our everyday lives

Hey. How’s your day? Maybe good, maybe bad. In this story, I’d like to share some of my findings, I’ve been through quite a phase. That moment when you’re awake, and, asking yourself, if I had absolute freedom and responsibility of myself, today, what would I do? Or better: how do I live everyday? Some people say “oh, that’s what adults do”. Most “adults” have no idea of what they do.

Here’s how I’ve observed what most adults do.

Nowadays, it’s so cool to be “man, I’m so fucking busy, it’s insane”. Some people live by fear or obligations. The duty filler. The stressed doormat. Whatever you want to call them. They always need the approval of their entourage. They need to prove that they are doing something. They need to reply to what is asked of them by others. They only exist because the others ask them to exist. It is the typical office guy, the typical “obliged parent”. “Oh, you know, I have so many responsibilities, so many bills, that I can’t have a life”. Really? Or is it because you are so afraid of life and never asked yourself the question: “what do I do?” or worse “who am I?”. So you let other people define it for you. I understand, it is scary to be asking that question, alone.

Some people live by pleasure. You know, the pleasure seekers, the clowns, the party animals. I have been quite one. And I still am, when the context is cool. So you drift on life, from pleasure to pleasure, from joy to joy.. but at some points, the joys look all the same. It is the same old dub step party with drunk people. It is the same old “great to be in a cool restaurant and eat great food”. Pleasures dilute and I don’t find sense in them. Sometimes, yes, but not all the time. The “been there, done that” grows pretty fast, especially when you like to live a fast life. Jumping out an airplane? check. Got so high, passed out for two days? check. Diving in exotic islands? check. What’s next? What happens when the confettis wear down? And.. above all, do you really want to put your life in pause between weekends? What if week ends suck? What if the party suck? So your life suck?

Some people live by success. The ultimate achiever, the “I’ve got to be the best”. Truth is, there is no “best” in this world. Maybe for a moment. I tell you a story: the night when you win that competition, everybody thinks you’re the best. You shake hand, say some politically correct shit, laugh politely at some jokes. The next day, you’re the same old you. No smarter, no prettier. A tad richer. So you move on to the next success. And your life is a roller coaster of prices. But I don’t feel fulfilled. Maybe for a moment. But again, the price is great, but why is it kind of fake? What if you’re not the best? You die? You don’t exist?

Some people just… run away. And live secluded. Or travel eternally. It’s kind of sad.

—-

It’s not easy. Because what society defined for me as “success” and “happiness” is empty and it is not what I want. And, from what I’ve seen from people around me, it is not what they want either. You know: we buy things we don’t need, with the money we don’t have, to impress the people we don’t like. Typical escape plan.

Isn’t the ultimate goal is to live a fulfilled life?

I’ve found fragments of my answers that I’m going to share it here. Maybe it is totally wrong for you, or maybe it resonates with you, you decide.

Do what matters

Kind of different from “do what you love”. Do what you love is kind of tricky, because, what happens on the days when it is hard and you hate what you do? You say “oh, I don’t love what I do” and you give up? Do what matters is different, it is really about “what can I contribute to this community, small or large?” in short: what can I offer people? If you happen to love what you have to offer, it’s great. But otherwise, it doesn’t really matter. It is having a sense of civic duty. That you need to provide for others.

Deciding to matters rid us of self paranoia. The “I am useless” feeling, because… we are actually useful. Being self absorbed is painful because well, we’re all imperfect. You are going to criticise something about yourself, at some point. But contributing meaningfully and being selfless rid you of this too intense self examination and make you feel that you are useful. It also give you things in return, which is pretty awesome.

This is very different from the “busy doormat” because you have observed, analysed, thought and decided that you are actively bringing things and services to others.

Deciding to meaningfully contribute counters the “buying impressive things” trend. It is only because when people think they are not relevant and worthless that they buy things to make them look worthy. Typical social race: “look, I have money, so I must be important!” Sad thing is, the things and money are not you. And people are not impressed. Have you seen some douche bags passing by in fancy cars with loud music? Yes. Is it stupid? Yes. Is it sad? Yes. Deeply, they think they are worthless.

Always evolve

When your friends turn 30, there’s a very funny phenomena: they try to “settle down”. Live somewhere, have a car, have a home, pets, lovers etc… really, being adults. Settle down is kind of a fucked up thing because: one day is like another, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day. Earn some money, have some fun. And you can see yourself dying, down the road, with days looking all the same. A slow paced life is okay, but a monotonous life is not okay. We trade security for boredom. You wait for holidays or drugged up week ends. Which, ultimately, end up being the same. To break out of this is pretty simple: try new things, have new ideas, read new books, master a new skill. I have noticed lots of “adults” doing always the same thing. Is it fun? I’m not sure. I think if you always do the same thing you go straight in to depression. Humans are made to evolve and learn new things, this is why, when we were kids, life was soooo not boring: everything was new. Can we do that being grown ups?

No professional specialisation

This one is a tricky one. People are obsessed with their careers, today. Why? because we are afraid to be losers. We are afraid to fail, to not matter, to be irrelevant. We live in a society where everybody is a specialist: you fit in ONE role. That’s it. What if you can not fulfil that role perfectly? You’re a loser. Or you drag down life feeling irrelevant. Like you are a failure. It’s like only having one arm to eat and somebody cuts it off. How do you eat? Smashing your head on the plate? It is quite difficult to achieve but it is extremely important to be professionally broad so you can free yourself of the obligation to “succeed”. If one day one thing goes wrong, then, you do the other thing. And vice versa. Two or three professional occupations are amply enough.

An adapted pace

We think everything is money nowadays. Even time. Time is money. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Time is precious. What do you do when you’ve traded all your time for money? Can you spend it? Well.. no, because you have no time. Even when you spend it, you don’t have time to enjoy what you’ve spent. That’s kind of ironic. What if I say we spend less, but have more time to enjoy things, to actually observe and intimately experience things.  So you’re not “stressed out” and feeling that you need to “decompress”. Like, go in the office, take same coke, pump up, pump down. That’s absurd. It’s like being a fucking hamster in your own volition. No, it is to take back your time, take back your decisions, take back your experiences and not try to follow some pace that is not yours. It might cut you back on a few things and on some money. But, imagine that, does it really matter? Is it better to have ten books that you’ve never read or is it better to have two that you’ve spent time reading and practicing? Besides, most cool stuffs are super cheap. I’ve been several times in “chic” restaurant. I hate it. Too fucking formal, too fucking fake. And I’ve paid a fortune.

I’m saying that we need less wealth and more freedom. The ever production is absurd and it’s making even the best among us mad.

 Amend: most important of all: have fun and have a great community

Last but not least, this one is a very important that I wouldn’t need to elaborate. There’s no point in doing this or any thing if it’s not a blast! Gather with great friends, create a great community. There’s no better feeling than creating awesome things while having a awesome time with friends!

EDIT: This story was not meant to be only reflective: I’m going to verify the facts and emotions with people around me and we are going to make a change. There’s no point in thinking if there’s no action. The building of this fulfilled community is the ultimate goal.

mechanism of creativity

When I was a kid, well, a big kid, 10 years old. I lived near a farm in Geneva and, next to it was this “pleasure centre”. It was a very cool building. We would gather with the kids of the neighbourhood and play games, create stuffs, film stuffs and play sport. I still remember the time I went home with a freaking bloody nose from the hockey game. Next day, we would do sculpture and next day drawing. As a kid, I was pretty good. Much better than I am now. See, back then, creativity was fun. It was about drawing your favourite imaginary character, telling your wishing stories, sculpting your future dragon pet. Let’s say, creativity unleashed.

Fast forward, creativity now is tough. You’re never satisfied. There’s the next critics. And there’s the next ideology clash, you’re angry, bored and afraid at the same time. When you disagree with something, the whole universe is against you. When you stand in front of the audience presenting your latest findings, it is Viet Nam war. It’s really, really tough. You get really depressed and are rarely happy. In short, creativity looks cool on the outside. It looks like hell on the inside. You know, in those mobile phone adds, when there’s this cool dude working on this cool painting. Well, in reality, he’s depressed and frustrated as fuck. If you care about your creation, you are miserable. Fairly recently, I asked myself: “why?”

What is it that is inherent in creativity as we know it that tosses us everyday in a foul mood. And those guys that don’t stress, they do pretty much not so profound stuffs. Conventional and boring. In my observations, it is almost categorical: talented and profound: miserable. whatever and boring: seems okay all the time.

First of all, the distinction from my childhood story is: we didn’t really give much of a shit. We created as kids, for us, for pleasure. There’s no responsibility in our creativity. If we screw up, fine. If we do well, fine. Whatever. Now, most artists adopt the “whatever man” attitude. The typical “I’m an artist” blasé face. Like, “I’m so living on the edge right now, whatever this is whatever”. Wether it is good, or bad, I don’t really care. But it’s pretty fake and they are missing the point. The Warhol of the 21st century. The hipsters of the trendies. I think it is partially self protection. You need to protect yourself so you pretend not to care. Because you actually do care.

Truth is, from my findings, creativity is very unhealthy. From a psychological point of view. No wonder why most artists died like… well, not so well. For me, there’s two fundamental sides to good creativity: one side: criticality, uniqueness and relevance. We can call it “depth”. The other side: production and flawless execution. We can call it “thing”. And these two sides really don’t go well together. It’s like being manic depressive. It’s like thinking perfection and making imperfection. It’s very, very horrible.

I have tried to analyse the process of creativity within me throughout a lot of my projects. Ranging from paintings, typography to architecture and urbanism. From my personal point of view, urbanism is the most difficult of all discipline. Really. It is a true bitch. Anyhow, I’ve assembled some psychological processes that would maybe facilitate the act of creating. I won’t be covering the why and the what and the specific how of creating. But just as a general “state of mind” guideline.

Creativity is painful in three steps: the ego, the decisions and the executions.

Letting go of your ego is probably one of the hardest thing. And the creativity world kind of works against it, it blames you for your ideas, it makes you feel like a piece of shit for a bad idea. Truth is, everybody have bad ideas. All the time. So what’s the big deal? Even when you succeed in your ideas perfectly, some people will still hate you for it. So, again, what’s the big deal? Embrace the hate and love and focus on what’s important: your creation. Once we understand that it’s not about being the best but making the best, the whole dynamic shifts. We no longer fear to be ridiculed, because, you know, fuck them. It is really about the satisfaction of bringing to reality the best thing you can make for yourself and other people. And the blast that you have during the process. So be ridiculous and let go of the ego. The ancients artists were so courageous because they had the concept of “having the genius” instead of “being the genius”. Which, in the first case, is more realistic. “Being the genius” is unrealistic. For everybody. “Being the genius” leads to suicide.

That guy is really really intense.

The decisions steps are quite difficult. It requires a clear mind and requires high criticality. It requires assembly of informations, imagining new scenarios, criticising the status quo. In brief, envisioning what is to come. This is the most volatile step, I’d say, as ideas come and go. And sometimes, the best ideas don’t stay in your head for more than a second. Always have something to write and draw at hand, archive in an anarchist way. I like to put a lot of things as they come in, freely. They could be wrong, or they could be right. I note them anyway. At some points, all of the gathered ideas start to create a network between them, they start to have a coherence. This is when we move to the next step. Sort them, put them in relations and create new relations. Don’t be frustrated if they suck. Take more time. But ideas are extremely important, like with all matters of the heart, don’t settle for shit. Only settle for the best. It is important, for me personally, that the decision step is entirely detached from the next step. I don’t believe in “learning by doing” in art. Decide first, then take action. “Art in action” only create mindless stuffs. And “I don’t know what I’m doing” is seriously stupid and irresponsible.

Sorry for the Pollock fans. I can’t stand this guy.

Moving on to the execution. This one doesn’t concern “execution” in expensive art or architecture. Because execution in architecture, you have to be perfect the first time. It concerns art and projects. After the decisions steps are made, execute them. This step can be quite painful if you stop, decide, execute, stop, decide. This leads to tremendous frustration. You feel incapable. Really. Instead, trust your prior decisions and ideas, carry them on to a certain mature point, with an almost zen like consistency. This allows me personally to feel good about what I do. To actually feel that I am achieving something. If I stop, doubt, stop doubt all the time. My days and projects are hell. So the execution have to be almost in a flow like state. Just do. Don’t ask.

Once the two micro steps of decision + execution are accomplished. Sit back and look. Then criticise, then decide the corrections or the next step. Is it good enough? Is the question I always ask myself when looking at this step.

Ultimately, I think the goal would be to create awesome stuffs without the awkward weird feelings that come with it. I mean, sometimes, when you create, you want to shoot yourself. And, honestly, that’s bad. Of course, creativity is much more complex than this, but explaining the logistics of it could help in some way. By the way, this article goes quite well with “recipe for innovation“. An article I wrote approx 2 years ago. It kinda talks about ideas having sex.

Cheers.