A tension that comes up a lot in my professional work as a graphic designer is between what John Cleese called the open and closed mode (there's a talk on Creativity in Management you can find on YouTube). The open mode is playful, humorous, exploratory, while the closed mode is tighter, more hierarchical. Closed mode is the mindset most people have in business contexts. I think there's a little overlap between this and explore/exploit.
As a designer, I have to adhere to brand guidelines and the constraints of the project brief. But ideally, I'll have enough room to play around and explore. In the past, I've even intentionally broken the rules in the early stages of a project or purposely made something that looked horrible just to get myself to open up. My favorite place to be is right at the edge, pushing hard against the constraints. (Unfortunately, a lot of my recent day job work hasn't given me as much room to explore.)
Writing is similar I think - there's a tension between creation and editing. George Saunders has been very helpful here. His book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is incredible, as is his substack Story Club.
Thanks for this post, Austin. There's a lot of meaty stuff here I want to go back and explore.
Aug 30, 2022·edited Aug 30, 2022Liked by Austin Kleon
This immediately brought to mind Keats’ notion of “negative capability,” which he wrote about in a letter to his brothers:
“several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason – “
There’s a tension there, I think, and it’s a very difficult position to maintain. I live on a tree-lined street (big oaks, mostly), and sometimes when I’m walking toward home and there’s a light breeze in the branches, I feel like I’m caught up in some sort of mystery. I once described it to a friend as walking down The Avenue of the Holy Ghost.
But only for a moment. There’s always that kill-joy voice in my head saying, “They’re only trees.” I wish I could stay balanced in the moment for longer--the moment of being in the world and outside of it at the same time--but it’s hard.
As for negative capability and creativity--I think when I'm writing really well or totally immersed in a creative project of any sort, there's also that tension/balance between a kind of dream state and a very practical application of craft. You need both, I think, to make something really interesting.
I hope this makes sense. I have Covid, so it’s possible I’m rambling like a madwoman.
One creative tension I have yet to resolve: When to fake it forward (just write some stuff, just keep swimming, la-la-la...), and when to shut off the computer, take a few days, and hope a direction for a story will emerge while I'm driving to the horse barn or playing solitaire cribbage. Writing any old "next scene" signals the subconscious, "Yo, we are supposed to Be Writing a Book, ladies. Some words would be good. Maybe a character arc if it's not too much trouble?" But it can also result in investment in wrong turns and blind alleys, in days trying to force what I have already to fit with what I need for the book, when it... just does not.
Letting go and easing my grip can result in similar time wasted. Some books have no great inspiration in the drafting phase. They demand that I pick and shovel on through the story, and hope that revisions will add depth and nuance.
Writers are fond of referring to "my process," or "the process," but then there's the book's process, and that only seems knowable in hindsight. All very un-widget-y and not what the productivity coaches teach.
“We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to leave life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full. “ —Thomas Merton
For me, the creative tension that fascinates the most is that between inexperience and mastery. In all the different mediums and/or types of artwork I've done, there's a vitality inherent in being a beginner at something that can easily be lost when you hit your stride, start getting better at something, and possibly slip into becoming formulaic. There's a sweet spot somewhere in there that's very difficult to maintain. During my last big project (actually the biggest project I've ever done), I seemed to break the sound barrier a bit by becoming more courageous in allowing myself to continue being a novice. I'm not sure that's the best way to describe it but, I gave up my concern with mastery. My credo became something along the lines of "don't do well—just DO". In reaching that point I think I created some of my best artwork. Now let's see how I do on my next project, haha!
For me, the tightrope I walk is trying to find the right balance of personal/professional knowledge I feel that I can share online or in public. On the personal side I'm both introverted and private, plus there are always limits to what a person should share online, knowing that it doesn't just affect me, but also my friends and family. On the professional side, between my employment agreement and corporate code of conduct, I've always felt it best to firewall anything close those topics. So it's limiting, especially since my work experience has largely shaped my writing style and some of my skills and interests!
On the other hand, I do have the opportunity to dig deeper into nerdy stuff and maybe that separation is a good break from everything else.
Books on the subject of paradox... this is a stretch but there's a book by David Ben called Advantage Play, who was both a corporate lawyer and magician, still doing the latter I believe. A lot of the book revolves around magic tricks and illusions but it's really about creative problem solving: generating lots of ideas and narrowing down to solutions. One key take away is that there can be multiple ways to achieve an effect (trick, illusion, etc.) One cool anecdote is a story about how Dai Vernon fooled Houdini, who claimed he could identify how any card trick was performed. Vernon stumped Houdini, even after letting Houdini see the trick multiple times. How? Vernon achieved the effect (finding the right card) by doing the trick a bit differently each time, confusing Houdini. And isn't that what magic is, seemingly producing effects in the realm of paradoxes?
This brought up another kind of "creative tension," in that as a creative, I feel like I have one foot in each of two worlds. One is the working artist, trying to be free of judgement and able to explore and create; the other edits, sends emails, is personable and level-headed when doing all the business things an artist needs to do for their work to live out in the world. I just think about that a lot, and have come across SO many fellow artists at my workplace who, for whatever reason, aren't able to balance those things and get both feet moving in the same direction.
Oh my gosh…the list of traits…reading it felt like being seen…and gaining understanding of myself and having words to put to it. Two books come to mind…though not as it relates to creativity per say but they came to mind as I read this. The first your book club read 4000 weeks, and Lessons From the Dying by Rodney Smith…neither probably not so much about tension as paradox…fullness from finitude. Great newsletter as always!!
There’s at least one pair of elephants creating tension in most artistic work: Time and money. When available in great quantities, they don’t matter quite so much. But when they are absent, paradoxically, brilliant work sometimes occurs. (and then, probably more often, it does not). Anyway – big time tension creators: Time and money.
Book Recommendation: "The Executive's Compass" by James O'Toole of the Aspen Institute (1995 revised edition). Still in print. I read this in the late 90s and still refer to it. Short (176p) but powerful. Key points:
=Simplicity on the other side of complexity (concept attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes). It's about doing the hard work of slogging through contradictions and paradoxes to get to the core, to a solution. Uses Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as a classic example. (Lincoln did not throw that speech together as myth would have it.)
= Consider a compass with Liberty, Equality, Community, and Efficiency at the four main compass points. "The tensions among these four ideas create what historian James MacGregor Burns calls 'the deadlock of democracy.'"
= "Americans tend to disagree about most matters of public concern. In fact, that's putting it mildly."
= "[The compass] helps us to understand the nature of the good society, but it tells us little about the nature of the good person."
- Appendix A outlines "Personal Uses" and "Corporate Applications" of the compass.
From Booklist: "The 'executive's compass' is a tool O'Toole developed over his years at Aspen to provide a grounding for value-based decision making. Divided into four quadrants (liberty, equality, efficiency, and community), it maps the conflicting pull of values all decision makers must face."
My thought: This book brings a larger context to the creative tensions you talk about. The push/pull among the four compass points either add or take away energy from the ability to be creative in one's own life.
Oh boy…in for a re-read,with pen and paper, of comments and the meat contained within!! Thanks AK for letting your readers expand on such a topic. Will mentally chew while biking today and look forward to an evening read of all.
It’s also what John Keats was talking about with “negative capability” and what F. Scott Fitzgerald meant by “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
I'm creatively expanded! I'd already begun to integrate "The Coincidence of Opposites" from my months long caring daily reading of The Matter with Things . . . and you sharing Keats "negative capability" coining the term, such that it has its own Wikipedia page . . . I am committed to reading/studying more caringly when I can find The Tension of Time and The Balanced Tension of Attention to our Wikipedia team mates who've created the page.
I'm also happy for you sharing: psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s list of the 10 “paradoxical traits” of creative people: from his book CREATVITY! I hadn't remembered that from my reading (probably 20 years ago) What I'd gotten from that book was the simple answer most of those "creative champions" gave to the question (something like this): You are so successful and likely don't need or have-to work . . . why do you go to work every day?" The answers were almost all some variation of "I'd go to work every day, even if they didn't pay me. And the reason is . . . [drumroll] . . . the sense of discovery . . . what am I going to discover today!"
Creative opposites for me. On camping: I'm the burro that packs it in and the donkey that packs it out. A wild burro anticipating the stay. A donkey who is calm steady and strong to pack it up.
Thank you. Thank you. This was SO what I needed this morning. Was in a deep funk yesterday and not feeling that great this morning. Another paradox is people in Alcoholics Anonymous admitting they are powerless over alcohol and saying later they gain power by surrender.
I hope that by the time you do write the book, Austin, you are able to do a tour.
These tensions are everywhere in daily life for me. One in particular is the explore/exploit. My husband and I have two folders in our OpenTable app. One folder is full of the restaurants we want to explore and if we like it, the place moves to our exploit folder. We have these two folders for each city we like to visit and live in. I didn’t think of it as a tension but now I see it. Thanks also for sharing the paradoxical traits in creative people. I see them in myself
A tension that comes up a lot in my professional work as a graphic designer is between what John Cleese called the open and closed mode (there's a talk on Creativity in Management you can find on YouTube). The open mode is playful, humorous, exploratory, while the closed mode is tighter, more hierarchical. Closed mode is the mindset most people have in business contexts. I think there's a little overlap between this and explore/exploit.
As a designer, I have to adhere to brand guidelines and the constraints of the project brief. But ideally, I'll have enough room to play around and explore. In the past, I've even intentionally broken the rules in the early stages of a project or purposely made something that looked horrible just to get myself to open up. My favorite place to be is right at the edge, pushing hard against the constraints. (Unfortunately, a lot of my recent day job work hasn't given me as much room to explore.)
Writing is similar I think - there's a tension between creation and editing. George Saunders has been very helpful here. His book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is incredible, as is his substack Story Club.
Thanks for this post, Austin. There's a lot of meaty stuff here I want to go back and explore.
This immediately brought to mind Keats’ notion of “negative capability,” which he wrote about in a letter to his brothers:
“several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason – “
There’s a tension there, I think, and it’s a very difficult position to maintain. I live on a tree-lined street (big oaks, mostly), and sometimes when I’m walking toward home and there’s a light breeze in the branches, I feel like I’m caught up in some sort of mystery. I once described it to a friend as walking down The Avenue of the Holy Ghost.
But only for a moment. There’s always that kill-joy voice in my head saying, “They’re only trees.” I wish I could stay balanced in the moment for longer--the moment of being in the world and outside of it at the same time--but it’s hard.
As for negative capability and creativity--I think when I'm writing really well or totally immersed in a creative project of any sort, there's also that tension/balance between a kind of dream state and a very practical application of craft. You need both, I think, to make something really interesting.
I hope this makes sense. I have Covid, so it’s possible I’m rambling like a madwoman.
One creative tension I have yet to resolve: When to fake it forward (just write some stuff, just keep swimming, la-la-la...), and when to shut off the computer, take a few days, and hope a direction for a story will emerge while I'm driving to the horse barn or playing solitaire cribbage. Writing any old "next scene" signals the subconscious, "Yo, we are supposed to Be Writing a Book, ladies. Some words would be good. Maybe a character arc if it's not too much trouble?" But it can also result in investment in wrong turns and blind alleys, in days trying to force what I have already to fit with what I need for the book, when it... just does not.
Letting go and easing my grip can result in similar time wasted. Some books have no great inspiration in the drafting phase. They demand that I pick and shovel on through the story, and hope that revisions will add depth and nuance.
Writers are fond of referring to "my process," or "the process," but then there's the book's process, and that only seems knowable in hindsight. All very un-widget-y and not what the productivity coaches teach.
“We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to leave life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full. “ —Thomas Merton
For me, the creative tension that fascinates the most is that between inexperience and mastery. In all the different mediums and/or types of artwork I've done, there's a vitality inherent in being a beginner at something that can easily be lost when you hit your stride, start getting better at something, and possibly slip into becoming formulaic. There's a sweet spot somewhere in there that's very difficult to maintain. During my last big project (actually the biggest project I've ever done), I seemed to break the sound barrier a bit by becoming more courageous in allowing myself to continue being a novice. I'm not sure that's the best way to describe it but, I gave up my concern with mastery. My credo became something along the lines of "don't do well—just DO". In reaching that point I think I created some of my best artwork. Now let's see how I do on my next project, haha!
For me, the tightrope I walk is trying to find the right balance of personal/professional knowledge I feel that I can share online or in public. On the personal side I'm both introverted and private, plus there are always limits to what a person should share online, knowing that it doesn't just affect me, but also my friends and family. On the professional side, between my employment agreement and corporate code of conduct, I've always felt it best to firewall anything close those topics. So it's limiting, especially since my work experience has largely shaped my writing style and some of my skills and interests!
On the other hand, I do have the opportunity to dig deeper into nerdy stuff and maybe that separation is a good break from everything else.
Books on the subject of paradox... this is a stretch but there's a book by David Ben called Advantage Play, who was both a corporate lawyer and magician, still doing the latter I believe. A lot of the book revolves around magic tricks and illusions but it's really about creative problem solving: generating lots of ideas and narrowing down to solutions. One key take away is that there can be multiple ways to achieve an effect (trick, illusion, etc.) One cool anecdote is a story about how Dai Vernon fooled Houdini, who claimed he could identify how any card trick was performed. Vernon stumped Houdini, even after letting Houdini see the trick multiple times. How? Vernon achieved the effect (finding the right card) by doing the trick a bit differently each time, confusing Houdini. And isn't that what magic is, seemingly producing effects in the realm of paradoxes?
This brought up another kind of "creative tension," in that as a creative, I feel like I have one foot in each of two worlds. One is the working artist, trying to be free of judgement and able to explore and create; the other edits, sends emails, is personable and level-headed when doing all the business things an artist needs to do for their work to live out in the world. I just think about that a lot, and have come across SO many fellow artists at my workplace who, for whatever reason, aren't able to balance those things and get both feet moving in the same direction.
Oh my gosh…the list of traits…reading it felt like being seen…and gaining understanding of myself and having words to put to it. Two books come to mind…though not as it relates to creativity per say but they came to mind as I read this. The first your book club read 4000 weeks, and Lessons From the Dying by Rodney Smith…neither probably not so much about tension as paradox…fullness from finitude. Great newsletter as always!!
There’s at least one pair of elephants creating tension in most artistic work: Time and money. When available in great quantities, they don’t matter quite so much. But when they are absent, paradoxically, brilliant work sometimes occurs. (and then, probably more often, it does not). Anyway – big time tension creators: Time and money.
Book Recommendation: "The Executive's Compass" by James O'Toole of the Aspen Institute (1995 revised edition). Still in print. I read this in the late 90s and still refer to it. Short (176p) but powerful. Key points:
=Simplicity on the other side of complexity (concept attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes). It's about doing the hard work of slogging through contradictions and paradoxes to get to the core, to a solution. Uses Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as a classic example. (Lincoln did not throw that speech together as myth would have it.)
= Consider a compass with Liberty, Equality, Community, and Efficiency at the four main compass points. "The tensions among these four ideas create what historian James MacGregor Burns calls 'the deadlock of democracy.'"
= "Americans tend to disagree about most matters of public concern. In fact, that's putting it mildly."
= "[The compass] helps us to understand the nature of the good society, but it tells us little about the nature of the good person."
- Appendix A outlines "Personal Uses" and "Corporate Applications" of the compass.
From Booklist: "The 'executive's compass' is a tool O'Toole developed over his years at Aspen to provide a grounding for value-based decision making. Divided into four quadrants (liberty, equality, efficiency, and community), it maps the conflicting pull of values all decision makers must face."
My thought: This book brings a larger context to the creative tensions you talk about. The push/pull among the four compass points either add or take away energy from the ability to be creative in one's own life.
Oh boy…in for a re-read,with pen and paper, of comments and the meat contained within!! Thanks AK for letting your readers expand on such a topic. Will mentally chew while biking today and look forward to an evening read of all.
WOW! Thanks for this!
It’s also what John Keats was talking about with “negative capability” and what F. Scott Fitzgerald meant by “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
I'm creatively expanded! I'd already begun to integrate "The Coincidence of Opposites" from my months long caring daily reading of The Matter with Things . . . and you sharing Keats "negative capability" coining the term, such that it has its own Wikipedia page . . . I am committed to reading/studying more caringly when I can find The Tension of Time and The Balanced Tension of Attention to our Wikipedia team mates who've created the page.
I'm also happy for you sharing: psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s list of the 10 “paradoxical traits” of creative people: from his book CREATVITY! I hadn't remembered that from my reading (probably 20 years ago) What I'd gotten from that book was the simple answer most of those "creative champions" gave to the question (something like this): You are so successful and likely don't need or have-to work . . . why do you go to work every day?" The answers were almost all some variation of "I'd go to work every day, even if they didn't pay me. And the reason is . . . [drumroll] . . . the sense of discovery . . . what am I going to discover today!"
Creative opposites for me. On camping: I'm the burro that packs it in and the donkey that packs it out. A wild burro anticipating the stay. A donkey who is calm steady and strong to pack it up.
Thank you. Thank you. This was SO what I needed this morning. Was in a deep funk yesterday and not feeling that great this morning. Another paradox is people in Alcoholics Anonymous admitting they are powerless over alcohol and saying later they gain power by surrender.
I hope that by the time you do write the book, Austin, you are able to do a tour.
These tensions are everywhere in daily life for me. One in particular is the explore/exploit. My husband and I have two folders in our OpenTable app. One folder is full of the restaurants we want to explore and if we like it, the place moves to our exploit folder. We have these two folders for each city we like to visit and live in. I didn’t think of it as a tension but now I see it. Thanks also for sharing the paradoxical traits in creative people. I see them in myself
“…like Jonas himself , I find myself traveling toward my destiny in the belly of paradox.” —Thomas Merton