a past life, was an egg farmer in another and a monk in yet another life, where I faithfully copied sacred origin myth texts by hand. Could it be that the conditions for the egg drama I experienced at four were cultivated by a couple of astral spirits as some kind of cosmic joke? A sort of “hey, let’s f__k with the egg guy!”
I can’t understand how I’d be repeatedly drawn to these origin myths or origin symbols if they weren’t trying to tell me something. Like my film babies, I wonder if this origin symbology is autonomous - if it somehow functions outside human construction. One will never know for sure, but then what does one ever know for sure? I think I’m attracted to the possibility that there are psychic ecosystems that exist beyond our material dimension - perhaps super-imposed on our everyday reality. Even in the Age of Weirdness, where tangibility is still proof of existence, haptics in technology create the illusion of physical reality - a dimension of existence so prized by materialists. We can also spend more of our lives in a variety of virtual spaces than here on lower-case “e” earth even if we are still here on upper-case “E” Earth. The materialists, in turn, might scoff at my associative speculation and dismiss this entire journey as magical thinking.
Well, what’s wrong with magical thinking?
My take is that magical thinking is only a problem when you 100% believe your magical thoughts or 100% dismiss them. I would argue a healthy approach is to hover around 50%. Better yet, enter into a state of neither believing nor disbelieving all the magical thoughts.
It’s easy to occupy a product-based mindset - but that’s not a bad thing. If we didn’t have access to this mode of thinking, we might not be able to support our physical existence. A process-based perspective can be a bit more challenging, especially in the face of the day-to-day demands where we are often called on to produce tangible results of labor for the marketplace in a timely manner. But one could theoretically still carve out time for oneself to explore the process.
But transmission? Entering transmission mode may require one to enter through a portal created by magical thinking. It can be a little hair-raising, especially if one does not remain tethered to consensus reality.
So how do I even know there’s such a thing as transmission mode?
I wonder this myself.
Let’s say there are three people sitting around a living room and a giant mythological creature from an overlapping reality is sprawled out on the living room rug like some weird cosmic cat. The person sitting in a corner recliner describes in great detail the creature, the iridescent blue feathery fur which seems to constantly be simmering like a pot of hot gravy (for some reason). “It read my mind and without opening its beak, it told me it’s all going to be ok.” That’s the first person. The second person lies on the couch pinching their forehead. “Dude, you’re high. There’s nothing there.” Then there’s the third person. That’s me. I’m not saying anything at the moment because while I can’t see this mythological creature directly, I sense the outlines of something. The air just feels different in that area. And I occasionally get tiny shocks of a realization that something’s going on - like a forgotten dream that teases me with a glint of a memory but never provides enough information for me to really gain a foothold in the dream’s content.
Ok. Well? If I only have a vague sense of this transmission mode, what the hell am I doing outlining a creative framework that includes this thing I can’t really define? I think that makes me the perfect person because, in this case at least, perhaps I can function as a bridge between the rational and the superrational - between the material and the ephemeral. Are we accustomed to having frameworks, systems, processes outlined by “the experts” - because we believe the expert can give us the three steps to becoming this, or the five pillars of that - ensuring our elevation to a higher plateau of understanding forever? I suspect the reason we keep consuming these types of optimization frameworks is because there’s never really any forever plateau and we’re mostly addicted to the rush of feeling the temporary clarity, stability and reassurance that the framework provides. And maybe it truly does help - for a while.
This product-process-transmission framework I’m exploring isn’t a system. It won’t iron your pants or butter your waffles. No promises for a better, more fulfilling life. Rather, the framework functions as a four-dimensional sculpture. Like us, it possesses form but changes through time - sometimes in contradictory ways.
Embrace the contradiction.
I just did.
In re-reading my living room scenario with the three people and the mythological creature, I asked myself, “what if the cosmic blue-feather-furred cat is just a cat? Why do we need to make it so fantastical? Who cares if the creature has more than one tail? Why give into hyperbole? And will adding another tail necessitate we trade our one-tailed earth-toned cat for the “luxury” model?
[#Capitalism]
I suspect my lapse into the grandiose could be a side-effect of living in the Age of Weidness and my cultural programming. See, I’m going on a process journey, but I glitch into product mode where I feel I have to be engaging in order to survive in the attention economy. And in the louder-faster-more sensational age, the creature needs more tails and should also be rendered in hyper-vivid color.
I wonder if the reason these fantastical online environments are becoming more wild, more sensational, rendered more vividly is because we’ve become numb to what we encounter daily in the more-than-human biological world.
I remember my son telling me when he was around eight or nine that he preferred the virtual landscapes of video games and other animation formats because they were so colorful and vivid and the everyday world was boring and perhaps a little depressing by comparison.
But then I also think about the way he and I look at our two small dogs, Cordy and Ozzy - as if we’ve never seen a dog before. “Dad, come check this out!” Ozzy has his tiny brown butt and hindlegs emerging from a balled up blanket on the bed. “Can you believe we live in the same house as these things?” We don’t need to search for life on other planets because at this moment (like many other moments) the dogs have become alien. They become alien because there is something in them we are seeing for the first time.
So back to the cosmic cat who, it turns out, is just a cat. If you look at just the tail, it’s really quite weird. Stripes band around this twitching form. Hair streams direct the flow of fur. The tail itself seems to probe the environment, independent of the cat as if it had its own brain and personality. So this strange life form isn’t “just a cat.” It’s an alien four-dimensional bio-sculpture that is infinite in its complexity - inside and out.
The novelty we seek online can be found in just that tail.
Does that mean a transmission state can be accessed through the mundane? The mundane has been there as long as we can remember. It reflects the source code through natural patterns—endless fractals and a complexity we can never fully unravel. If we have the same source code as trees, dolphins and mushrooms, does that mean we’re all swimming in the same invisible sea and transmission is merely employing our bodies as radio receivers to concentrate that source code. I don’t know that for sure, but it sounds cool. Who knows, maybe I’ve just been listening to too many Alan Watts lectures - but then again, I do sense the edges for myself. Though I can’t quite make it out, there is a form there.
Yet some seem to perceive more than a hazy impression. Many creatives, mathematicians, and physicists have described their discoveries as coming from beyond themselves. I’m not here to define what that 'beyond' is—nor do I think it requires any specific belief system. File this under stuff we haven’t quite figured out (and may never figure out). In the meantime, I have to trust that these folks are honestly conveying their experiences/processes - even while they may not be able to identify the origin. Hearing about these experiences is a big part of what draws me to the idea of transmission mode. If something real is happening here, I want to find out for myself.
Well, I made it to the end of the journey - the end for now. From a product based perspective, I feel a certain satisfaction having not only created something, but being able to share it with others and thus participate in the collective conversation. But I also understand in this product state that I have opened my contemplations and theories up to scrutiny. Inevitably, my “argument” may fall short, may be out of touch according to some, be limited in it’s understanding, wander all over the place - and so on. But if I also integrate a process-based mindset, then this document is perfect. It’s a perfect record of my journey - loose threads, liberal speculation, valuable/resonant insights and all. This philosophical playground will no doubt serve as substrate or a jumping off point for future creative adventures. By further integrating a transmission mindset, I open the door to move beyond myself and allow my exploration to enter an entirely new dimension - one that allows to continue the flow of existence rather than just add more stuff.
One final thought about weirdness and its root word weird. Weird to us moderns means strange or uncanny - alien. But the word is also deeply connected with the concept of fate or destiny - etymologically speaking.
I wonder if weirdness, or fate, is pulling us toward a future understanding where in order to truly be original, we have to return to the origin.
