A new insurmountable

I have a major AI problem and it’s multi-faceted.

It feels to me that humanity is sliding into a new age of stupid. This obsession with smart phones was bad enough before the developed world woke up sweating in the night and vomited AI all over itself. It was already upsetting enough to see teenagers hunched over screens, rows of them on park benches, next to each other in the physical realm, but each off in some virtual brain soup sludge swamp, alone in spirit. Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation spells out a damning account of why it’s caused a mental health crisis, and what we can start to do about it. But now… fuck me… NOW.

I can’t fucking move without someone smacking the word ‘AI’ against the side of my head. Not only has it shrunk the work pool for illustrators and other professional creators, it’s just everywhere. People are asking the likes of ChatGPT stupid, basic things, that their brains should be processing to stop them turning to grey mush. There are people making videos of rows with ‘AI partners.’

The genie is out of the bottle, and as a father and professional artist, it’s causing me all kinds of anger to manage.

The energy/resource consumption of the technology, just like blockchain technology, is apocalyptic. With each unseasonably wet, hot, or cold day, I’m convinced climate breakdown is being accelerated by our unfettered data gluttony. We sleep with the sounds of birdsong, or rivers streamed. We add our absent cousin into photos. We try to make a Google search but without any say in the matter, spend 10 x the energy because Google also routes our query through AI.

Darkest of all, I see a video of a ‘humanoid robot’ demonstration as it works away tirelessly at a Mercedes Benz car manufacturing plant, triggering very real waking nightmares akin to The Animatrix and Terminator.

Don’t get me wrong, there are astounding uses of AI, including the tracking of illegal loggers in rainforests and study of the gut microbiome in medical science, but why oh why was this powerful technology every lumped into the lap of every Tom, Dick, and Harry?

I haven’t touched it yet (aside from clumsy uses of Google Chrome, forgetting their ugly default) on moral grounds. Freshwater is already in short supply out there. I have to look my children in the eye, knowing that one day, they’ll want to know why society is collapsing around them.

Needless to say, all of this pushes me close to, and often, deep into fight, flight, freeze, into perplexed rage and a sense of alienation from my fellow humans as I see mass idiocy flirting with ecological disasters that we cannot yet imagine.

But what am I to do? Sit here stewing, fucking up my body and energy, jeopardising my ability to find work where AI has left a commission-shaped hole? Being a shit dad chewing at his nails and snapping at his kids? No. I’ll continue the assemblage of my go-bag, and my slow attempt to learn basic survival skills, and protesting and refraining where possible. Last week at Paradiso, I listened as artist Tala Schlossberg spoke of her beautiful writing, explaining that yes, there’s heaviness out there, and the future might hold dark things, but right here, in this present, the only bit we can control, the only bit that exists, there is beauty. Beauty in the sounds around us, beauty in the shape of shadows. So I breathe and try to shut down the whirring visions of mechanic robots before I suffer another overheated fan because Tala is right, and if the rest of my clever apes are going to blow it all up for the silliest of reasons, then I’ll at least try to go down cherishing what is right here before it’s gone.

The Anatomy of a Burst of Anxiety

I caught the bastard. Watched it on CCTV as it cackled, hosing down my guts with cortisol, scattering spreadsheets of financial not-quite-enoughs around my buckled brain. That’s what they say: step back and observe. The trouble is, when we’re talking about anxiety and panic thoughts, there’s no hired muscle we can send in to apprehend the offender.

It started on Wednesday when I found myself fretting about the obscene resources use associated with AI. As a parent with a stake in the next generation of living things, hearing this stuff conjures horrendous imaginings of uninhabitable futures.

The concerns pinched at me as I got dressed and set off for a meeting in London but dissipated in the business. As I barrelled back from the meeting, through the park in Salisbury, I started mentally calculating the job money I’m owed. Welcome to the pinball freelance brain. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. The trouble is, I was still shattered and slightly jet-lagged from a trip to Paradiso festival in Mexico. So, my defences are down. Said meeting was about coaching work with an agency. I’m in the midst of a transitional phase in my career – still an illustrator, but caught in a downturn. I’m coaching and writing more too. I love all of it, but it’s a heavy load. This extra weight of pressure capitalised on my financially concerned brain, and the ageing, brittle, corrugated roof gave way.

Before I knew it, tired and unable to challenge my thoughts the way I know I need to, I’m anxious. Freaking out as I struggle to get my key in the lock. Too much to process, all out of energy.

Each concern is valid, but in the classic anxiety way, they’re mutated beyond all rational recognition, mating and multiplying into other concerns, trivial but terrifying concerns ranging from when will I find time to clean the house through to will next door suddenly decide to cut down their tree in the midst of a biodiversity crisis that threatens our very existence, like seemingly every other fucker who wants to fit another car on their driveway.

But it gets exhausting, so I drop voice notes on friends who I know will care, and will help with suggestions and personal stories. I talk to my wife who is better at mental equilibrium than me, and helps.

Now, late afternoon, I feel much better, but must remain vigilant for the return of the adrenaline as darkness falls. They say do the thought challenging when you feel better to avoid the classic anxiety tactic of stopping the work the moment you feel better. That’s great advice for us busybody artists, isn’t it?

With a Bump

An incredible trip to the inaugural Paradiso festival in Mérida, Mexico, is surreal and brilliant. I wrote on my social media and made sure to remind any readers that this kind of career high is invariably gift wrapped in 1000 frustrations, lows, and blasts of self-doubt.

Now I have a stunning example.

There’s no grace period when you’re a parent. Laura heroically steered the family ship for almost a week in my absence, ensuring that not only were the twins catered for, but Walter White, our hound was walked twice daily too. Oh, and she had to work each day too. So, I land, I tell hyper-paced tales of my adventure, I crash and sleep. Then, WHAM! Welocme back, 6am, make breakfast, walk dog, do school run, and into work. It’s fine. It’s what we do.

I’m nodding on the sofa, trying to update this diary through closed eyes when someone rings the doorbell. Up I jump, distant and detached from reality, and open it.

‘Hello, I’ve come to read your gas meter.’ Red rising. My forehead pounds like a horse heart. For context: We just passed the 3 years mark without a working electricity meter. 10 rounds of phone calls to our utility provider, jumping through hoops, filming the meter as we fail to switch it on, sending them various numbers of things, ID details, only to listen as the operator doesn’t know at full volume. It’s deafening and hurts my brain.

Now, unannounced, there’s a man from an independent agency, sent by the utility provider to read the one meter that works fine, of which we’ve sent the reading every month. His eyes tell the story as he tells me “they’re all as bad as each other.”

I’m telling you this because these are the conditions of creativity. They always were. I can’t help but wonder if there was ever a time when a carrier bag full of real life didn’t split and cascade all over the fictional ‘pure’ creativity. I think of classic writers penning timeless tales of love and monsters, in castles and lakeside retreats, but it simply couldn’t have been as toasty and mesmeric as the picture my imagination paints.

Mary Shelley was probably worrying about a patch of dry skin or something.

I know from experience that the Brönte sisters were fucking freezing, despite the rolling moors I’ve walked my dog on countless times during childhood, not to mention the inescapable, savage illnesses of the day lurking at every turn.

I could go on, but for creativity to flow, it has to be cause; unwavering, defiant cause, or insatiable passion that can pull in all of this shit, and thrive regardless.

After we both sigh a lot, and he makes a note on his device, which I have no doubt will result in a ‘failed appointment’ fine to the tune of £66 that will have to be contested as I prepare to draw, or record a podcast monologue. Then he’s in the car.

The rage sloshes like molten lava in my gut, but I breathe, and run a series of things I’ve creatively and personally excited about, or grateful for, and it works. It works because life is short and I won’t have it. Not from those bastards. Not when I have this in my life. This ability to create it out of my system.

Now I’m thinking about a collection. Real-life nonsense of those who appear to be winning. Maybe not.

Date Night

Less than 48 hours after we launch Héctor Ayuso's biography, The Reason You’re Doing It at the inaugural Paradiso festival, I get a message. Its sender, someone from Mexico City now living in Mérida, tells me that he was at the venue, Sallon Gallos, on a date. He did not know about Paradiso, but found a copy and got talking to designers and artists at the festival. He tried to find me but I was busy eating at the time, unaware.

But now, he explains, this book has impacted him.

He’s been working for big IT companies, and wants to get into art. The landscape is complicated for him, but Héctor’s story is an eye-opener.

It blows my mind every time this kind of synchronicity, this serendipity plays out, in new places, in many ways.

It was Héctor himself who nodded and smiled when I asked him that, despite the darkness he had witnessed, if he believed in the power of small actions and ever decision, provided we felt it. You just never know.

The Burrills at Breakfast

Anthony Burrill is in my house like he is in many, many houses. My house on the other side of the world in the UK. THINK OF YOUR OWN IDEAS. The kids like to read it as they learn phonics, and Anthony has more than earned his place among design royalty. I recognise him having seen him speak in Manchester and my room in Mérida's Sureno Hotel is next to his. I introduce myself to him and his lovely wife, Emma at breakfast and join them. Very quickly I'm enamoured by their warmth, their pleasant nature. The Creative industry is littered with renowned names bereft of ego. This thing we do, this creativity, it's fundamental. We do it purely, professionally, but in the majority of cases, with decency and with little ego. This happens on several mornings before Paradiso kicks off each day and we keep bumping into one another around and at our respective events at the festival.

On day 3 I finally get the chance to properly meet Zipeng Zhu, a New York-based artist and designer. We said hello on day one in a group setting, and now, he's sitting alone in the restaurant one hour or so before his workshop. He waves me over and says "Don't be alone!" Zipeng is a bundle of energy, dressed in brilliantly loud clothes, and full of great stories. We eat together and after he's finished and I'm still working on my chips, he begins telling me a story.

"Oh, so I got talking to this unassuming couple, and I didn't recognise them. I say, nice to meet you Anthony and Emma, and we talk about Mérida and all kinds of things. It's only after about 20 minutes that I see the ‘B’ of his surname. Wait... Anthony... B, ANTHONY BURRILL, at what point were you going to tell me I'M TALKING TO GOD?!'

I almost choke on my veggie burger as he somehow illustrates the way it so often is in our profession. He pays for his food and leaves to prepare for his workshop, his unmistakably bold look bringing full colour to the room, and I chuckle over his omnipotent casting of this unassuming industry favourite. It's only when I call for the bill that the waiter tells me Zipeng paid for mine too.

Despite the hours in my hotel room, when you lead with creativity, it’s hard to ever be truly alone.

School Trip

At Paradiso Festival, each day kicks off with an optional trip somewhere in Mérida, creating a lively rabble of people wearing backpacks. There’s a local tour guide hoisting up a little Yucatán flag on a pole, on a bus.

The festival doesn't kick off until 3pm, and by that time, new friendships have been made without the formalities. Moments have happened. At breakfast, people are learning about one another and there's not a speaker in site. In the cenotes - luscious natural sinkholes filled with brochure blue water - we bob around and drift towards one another in life jackets and say hello. I meet Ivan Cash this way, a talented filmmaker who I've recently discovered. Stefan Sagmeister and Oliver Jeffers are ahead of me on the bikes we hire to get between each cenote, but we are lost, and Stefan scratches his head, voicing all of our concerns that 'this doesn't look right.' It's funny, we are present, and it's a level playing field in which we're not competing, but sharing ideas and experiences.

Héctor Ayuso knows what he's doing. During the time I spent writing his biography, The Reason You're Doing It, he spoke of his love of this, of turning to the person next to you and saying what you might not say, that could lead to anything.

It creates a warmth, an atmosphere of mass conversation and curiosity. People listen to speakers, get dirty in artistic workshops, listen to local music, eat, and drink, and it all takes place in a Roman Bath rumble of connection and sheer possibility.

Immediacy

Mexico City Airport. Foreign passport queue. Present, head snapping from side to side, locked into everything.

New surrounds, feeling lost, being here, now.

Seeing happens with all the senses. Break from the sleepwalking through the achingly familiar.

It needn't be the other side of the world. That's where my creativity has led me for the week, but the next postcode can invoke the same sense of uncertainty. The new.

It takes effort to welcome the right amount of risk. But without it, we see nothing.

Looney Tunes

I never stopped finding those old Looney Tunes cartoons funny. Hysterically so. The backfires, the anatomic impossibilities, the burned faces, and the good v mischievous see-sawing in 2D. We left my Granddad –around the age of 87 – watching Daffy Duck on his own downstairs one Christmas holiday while we sorted a few bits around the house.

I remember my dad smirking and saying to my mum, ‘Have you heard your dad down there? He’s watching bloody cartoons!’

You couldn’t not hear him. His laugh boomed two floors up and probably three houses along the terrace despite the century-old thick Yorkshire stone walls. So, I went downstairs because I wanted in. My granddad, always in his suit, lay on his side, tie draped over the edge of the sofa, glasses off his face next to him, in pieces, tears rolling down his cheeks. On the screen, Daffy’s beak was halfway around his head. I fell apart too.

Humour is personal, but an elixir in creativity’s makeup. It can come in any form, and needn’t be overt. Anything from straight up jokes, Mr Bingo style rude drawings and words, right through to the mood in a line drawing, piece of music, or approach to a workshop. It’s a defining aspect of personality, and personality means everything.

And here’s another thought – it need not even be involved in the creative process.

I spent 24 hours of this weekend holding back a smirk, or laughing in public because I tried to trick a group of fellow Fantasy Premier League players into thinking I’d played my wildcard (A twice-season get out of jail, revamp your squad for free chip) in the hope it would convince them to play theirs at a time I deemed silly to play it. It got me nowhere – I’ll be bottom of our league tonight. So, my brother, finding this attempted ‘ruse’ and subsequent backfire utterly ludicrous, began likening me to Wile E. Coyote, the famously inept antagonist from the cartoon ‘Road Runner.’

This and thousands of other acts of immaturity take place in a private group, and some of the escapades are the most creative things I’ve ever made. They never see light of day. But the positive emotions, stunts, and ideas hatched in that forum grease the wheels of my creativity like little else.

That’s what all of this creativity coaching work is: helping humans re-attune with a purer self, a sense of magic, enabling idiocy and play in ways intellectual work rarely does, but can always benefit from. It need never be seen in a portfolio or pitch, but it can elevate the way a person feels and acts so much that the dots can always be joined regardless.

So I don’t hesitate to take 10 minutes to turn myself into a failed villain, scheming atop a cliff with a cart full of ACME dynamite, waiting for a protagonist to emerge. It makes me laugh, it lifts my mood, and nudges me into the headspace in which the unconscious is more accessible.

We’re not silly enough.

Less cynical and calculated. More daft and immature. Take that as a prescription.

The Heels

Heel: A storyline antagonist in professional wrestling.

I tell people to use their own passions to frame things in a way that energises and motivates them. John Cena, the ultimate ‘babyface’ – a hero or ‘goodie’ in wrestling – sold his soul in the TV story. The drama and shock of it reminded me why I adore the theatre so much.

I also took nerdy pleasure from a section within my creativity coaching, helping clients to identify the most dastardly ‘heels' in their creativity's ecosystem.

Procrastination

Perfectionism

Jealousy

Comparison

Burnout

Rejection

Fear of Failure

Comfort (creative or financial)

Subservience

We’ve all encountered most, if not all of them, and there are myriad couplings or group dynamics amongst them at any given time.

Procrastination. What are you refusing to face? Running from? Evading? Denying?

Perfectionism. The enemy of big ideas and progress.

Jealousy. Pointless in a subjective realm. Get inspired, but don’t desire.

Comparison. Thief of joy. Each human has an utterly unique story and lived experience. It is arguably the best asset in your creative arsenal.

Burnout. We have to learn to manage our energy flow, know when something is draining, and be brave enough to move towards the more nourishing use of our minds and skills.

Rejection. Inevitable. Next.

Fear of failure. It happens, a lot. That’s a good thing. What’s the lesson and how can we use it to get better?

Comfort. A degree of risk is essential in the creative process. Jeopardy needn’t be sharp-edged.

Subservience. Question. Push back. Demand better.

Keep a list of these bastards on the wall, visible, and stay alert. They’ll don the brass knucks and bloody your creativity the moment your back is turned.

Hyper-consumerism or pure magic?

This isn’t an ‘either or’ conversation. The scale of fashion waste in the west is abhorrent. We know this. It’s why I so seldom buy new clothes. Besides, the good stuff is always in the vintage and charity shops. For the kids, it’s all about Vinted and re-purposing when it comes to fancy dress in our house.

Today is World Book Day. My son calls out for his night light at 5.45am and I notice his open eye, watching me despite the rest of his face ploughed into his pillow.

‘Dad….’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m just so excited about World Book Day.’

And he is. They are. Stories. That human glue. We need them on every level, and have to watch out for the sneaky narratives we weave that cut us off from our creativity. The reasons we can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t do things that are right, or perpetuate damaging behaviours.

If I think early, it’s under a duvet with a torch, totally absorbed by the descriptions of the inside of the giant peach by Roahld Dahl.

A bit later it’s Point Horror and my first serious literary chills.

As an agitated teenager suspicious of the version of success I saw offered up, it was Fight Club.

I could go on, but a man listing his favourite books belongs on Goodreads.

The reason I adore seeing the kids running up to school dressed as their favourite book characters is because it highlights the unifying magic of stories. How they equalise, illuminate, inspire, and show us the way. The purity of kids who are not yet caught in the ‘maturity trap’ that later ensnares adolescents, and keeps too many adults in it to the detriment of their ability to flourish as a human, in their creativity.

We could all learn a thing or two from them.

The Insurmountables

It's heavy out there. Turn on any radio or TV. Go online. The weight of the world bears down on us in a matter of seconds. I think of those awful metal octopus things on The Matrix, swooping down to clamp onto my brain before injecting it full of grey gloom goo the moment I wake in the morning.

As society finds itself at various tipping points, humanity focusing on all the wrong things, it's hard to escape the tension in the air.

But we can't go around in a state of fear and hope to create.

I'm doing my 4th one-to-one PIT STOP creativity coaching session this week, and of increasing importance, each time I work with a client, is the need to address their insurmountables right out of the traps.

Creativity is a potent tonic for our biggest monsters. Think The Diary of Anne Frank: a powerful, haunting, sharp-edged example of the potential of an outlet for our troubles to change lives and soothe its maker.

For me, a cloud of eco-anxiety followed me around for almost a year before I began intense work on my thought patterns and found my cause to take action against the climate crisis.

My clients speak of rising misogony, financial challenges, and family disharmony, among many other 'heels' in their lives. (Heel: wrestling villain)

We get deep very quickly because it's essential to create a framework to face our fears and empower ourselves, returning the drive to our time making.

We look at gallows humour, activism, and active, curated participation in the news, instead of scrolling and passive overwhelm.

We do this because while there is great value to the negative emotion spectrum in small, concentrated doses, it's unsustainable to walk around believing 'the world is f*cked.' If we do, then it is.

A baseline of optimism, curiosity, and purpose is essential if we are to think differently, invite luck, and see the opportunities ahead of us. But this cannot be achieved through blanket ignorance of what's going on. That way, the evils remain facelessly present in our subconscious.

I used to think activism meant big banners and aggressive protests. It can, but that is just one way.

One designer client brought a stunning, powerful book of poetry she'd written to our session. This was her emotional creativity during a personal crisis, separate from her professional work but enriching as a tool for her well-being. This might be a found texture or defiant positivity in the face of the oppressor in the way a person dresses or carries themselves in the street. It all counts.

All of this must be determined by the individual, their story, and what energises them.

As a coach, it's my job to understand the psychology of managing the information overload in this too much world. See how our negativity bias is hijacked by well-funded, targeted news cycles and make my clients aware of it. To reframe their fears and barriers in a way that hands them cause and purpose instead of alienation, futility, and nihilism.

Their fears are invariably valid but blown out of all proportion, actively damaging their creativity by cutting off flow and masking the fact that they remain powerful agents of change. This despite the deafening volume of those disgraceful, gelatinous abusers of power.

But I heard it said that the empty can makes the most rattle, and I believe that. Despite the intensification of the ills of capitalism, we are in the midst of a social psychology shift towards a greater understanding of human needs. If you pay attention to what's happening amongst us, at ground level, it's easy to see. Those quiet ones, you and I, may lack that volume and willingness to abandon principles. We lack those media channels, but now is our time to stand up and use our creativity for good in this fight.

It starts with a smile and recognising the power of our story.

We’ve lost Ken

I’m back at UCLan for the design department’s Conference Week 14 where I’m giving my new talk, ‘Where the F*ck Did that Come From?’ They’re fiddling with tech when I sidle over to the display wall, upon which, as ever, Ken Garland stares back. Ken penned ‘The First Things First Manifesto’ in the 1960s – an iconic call to arms for creators to pledge all free time making work with meaning, as opposed to commercial gain.

I smile, having been as wowed by this form of activism as the other 5,000 or so students to have handed in a paper about the manifesto. And when the course leader, Andy has prepared my slides, I ask him how many. He laughs, a tired chortle, but not without admiration.

“Did he die, Ken?” He asks me. I hadn’t wanted to confront the possibility. I’d spoken to Adrian Shaughnessy on the podcast in 2016 and back then, Adrian, who was good friends, and an admirer of Ken, had alluded to Ken not being in the finest health.

This encounter had come 3 years after Ken had me over to his house to chat for a voluntary awareness campaign on behalf of CALM, The Campaign Against Living Miserably. At 83 years of age, Ken paced his workspace as he spoke passionately about the ills of capitalism, the way the banks had blown the surplus wealth that belonged to all of us.

We don’t retire, you see. Not when we shape our lives around our passions and find ways to get by in this harsh financial system. Ken hadn’t retired, and his fire burned bright.

His spirit, his outrage, and his joy swirled and melded like cosmic showers, as he showed me work, pulling down books from his wall, one collating his work, designed by Shaughnessy’s UNIT Editions. I basked in his glow, even as he bollocked me for saying ‘Saint Martins’ and not ‘Central Saint Martins.’ This I loved. The antagonists have always been fascinating to me.

He sent me away with a copy of his book and so much inspiration that I ran the short distance back to Camden station and swore off caffeine for the train back to Manchester.

So it was with sadness that my fears were confirmed. Ken had passed in 2021. But my ongoing fascination with the cycle of life, death, and rebirth in nature, we as a part of that, means I smile when I think of one of our industry greats, his tempestuousness, his craft, and his fights for what he believed in—not gone, of course, but on to something new. He is one of two Kens to have made a colossal impact on my life – Sir Ken Robinson, of course being the other – to have handed over a legacy I feel a welcome responsibility to build upon through The Creative Condition. My life cause of elevating creativity’s role in our lives, in healing the ills of our days, and to, at time, simply cope without falling apart.

Timeslip/warp

Last Saturday I read a dinosaur book with my kids.

50 million years ago. 100 million years ago. 250 million years ago. The mind bends. I find it comforting when the world feels heavy. Donald Trump and our current ills will be farts on the wind soon enough, and it reminds me not to let the fuckers pull me under.

On Sunday, Salisbury Cathedral try to wow me with 800 years, and I just snigger, thinking of those gigantic beasts all that time ago. Historic, ha!

And yet in Preston, where I spent 6 years including the three years of my undergraduate study on a BA (Hons) in illustration, where I’ve returned to give a lecture at the UCLan design conference week. I’m hammered by the realisation it was 22 years ago when I arrived with my several bags of possessions and a key to my halls of residence. TWENTY-FUCKING-TWO!

What is time, anyway? They say it’s all relative, Hawking and that. Or something?

Buildings I spent significant time in have disappeared and I can’t handle the deluge of memories and sensory ripples.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of the cathedral’s efforts to impress.

The Storyteller

Dave Grohl named his recent book The Storyteller. I loved that.

Stories are my quite possibly my greatest joy in the human condition. The limitless nature of them. The escape, the shapes, sizes, and styles. The tears, laughter, and rage they can stir in us despite absolutely nothing else changing around us.

I grew up on them. My dad, who grew up in a breadline poor family, and his brothers learned to use them to get their adventures. They have great imaginations, and take so much pleasure from stories.

Stories become our binding culture. Humans, it is said, cannot truly know more than somewhere around 150 people. After that you need a myth, a narrative, a binding mantra. Hence religion. Hence football fans referring to their collective club entity as ‘us.’

It’s why bigger businesses – agencies – have buzzwords like ‘disruption’ to bind their staff and unite them in common cause.

I found myself waiting for a coaching client on Oxford Street, outside Primark. Instead of going on my phone, I decide to people watch, look up and around. There’s a bus stop on the other side of the road, the building behind it boarded up and covered in graffiti and fly posters. For a minute or two I watch how people interact with the Donald Trump illustration (It’s not complimentary) Then the several floors above catch my eye. These windows, while not church old, are of another era. Maybe the 1970s. I wouldn’t know. But they are clouded with dirt and dust, which obscures whatever might have once been going on inside. There’s nothing in there now – no lights, no people moving around, no obvious contemporary use – and it gets me thinking. Could artists stage a takeover? A theatre troupe who might put on late night performances for intimate audiences of friends and peers? Homeless people?

Then there’s an assassin, Jason Bourne, The Day of the Jackal style. And just like those dreamy church imaginings of sleepovers by candlelight, I’m in there again. My client arrives and I’m yoinked back into 2025 Oxford Street and my challenge to help realign her creativity, passions, and personality, but an idea has hatched. A storytelling workshop idea, putting this storyteller nature of mine to good use to help businesses and people. Ah, beautiful active boredom….

Vestibule

I like the associated words, even if I don’t know what they mean. Vestibule. Catacomb. Priest Hole. It used to conjure images of people in cloaks in shadowy nooks, conducting secret business.

I went to a Catholic school, but I’ve never been a religious person. I like the belonging it gives people, and I find all religions interesting, but church was incredibly boring. Until the age of 12 or so, my dad occassionally took me on a Sunday morning. It was annoying because it meant I missed Goals on Sunday, and the service – the readings, the hymns, the genuflections and dry disc of bread – took forever.

But it had a huge upside. I realised this on Sunday, as we used our free resident of Salisbury access to the cathedral to take the kids and dog down for a look around. It’s grandiose. In a city the size of Salisbury – quaint, and more of a small town than a city – it feels like a gothic, religious Independence Day when I look up at the colossal structure. It’s 800 or so years old.

And I find it happening again.

Laura is reading a sign about some old king’s tomb to the kids and my attention drifts over to a tour guide surrounded by 20 or so people. In mere seconds, her voice, imparting genuinely fascinating information, triggers a sleepy feeling in me. Conditioning. Years of lectures, and sermons, and tour guides in tourist attractions have created a learned brain behaviour. So I look up.

Above us, maybe 30 or so feet (Though in these buildings, depth perception is distorted so it could be much higher), there are arched windows on an upper level. Stone, spotlit corridors run behind them, and the shadow cloaks are in there again. I smile, recalling those Sundays, when I’d stare at the ones in my local church and my dad zoned out too. Back then, I’d imagine how cosy it could be to spend a night up there with a friend or family member. I’d have a sleeping bag, and find a corner, and if it was raining outside, I’d listen to it driving against the thick stone exterior, and all that history. I’d light some of the little candles and it would be dreamy.

I spent a good bit of time conjuring these narratives between 1988 and 1999 when I left all forms of Catholic institution, but clearly, as the narrative picks up anew, I never lost the sense of wonder these beautiful buildings awoke in me.

Active boredom is a scarce creativity fuel these days. We’re never far from something to keep us in our conscious brain state and ultimately, ideas are worse for it.

The five-year-old’s lunar broadcast

‘What? Do you know what I mean, though?’

No, well, sort-of. My poor wife has to suffer my neurotic bursts of grandiosity every couple of weeks. I’ve noticed a pattern that needs amending. Off the back of a testing spell – be it eco-anxiety, financial panic, overloading myself with projects that could have waited, I’ll find my groove again, and everything is possible.

This time I’m plotting an assault on BBC Sounds producers because my vision for The Creative Condition has grown. I’m a lifelong audiophile, which played a major role in starting the podcast that grew into the brsnd and cause in which you, dear reader or listener, are now immersed. Or playing in the background. And in this frenzied world of constant streaming content, who wouldn’t want a Yorkshireman exploring creativity tucked away on some 1am graveyard slot on the BBC?

When I feel this stuff, it is with such passion that I blather on as if my wife had been in my head, sharing the years of germinating ideas before the mature and burst out of my face in a multi-sensory, quickly spreading ambition virus.

She reminds me that having not been made aware of this long-term thought process, I must realise that making sense of its sudden birth is a challenge. I stop and start to laugh, seeing her very fair point.

My challenge, of course, is to save a little of this beautiful wonder, this energy and willingness to dream, so I don’t repeat the pattern that invariably ends up in a burnout on the other side.

Like my two five-year-olds, one of which stops half-way through finding a clue in her treasure hunt, and shouts a request for the building of a ‘tent’ in the front room.

‘That’s me, isn’t it? That’s my brain, right there…’

‘Yes. A five-year old who is suddenly certain they’d like to broadcast for the BBC from the surface of the moon.’

Weight Watchers Coach?

While fine-tuning my LinkedIn profile to make sure I’m as juicy as possible in a stupidly loud online meat market, I added ‘coach’ to my list of skills. Just ‘coach’. Not ‘creativity coach’, or ‘career coach’ or ‘business coach’. I mean, I’m not either of the latter two, even though there are certainly aspects of that, but only coach is asking for trouble.

I haven’t been approached to carry 60-odd people to London Victoria for a more affordable rate yet, but I’ve begun enjoying a certain dubious thrill of seeing what they do send me as suggested professional opportunities.

The first was a Weight Watchers coach in Wiltshire. What happens is, my imagination takes the title and quicker than an AI image generator, plays a HD video in my head of what that looks like. It gets silly very quickly. I’m like latter-day Diego Maradona – full tracksuit and whistle, shuffling around a church basement, telling people about my own reckless and recently addressed sweet tooth, before descending into the psychology side of creativity – the small gains, the manageable goals, the value in the dark and light and grey of our personality. But no. I have no place advising anyone how to drop pounds.

So, I don’t amend the skills settings and wait.

Southampton youth team football coach is next. I’m 14 again, the last years of the delusional professional football dream. I’ve interviewed Ben Ryan, the Olympic gold medal winner as Fiji men’s rugby 7s coach. That looks good on paper. I do adore sports psychology and I have strong people skills thanks to my storytelling-driven observation and empathy. And it’s the full tracksuit again. I’m in full red this time. Having watched Kaos with my wife, Laura, recently – a beautifully stylish retelling of Greek mythology starring Jeff Goldblum in several enriched tracksuits – I entered a minor mid-life crisis by doubling down on a previous threat to ‘treat myself’ to a tropical print Adidas number and thick gold chain like a Mafioso uncle, in which I’d march around Salisbury seeking peak respect based solely on it.

But something in all of this silliness stands out because I’ve come to learn that even the most whimsical trains of thought can pack value – there is something of a general ‘coach’ inherent to my personality. I take a lot of joy from helping, motivating, guiding, and refining people. Storytelling is my biggest thrill in life, and working out a person’s arc is becoming a total fascination, even if they don’t see it themselves. None of us do, not for decades at least. But coaching – the kind I’ve fallen in love with – is about becoming that hovering narrator, succinctly capturing the instinctive and natural behaviours and bottling it as trusted, actionable advice at the right times. Or something like that.

Next up, ‘gymnastics coach’. This time I’m in court, in a black tracksuit, representing myself against the lawyers of the people with legs where their ears should be.

Little panel of gloom

I’ve reached a point where I land on some social media sites with my hand held up to cover the little panel of news headlines. That’s how destructive they can be. Each morning, despite enjoying Scott Mills as the new host of BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show, I prepare the family breakfast each day bracing myself for the latest update on which leading global dick head has said or done something outrageous and frankly stupid.

Calculated, yes. The news and the reported action. Do I have my head in the sand? Maybe. I picked this cause of elevating and teaching creativity because this daily bombardment of bad news was pushing me close to some kind of personal collapse. Collapse. That’s the title of a record I’m designing the artwork for. In a creative exploration sense, that’s a juicy brief. But too many people are battered incessantly with this abandonment of morals and head-scratching lunacy until they can no longer create. Not sustainably, at least.

This came up during an interview with LOVE Creative founder David Palmer. He pointed to the bleakness of the Manchester scene out of which emerged Joy Division, The Happy Mondays, and so on. And he’s right. The negative emotion spectrum is incredibly valuable and the bedrock of so much great art of all kinds, ideas, and innovation that could not have been brought about any other way. But I also believe that this is unsustainable in the long run. We are human and there are limits to our resilience and the kind of responsive creativity our pain brings on.

On my bad days, I cannot access this at all, and this doom overload leaves me sat grinding my teeth, staring out of the window.

So, I hold up my hand. Sometimes, I lunge for the plug when the radio news comes on. I have to curate my news consumption, and be kind to myself, even though our evolutionary negativity bias makes it so easy to heap on another ladel full of big tech presidential politician prickery.

Treasure Hunt

I’m interested in Friday night and Saturday morning. It used to be that the former bludgeoned the latter when my weekends were built on going out and drinking too much. The energy switch from the working week to downtime, or family time, or whatever it might be for each person, provides many clues about character and personality. It’s a subtle thing, and not easily observed in others, but it’s there if you want it.

Some escape into the weekend. Others triumphantly stomp into it, the general of a life they love, confident in their direction and gushing with silken imaginings of what next week will bring, and how this weekend can celebrate or nourish it.

These days my Friday nights are lower-key. A single whisky and a cup of tea is not unheard of. Not in succession either. At the same time. Have that! What of it? What are you going to do about it? Hm? And Saturday mornings… the simple pleasures. I’ll doze on the sofa in front of a Batman cartoon with the kids and then get on the coffee, knowing there’s a chance of finishing one uninterrupted since they are now five years old. But in amongst all this, I’ll carry around whichever book has me all excited. I’ll reflect on the week’s highs and lows, think about how the next one might shape up, and find ways to get excited about it despite the turbulence seemingly everywhere. I’m a purer, less professional self, and the feelings I get with a moment away from the desk are often valuable insights into the flow of my creativity.

Years ago it was chaotic. Who, at the age of 19 or 21, has a conscious awareness of these feelings? Not many. And yet I loved to watch the weekend versions of people. How did their dress sense change? What did they choose to do with or without money? How did music fit into their plans and influence behaviour? Were they bothered by the sporting calendar? Were they assertively social – organisers and cheerleaders – or passive? Happy to plug into whatever with whoever? And on the murkier side of all this, how did they feel come Sunday night? Was their dread temporary because they were on a better path into a longer-term future aligned with this weekend self, or running from something they felt they could not escape?

The other day I walked past a can of Oranjeboom sat on a wall. Oranjeboom is a Dutch beer with its roots in Rotterdam. I began cackling and stopped. My wife asked what was funny as I took a photo of it before taking it to the recycling bin in the park. I told her about a friend of mine who while at university in Leeds, discovered that you could get four cans of the stuff dirt cheap in Home Bargains. I put pressure on him to come out, and after futile protests of being broke until his student loan landed, eventually agreed to come out.

He turned up and declined all drink offers. Fair enough, I thought. Nice to see him anyway and the sobriety might help him come bath night. After two pubs, I noticed that as we walked between venues, he’d run off and return several minutes after we’d ordered. So I ran behind on the third vanishing. I watched as this dark hunched shape didn’t piss into a bush, but stooped and began digging into the earth. After 30 seconds or so, he pulled up a vessel, at which point he noticed me watching and burst out laughing.

“Fuck’s sake mate! I panicked then, thought you were a mugger!” As he emerged and the streetlight hit him, I saw his muddy fingers wrapped around a still-cold can of Oranjeboom and fell about laughing.

“I told you I was skint!”

“How many of these have you hidden?”

“Eight. One between each pub.”

By this point, we’d been going out for over two years, so he knew the likeliest trail and our hometown wasn’t the biggest place. He was fit, so if he needed to run further to get at his loot, it wasn’t a problem.

I’ve never forgotten the surge of misplaced admiration I had for his innovation. This budget side-quest he’d put in place as we all carried out a predictable central plot. And the ludicrous contrast between his stylish outfit, a vintage denim jacket, and Converse shoes, and his building site fingernails, dark with the dirt of one who isn’t afraid to sweat and defy convention for his pay.

A silly story? Maybe. But we can only learn so much through practicing the skills that define our career choices. These downtime deeds are just as valuable as we seek to understand ourselves; our needs, quirks, thrills, and unique way of navigating our lives.

Fear creativity

There are fewer words more loaded than ‘creativity.’ Saying it to people – even in organisations who live and die on its effective use – is like shouting ‘Voldermort!’ at the Hogwarts breakfast bar. I’m not exagerrating either. It’s massive.

I remember going into an exhibition in TATE Modern and ducking, fearing my head was about to be knocked off by the word MOTHER, which hurtled towards me. A 3D, 25 foot long installation of the word was a conceptual piece to represent the intimidation children can feel towards the matriarchal figure. If it had been ‘CREATIVITY’ they’d have needed an aeroplane hangar to house it and do the seismic connotations attached justice.

People just don’t understand it. Even at the top of the creative industry. Those attachments to artistic talent are unbreakable. It ruffles feathers, placing crushing pressure on people who are very much creative, but shun any notion of wearing the label because their perception of what a creative type is is so far from the simpler truth.

Anyone can be more creative.

When you break it down into lighter words such as ‘playful, silly, imaginative, making, flippant, energised,’ people are far likelier to step forward and express themselves.

If you can associate a word with feeling, culture, ideas, and lived experience, then it clicks, and becomes more than something people have been convinced they are not. Something that should not be named.