Conversations about Creativity

Welcome!: This interview is part of an ongoing series of chats with artists about their creative process. You can find the full set of interviews, including musicians Van Dyke Parks and Jonathan Coulton, and SF Chron columnist Jon Carroll, all at www.about-creativity.com. You can also subscribe to future interviews here. Thanks a lot for dropping by, -Cecil

Photo credit: Scott Beale / laughingsquid.com.
In 2001, Ze Frank achieved net notoriety when a birthday party invitation entitled “How to Dance Properly” became an early viral video. This spark led to zefrank.com, home of a host of projects, including interactive flash toys, animations, essays, videos, and a wide variety of collaborative ventures. Over fifty million people have visited zefrank.com to date. From March 17, 2006 to March 17, 2007, he wrote, produced, and starred in The Show with zefrank, a wildly creative online daily video program.
Frank’s an adjunct professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Parsons School of Design, and SUNY Purchase. As a speaker at events like the TED conference, PopTech, and Flash Forward, he covers topics ranging from the new creativity to contagious media to airplane-cabin safety cards.
We spoke in February 2007 as his year-long run on The Show neared its conclusion.
Ze Frank on the Web: zefrank.com, The Show with zefrank
Cecil Vortex: Are there any techniques that you use in your creative process that help you generate new ideas?
Ze Frank: Self-awareness is one of the big keys. If you read a lot of the psychology literature on creativity, one of the only real, solid correlations with being able to shift your creative output is the belief that you can change it. So for me — I think I picked this up in a Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi book — I’ve spent a long time just trying to figure out the kind of cycles that I go through, trying to pay attention to the different kinds of states that I find myself in.
There are times when I feel like I’m craving what I call unsolvable problems, and I have the kind of energy you need to move forward into uncharted territory and brave that side of things. And then there are other times when that seems like the most difficult chore in the world. So I’ve also gotten pretty comfortable knowing when I need to pick up solvable problems. Programming definitely fills that void for me. Also illustrating, doing little illustrations, things like that. This is a long-winded way of saying that I think I’ve got a range of techniques that feed into how I’m feeling at that particular moment.
CV: Do you have any day-to-day habits you rely on?

Read more

Recently dubbed a member of the “Poetry Pantheon” by The New York Times Magazine, Bob Holman has previously been crowned “Ringmaster of the Spoken Word” (New York Daily News), “Dean of the Scene” (Seventeen), and “this generation’s Ezra Pound” (San Francisco Poetry Flash). His latest collection of poems, a collaboration with Chuck Close entitled A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, was exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum during the Venice Biennale and published by Aperture in fall 2006.
Holman ran the infamous poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café from 1988 to 1996. In 1995, he founded Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records, the first-ever major spoken word label. In 1996, the TV series he produced for PBS, The United States of Poetry, won the INPUT (International Public Television) Award. He is Visiting Professor of Writing at Columbia School of the Arts, Founder/Proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, and Artistic Director of Study Abroad on the Bowery, a certificate program in applied poetics.
Bob Holman on the Web: The Bowery Poetry Club, Bobholman.com, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, by Bob Holman and Chuck Close
CV: Are there any habits or tactics that you use to help feed your creativity?
BH: I’m a poet, I guess, because the tempo of a poem fits into my life. If I had a different kind of discipline, I’m sure I would write infinitely long novels. Poems ride along on the tip of your eyelash and can come and go in a blink. It’s important that you be there when they want to happen. And the way to be there is to give yourself time to percolate; you can read, you can walk, you can sit there and dream.
The other part is to be ready when they are. Which is to say, a notebook and a writing implement are your passport. I love writing in darkened theaters and at art museums. But it’s also important to have [these tools] beside your bed so no dream gets lost.
CV: What do you do when you’re feeling creatively dry?

Read more

Sanctuary #3, 42″ x 72″ acrylic on canvas, private collection. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.
James Warren Perry is an independent realist artist living and working in Northern California. His work has been featured in over 100 exhibitions at institutions around the world, including Riverside Art Museum; Palm Springs Desert Museum; Museum of Art, Kochi, Japan; Masur Museum of Art; Art Museum of Los Gatos; Bolinas Museum; Texas Artists Museum; United States Embassy, Reykjavik, Iceland; Oliver Art Center; Stanford University; University of the Pacific; Merced College; and the State of California Attorney General’s Building. He’s the recipient of a full fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and a Marin Arts Council Individual Artist’s Grant. His artwork has been featured in numerous publications, including New American Paintings, American Artist, and Artweek.
James Warren Perry on the Web: Jameswarrenperry.com
Cecil Vortex: What helps you generate new ideas?
James Warren Perry: Travel is a wonderful way to feed your creativity. You’re taken out of your normal context and can assess things in your daily life from a different point of view. I paint all over the world. When I’m off in Southeast Asia and then come back to Northern California, the shapes that seem very familiar to me on a day-to-day basis somehow seem quite exotic.
CV: Do you have any day-to-day habits that you rely on?
JWP: I’m really glad that you used that word — “habit.” Honestly, most artists that I know who have had sustained periods of productivity — people who have made careers of it — are very regular in their working habits. They just get up in the morning and they do it. Getting in the habit, that’s the thing that will sustain you much more than the stereotype of the artist who’s in the throes of creativity.
If you look at how artists have been portrayed in films, most of it’s not great. [laughter] I always think of Kirk Douglas in Lust for Life. He’s in the throes of madness. Most people I know that are pretty darn good artists, they’re just somehow regular people. They just get up in the morning and work.
CV: On your website you talk about the importance of quieting your mind and giving focused attention. Are there any techniques in particular that you use to accomplish that?

Read more

A graduate of the American Academy of Drama, Howard Kremer has performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Comedy Central’s Premium Blend as well as at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, the Montreal Comedy Festival, and top comedy clubs around the world. He’ll be performing at the upcoming Coachella Festival in April, 2007, and his half-hour comedy special airs on Comedy Central on April 6th. One of the stars, cowriters, and cocreators of MTV’s Austin Stories, Kremer has sold nine original sitcom pilots to HBO, ABC, NBC, FOX, MTV, and Comedy Central. As Dragon Boy Suede, he performs and records filthy, funny, infectious rap.
Howard Kremer on the web: Dragon Boy Suede on MySpace (adults only)
CV: What techniques do you use to help you come up with new ideas?
HK: I take walks. I find that if I’m stationary, sometimes it’s not going to happen. I take drives. I’ll force myself to go to bed if I’m not tired, because if I lay there and toss and turn then I get ideas. Other than that I have — I guess they’re formulas? I’ll change one thing. I’ll look at an object or a situation or a show and just change one thing about it. What if oranges were square? What if Gilbert Gottfried was the star of 24? If you change one thing in a dynamic, it changes all the other relationships, so you start to be able to abstract it and look at it in a different way.
CV: Does listening to music help your productivity or get in the way? For me, for example, taking a long walk without music can be a big help.
HK: Oh completely. An iPod, or even having the radio on in the house, or if you’re going for a drive and you have a CD in, you’re just not going to really create during that time. Which sometimes is good because you have to absorb too. Joe Strummer said that — you have to have input to have output.
CV: Can you describe the creative process you use when you’re working on a sitcom script? Is there anything in particular that you do to stay focused and get your work done?

Read more

Maggie Nelson is the author of The Red Parts (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2007), a nonfiction book about her family and criminal justice, and a critical study, Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, Fall 2007), as well as four books of poetry: Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, Fall 2007), Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull, 2005; finalist, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir), The Latest Winter (Hanging Loose Press, 2003), and Shiner (Hanging Loose, 2001; finalist, the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award). She’s taught literature and writing at the Graduate Writing Program of the New School, Pratt Institute of Art, and Wesleyan University, and is currently on the faculty of the School of Critical Studies at CalArts.
Maggie Nelson on the web: Amazon.com, Simon & Schuster, Soft Skull, CalArts
Cecil Vortex: Can you describe your creative process?
Maggie Nelson: I have few to no patterns, and even less dogma about how to write, or how I write. Poetry tends to come to me naturally or not at all. I spent years trying out different exercises and forms like most everyone, but the truth is that I don’t do that anymore. It may sound mystical or retro or simply depressing, but I increasingly feel myself to be a hostage to poetic impulse. I usually have to wait until a poem comes along, or until I see what’s there to be written, as Robert Creeley once put it. For me a poem often begins as a constellation of words coursing through my head like little electric shocks. This often happens when I’m in great pain or pleasure, doing laps in a pool, or in the bardo between sleeping and waking. I don’t know why. The words feel like irritants in the soft lap of an oyster, as Henry James had it. Then the pearl — if one could call it that with a straight face — starts to congeal around the irritant. A snowball in the muck.
As for non-poetry projects, that’s a different story. Usually I do a lot of reading or research until something takes possession of me. I think of research like throwing lots of crap in a cauldron — bones, feathers, blood, everything — and turning up the heat: eventually it has to come to a boil. (Whether you make something edible is a different question.) Or, let me put it this way: Often a baby in a subway station will scream back at a loud train hurtling through. If you send a train of information hurtling through your brain often and fast enough, and if the train screeches loudly enough, you may eventually find yourself yelling back.
CV: Are there any techniques that you use to spark new poems or gather up ideas?

Read more

For the last thirty years, Jeff Raz has performed internationally with circuses and theaters including The Pickle Circus, Lincoln Center Theater, Dell’Arte Players, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and the Marin and S.F. Shakespeare Festivals. Since 1990 he has written ten plays and two solo plays. His television work includes Live From Lincoln Center and Disney’s The New Vaudevillians.
Raz is the founder and director of the Clown Conservatory, a program that has trained some of the top young clowns working in Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Eloize, Ringling Bros., and other circuses around the world. He’s currently performing the lead role of “The Dead Clown” in Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo.
Jeff Raz on the Web: Jeffraz.com, The Clown Conservatory
Cecil Vortex: Do you have any techniques you use to help you get into a more inspired mode?
Jeff Raz: You know, I usually don’t think in [those terms] because I’ve made a living doing this since I was 15. I’m kind of a blue-collar guy in that way. I go to work. The way I look at it and the way that works for me is, I just keep plugging ahead.
I started as a juggler. As a juggler, you can always get up and throw the balls. Or you get up and you throw the clubs. No inspiration needed. Throw the damn things. If they’re in the air, wonderful. It they’re on the ground, throw ’em again. It’s kind of simple.
When I write a play, what I do is, once I’ve got the research going and I’ve got it floating around in my head, I’ll try to write the whole play in a week. Just write the f****r. And it’s terrible. (I got this from Annie Lamott, from her book Bird by Bird.) So I just do that, and then I can edit it, which I do better than creating from whole cloth. And again, both of those [steps] are kind of designed to make sure I know what the job of the day is. I don’t do well waiting for inspiration.
Now, the other morning I was working ten-show weeks, which means I’m on stage for twenty-five hours a week, which is a huge amount of stage time. I get done at 11 o’clock. I get home and the turnaround between Saturday night and when I have to be back on-site at 11 o’clock putting on makeup the next morning is the tough one. And then we had a cabaret after, so we actually had an eleven-show week. I was getting really tired. But sonofabitch if I’m not up at 6:30 on Sunday morning with ideas about the show.
CV: And why do you think that is?

Read more