It’s What You Do. Who You Are.

We were four or five pints deep when I told my electrician friend that business had been better this year than the previous two.

‘You know what the difference is, or one of them?’ I rambled.

‘What?’

‘I’ve been spending less time sending speculative emails, on social media, and arranging calls instead, meeting people, going to things, taking care of my relationships, and starting new ones. It’s easy to forget how important that is, you know? Seeing the whites of someone’s eyes instead of a fucking avatar.’

He’s nodding as I trail off into questioning whether it might just be that I’m now in my 40s. He shrugs and says,

‘Well yeah, that’s who you are.’

The simplicity of his words and the certainty in how he says them hit me hard.

‘As long as I’ve known you, that’s just what you do – talk to everyone, bringing people together, making it make sense.’

And it’s funny because I fall into that trap of thinking the best insights will come from those in my industry, but this friend has known me since 2005, when he moved to Preston without knowing a single person, and bumped into a lecturer of mine in a pub. The two of them played pool and drank beer, and by the end of the night, they had decided to start a 5-a-side football team. Trouble was they needed 3 more and ideally a couple of substitutes. That’s where me and the other football fans on the illustration degree came in. Then I invited him to everything, and he was always shocked by the range in the many little worlds I liked to inhabit. I had my creative industry lot, but I’d worked in factories, the council, bookshops, and regularly had friends from Yorkshire, London, and overseas come out. I’d always loved it that way.

Twenty years later, and despite much of my counsel being from other artists and designers, his valuable perspective makes it abundantly clear – he’s right. This isn’t a strategy, it’s permitting myself to step away from the noise and do it the only way I know how. The way it works for me.

The Layby People

Those people I see on long drives north, and back south, the slouched people awaiting help, forced out of plans. I see something in them. You might remember I recently wrote about getting lost, how there is no better way to be ultra-present. Well, it’s a variation of that.

Two lads, around 13 and 15 years-old respectively, and a dad who paces a few meters away. The lads both wear tracksuits, and their faces are blank, gazing at the zooming cars still on course for their destinations. They remind me of author Chuck Palahniuk’s comments about there being no better place to write than hospital emergency waiting rooms, if you want to capture unfiltered body-language and presence.

None of the four groups of unfortunates I see want the situation they’re in, and I have no way of knowing whether it will turn out to be good or bad for them, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t believe there to be an opportunity in the predicament.

Outraged by Outrage

I had a moment, reflecting in the car on a long drive. I haven’t yet mastered the new car’s operating system and somehow kept flicking the CD player onto the radio. One one burst of broadcasting, I heard the words ‘appalled by comments at Glastonbury Festival…’

Kneecap and Bob Vylan are on the thick end of it.

Kneecap showing solidarity with the colonised – in this case, Palestinian people – and Vylan too.

I observe my feelings here, and while acknowledging that Vylan’s comments calling for death to Israeli Defence Forces were strong, and perhaps self-defeating, I find it hard to see it any other way than making artists easy scapegoats.

Can anyone credibly point the finger at young musicians speaking out about genocide when far darker participation in these horrors is at play on the same shores?

We can all remember a certain Marshall Mathers in these shoes back in 2000, can’t we?

Gobshite!

Where I'm from, James Brown would have been called 'a gobshite'.

Sometimes, the slinging of this word would have been more justified than others. Loudmouth might be more universal, but I like gobshite.

Context, among other factors, determines whether a gobshite is an asset or a pain in the arse. In the mid-1990s publishing world, James thrived, giving many artists, writers, photographers, and stars their break because his brash qualities came with bravery and a willingness to resist conforming to industry standards.

He surrounded himself with people who were great at what they did, and balanced his extreme characteristics.

I'm a social bloke, but I also need my solitude because I'm sensitive. People are nuanced.

James had his demons, and while the mid-1990s proved to be the right time for his kamikaze way of doing things, it also lacked the awareness we have today around mental health. He documents this brilliantly in his autobiography, 'Animal House.'

Abandon is a characteristic that tends to come with gobshites.

Where I'm from, that tended to lead to one of two extremes: (mostly) trouble or achievements in a field where their differences were hugely beneficial.

Education is still massively failing gobshites. For every James Brown I've seen countless others pinball through chaotic lives until the lights stop flashing.

We still, as a society, refuse to acknowledge the inarguable need for broader learning, where drama, dance, art, sport, and other vehicles for different kinds of energy and intelligences can significantly reduce the amount of pinball lives being lived.

Every gobshite who has illuminated my life has a beautiful tender side that they'll show if you give them the chance and the vehicle to show that in a way that our culture tends to barricade. These contradictions embody the human condition. I love helping my coaching client recognise this duality because it opens up so many fulfilling pathways they never even considered.

All of those 'naughty' kids at school were brimming with creativity, but their identities were built on mischief and a system that reflected only failure back at them because of its Victorian rigidity.

That was the mid-1990s.

We live in a world where technology is outpacing science fiction.

Surely we can do it better?

For deep insights into the work and creativity of people contributing to this cause:

The Creative Condition podcast episodes on this:

197 with Bikestormz founders Mac Ferrari and Jake100

175 with a head of home at a secure children's institute

183 with Loaded Magazine founder James Brown

241 with multidisciplinary artist Sara Prinsloo

99 with Gary Mansfield, who discovered art and transformed his life in prison

152 with Olympic gold medal-winning rugby coach Ben Ryan

154 with Creation Records founder and ex-Oasis manager Alan McGee

https://open.spotify.com/show/4Rs8oXioIYV32u2GwTZFfx?si=ec796ffebb2f487e

Such a nice, mild mannered bot

Here’s a sample of what goes on in a very short space of time in my highly sensitive, artist brain when I consider AI. It’s exhausting and takes constant management, but manage it I must.

Robot dogs roam the streets, tracking down and eliminating anyone going against whatever elite doctrine is cooked up and served without our input.

AI doesn’t really get going because of the major climate event it tips us into, and chaos (in my mind, preferable to the previous dystopian imagining) ensues.

Species begin to thrive again because we’re able to make revolutionary clean energy breakthroughs, and we find a tender balance, with mistakes and jeopardy along the way, between the gains of advanced technology and human needs. (This vision is restricted to particularly optimistic days)

Those who cannot hold tight enough to keep up with the speed of societal, technological, and economic shifts form an unprecedented extremity of underclass, worse than the Victorian era’s, but in it we find a consolatory community we’d almost forgotten might be possible.

We’re all bald in jelly tanks, 'The Matrix' style.

And I never really settle on any satisfying conclusion.

Other than the certainty that I need to push myself, the human artist, the creativity coach, the thinker, to maximum levels of inner-authority, bravery, and belief in why I do this, while trying to work out how to enlist the help of a few AI tools if just to not completely fall behind.

But that takes time, and this revolution isn’t waiting around.

I walked into London Waterloo station to be confronted by a gigantic advert for Rayban x Meta ‘AI translation glasses.’

If I still worked in Blockbuster Video, we’d be relocating Minority Report to ‘historical fiction.’

I hope this provides a little glimpse of the need to take people along for the ride from a mental health and purpose point of view. The sheer intensity of this revolution we’re in, without any form of consultation with the population, is incomprehensible.

I shared some of these thoughts with a good friend of mine who runs the media department in a school. He’s started to speed up his workflow on the admin side of things, and he’s always had one eye on the underground bunker. He said to me,

‘Tell you what though mate, whenever I interact with these chatbots, I always say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, just in case.

The piano and the mint Viscount man

Continuing this week's 'Reclaim the Throne' mini-campaign to take back those moments of opportunity (to rest, write, read, make, ponder, plan, etc) from big tech, I had two beauties in Manchester Piccadilly Station earlier.

I felt happily fried after an intense 4-hour Pit Stop coaching session, and heard communal piano music. I walked over and drank it all in for a minute or so. This guy played and sang, but what really wove magic was his sway, his body language, full of abandon as he rode from side to side, up and down, snapping his head this way and that as his flow state transported him somewhere far away from here, somewhere inside him and everywhere at once.

Then, in less epic fashion, the man at the gate to platform 10 didn't just scan my e-ticket, but smiled, arched around the gate, and pointed at the idling train.

"That's your train there." His thick Manc accent, full of something close to affection, caressed me with as much pride as the way my nan used to curate and unveil a plate of diabolical filth - mint viscount, Gold bar, Penguin biscuits. And somehow, it landed in the same way.

If I had to pick him out of a lineup now, I couldn't. It was about the moment, the intent, not the man. I'll remember the way he made me feel. The old me would have stayed on his phone without knowing why, missing that feeling altogether, that observation.

And it all looped back to something my client and I discussed. We spoke of the challenge of being sensitive in a crazed, snarling, changing world. We both, once upon a time, wanted to change the world alone, warriors overlooking the need for our tribes. But now, a little older, we reflected on the cult of individualism, how it can throttle progress and creativity's potential. In design, like many industries and organisations, we default to celebrating individuals as changemakers. But let's face it, creativity is a communal condition. No matter how big a role one person has, ultimately, it's nourished and made possible by many. In a culture that celebrates creativity in its broadest sense, we all win and don't need an award to hoist.

I'd like to know more about the man on the piano, the member of staff who rose above his job description with no need for a gold star. But these were more important than singular moments.

They were a part of something bigger, and I'm happier and more inspired having looked up to notice them.

Reclaim the Throne!

Even just one other

I got overwhelmed again. You might know the feeling – that weight of everything you're trying to carry, crashing down, to the point where even replying to a message feels insurmountable.

We're all carrying varying degrees of too much, at least most of the time.

I can't even be sure what triggered it this time. Something I read about blackbird sickness, or Amazon preparing humanoid deliveries, maybe. Then into intense days loaded with illustration projects, coaching sessions, writing, interviewing – and then, with piss-bag eyes, reeling mind; every concern, mundane task, family duty, and Ben Tallon's life plot hole is sucked into the panic vortex.

Not uncommon for these sensitive artist minds, and more frequent in parenthood.

I'm back in control of my stupid brain by the time I arrive at London Euston, heading north to do some coaching work. The place is teeming with people pulling little suitcases, and also on phones, trundling around the human obstacle course without looking up.

I find a wall to sit against, under a staircase to the right of the lobby, before sliding down it dramatically with a full-on old man groan. Then I see another bloke sitting against the opposing wall, legs stuck out, paperback in hand. His presence triggers a rush of loveliness in my belly, so I sit with the joy for a minute or so. This little pocket of quiet, so close to the noise, yet gorgeously separate, is perfect. Before he looks up to see me grinning lazily in his direction, I mirror his choice of time-passing and pull out my paperback.

As a kid, hauled into compulsory school church services, I'd sit staring up into the upper echelons, imagining what it'd be like to camp up there, under those ornate arches, by candlelight. The notion of how cosy that would be was enough to help me through the endless warblings and hymns. I glance up every so often to see if it's still just us two. It is for a while. Then he's disappeared, and the space is immediately far less welcoming.

A burst of basic human connection. Since the pandemic, it's taken time. I remember speaking to Manchester creative industry friends, asking how the vibrant events scene was, only to be told it hadn't really gotten going again since COVID. I believe there are signs of life now, but some of those online habits stuck, and it tends to be tough on our creativity because that basic human connection is essential.

I've been parting with loose change to surprise my kids with new Pokémon cards from the market toy stall, anticipating the day when I can take them to New Realities Gaming, a seductive little nerd hole up by my local train station. Any form of tribe will do.

It's not lost on me that I'd have missed that moment of unexpected comfort after a personal crash had I reached for that attention vampire in my pocket. I did eventually, to reply to my wife, taking the opportune moment, but I shoved it back into my jeans the second the message delivered, then people watched a bit longer.

Doctor - Patient - Creative

There have been times my fierce commitment to roaming far and wide to inform my understanding of creativity has wavered.

It felt risky to write books, interview, and run music companies when my job title said 'illustrator'. As soon as people tried to bracket my podcast as 'an illustration podcast,' (after the first episode with Danny Allison), I piled it full of guests from far beyond one form of visual communication.

Episode 2 was a conversation from a chance encounter with then New York University's professor of theatre Rebecca Johannsen. And not out of any petty rebellion. I've simply always followed my curiosity, even when logic screamed otherwise. From the outset, I was in the service of creativity.

If you want to be truly creative, drawing only from the reservoir of existing industry material is counter-productive. Any narrowing of this kind has, in part, made things easier for AI. So the need for different thinking today is an emergency.

That's what I'm helping individuals and agencies with through The Creative Condition and my coaching work.

Before my conversation with HIV and sexual health consultant,Rageshri Dhairyawan about deep listening on episode 259 of the podcast, I read both her book, Unheard: The Medical Practice of Silencing and A Fortunate Woman, as referenced in Rageshri's work.

Rageshri's experiences of being unheard in healthcare, despite her work within it, taught me so much about the need to truly listen to people, to respect them and rise above our conscious and unconscious biases.

And very quickly, I joined the dots between the issues in healthcare detailed by Rageshri and the creative industry.

I'd like to share with you an excerpt from A Fortunate Woman, a stunning piece of work by Penny Mordant. Consider this in terms of the asphyxiating effect of data, protocol, liability, and risk aversion on creativity, storytelling, play, and joy.

You all know what I mean.

The rise of evidence-based medicine over her time in the practice has seen remarkable strides in the treatment of disease and improved medical outcomes beyond recognition. It was certainly transformative in the early days for the young doctor to anchor her clinical decisions within an established framework of best practice informed by the latest science. But what has proved more difficult to measure in terms of its efficacy is the value of the doctor-patient relationship within it. Because this is so hard to quantify and cold, hard figures, performance metrics inevitably skew towards incentivising outcomes that are easier to define in statistical terms and a population rather than a personal level. While not a bad thing in and of itself, this culture shift towards standardized interventions for common medical conditions has created a cascade of unintended consequences within primary care, many of which of eroded that doctor/patient relationship upon which it was once built. Workloads have increased, practices and their teams have gotten larger. The role of technology has expanded. Part-time working has become the norm. A portion of the press routinely use the issue of part-time working as a stick with which to beat the rising number of female GPs, but in reality, if the doctors of either gender, part-time working is the only way to endure the pressures of the job. All the while, the wholesale management of risk according to standardized guidelines trumps the judgment of individual doctors. Thus, by increments, the axis has tilted from an emphasis on the patient to an emphasis on disease, from interaction to transaction. Moreover, as patient numbers have risen, access to a doctor; any doctor has become the overriding priority and individual relationships find themselves push to the margins continuity of care remains much talked of but it's far less often achieved and because it's so tricky to measure it doesn't feature in the framework of payment incentives for general practitioners.

Let's welcome the massive potential that technology continues to offer creativity, but more caution about how much humanity we surrender to it is sorely needed. Those who thrive in the era of automation will be the ones who lead with authenticity, personality, and the lived experience, not those who demand cheap silver bullets.

Get lost!

I was 26 when I visited Istanbul. Me and a friend, no roaming internet connection, just passports, little folder stuffed with printed maps and handwritten directions that would hopefully enable us to reach our hostel.

These travels, before the age when I began to feel like I could trust my sense of self, were thrilling. This was, in part, down to the adrenaline brought on by the chaos of it all. The last days of relying on our heads and pre-planning. Our noses, senses, and guts. I enjoy the convenience of today’s transformed landscape of connectivity, but what are we losing by always knowing where we are?

In Istanbul we walked into a mucky little bar and were sucked straight into the magnetic field of king bar fly. He was Irish, tight jeans, straggly, shoulder-length hair, and his aura roared, crackling and spitting deep orange embers.

‘Hiya mate’ opened my friend.

‘BOYS!’ He chortled, getting off his tall stool, flicking his hair back over his shoulder as he pulled each of us in for a hug we didn’t feel we’d earned, having just met him for the first time. And we were his for the next half hour and two beers, basking in his tales of misadventure.

He lived there, so we asked him what we should be doing while in the city.

‘GET LOST!’ He said it several times, and assured us that if we wanted to experience Istanbul properly, we should stop trying to plot, and plunge arse first into its vibrancy and mystique. All those humming side streets and spellbinding bazaars. This wasn’t travel advice, it was wisdom, and so much better than TripAdvisor.

I try to ensure that despite my role as a father of two five-year-olds and a busy business owner, I carve out time for new experiences, crowbar in a little jeopardy and adventure. I seek the sense of being lost, even if I have to engineer it.

I push my coaching clients to do this. Most of them, in some way, have settled for something that could be challenged, redirected for personal illumination, and tiny thrills.

Last weekend, a fellow father described how he recognised his son, a teenage victim of the Covid-19 lockdowns, had no wayfinding skills so he would take him places a few postcodes away and let him walk back. After a series of phone calls to his dad, mildly distressed, describing the strange places he’d found himself, he managed to get back on track, steadily rebuilding a crucial component of independence.

We’re connected all the time, and if we let ourselves, we’ll never be lost again. And that is an ugly purple bruise on our curiosity, our ability to be truly present, the way we were in that bar in Istanbul. How can we truly appreciate what we have if we never mislay it with the real threat of never having it again?

And it needn’t be overseas, or even beyond your own postcode. Change is accessible at all times, but we forget that.

Go out and look for it. Get lost.

Lollipop Leanette v Them

Right off the back of an afternoon flow state, I thunder up the hill having left it late to collect the kids from school. I still inhabit that glorious lucid state when I arrive, when solutions feel near for all and any issues, and possibilities are endless. Lollipop Leanette holds fort in the middle of the road, as she likes to, despite me – the next pedestrian – being fifty or so yards away from her traffic haven, meaning I – an overly considerate weakling – have hit a jogging pace to avoid upsetting the apprehended driver.

And without fail, she laughs a triumphant, defiant sneer. It’s beautiful and I implicitly understand it. To crown it, she turns to look at a tailback happening to the cars she has allowed to go on and says, in the most beautifully snarky voice, ‘I don’t know where they think they’re getting to, anyway’ and oh, the dark sticky treacle pouring out of that face is so sordid and magnificent to me.

I carry on, through the school gate, and I stop to make a note on my phone to remind me to write this piece on Monday because my lucid state has me joining all kinds of dots.

It’s one word that drove home so many observations, birthed so many thoughts.

They.

The antagonist. Her antagonist. Our antagonist. The foil.

A classic storytelling other. The contrast. Not always, in fact rarely, when you go beneath the surface, good v evil.

For Leanette, it is the vehicle and the person behind the wheel. She is the guardian of children and their protectors, a shield in high-vis gear come rain or shine, and if you pause for just a moment to engage her, she’ll detail HGVs that have nearly flattened her.

In 2002, for me, it was the customer browsing the VHS and DVD films in Blockbuster who would not fuck off despite closing time having passed minutes ago. I HAVE A LIFE OUTSIDE OF HERE YOU KNOW. Only once did I flat out refuse to process the rental of the eventual selection on the grounds that I believed this one was doing it, at least in part, to piss me off. SEVEN minutes after close. No mate. I watched them shuffle back to their car with a blend of guilt and glee, Shrek in hand.

And now, in this career, selling art, words, and expertise, who are the baddies? What makes them so?

I could go down a rabbit hole here and there’d still be no right answer, but as I waited for my kids to emerge, making small talk with the mums and dads, I began to wonder about the framing of these antagonists, their impact on creativity, and flow – how they can just as easily provoke more interesting responses than plain sailing and smiles.

It was in Blockbuster and the other retail and factory jobs I held until my illustrator beginnings that I heightened my tolerance, often fighting the corner of a person I recognised was more layered than the ‘prick’ or ‘arsehole’ tag another might – and often with good reason – have stuck on them in the aftermath of some mild skirmish. And not always just tolerance. It would grow into admiration, recognition of valuable difference.

In my lectures and coaching, I now ask my audience and clients to consider the duality of ‘like-minded people’ - the idea that we seek to populate our existence only with those like us, who align with our interpretation of the world. Here of course, there is capacity for joy, but also a risk of unnecessary limitation of our imagination, idea generation, and understanding of the human condition.

The tension between desirable and undesirable is a place where creativity gushes hot.

As far as Leanette, I’ve been thinking about the creativity in her role. Obviously it’s a subtle blend, but I saw that expression. Those eyes. The voracity in her handling of the impatient and reckless drivers, but also the mastery with which she aims her silent daggers. Believe me, she has her means, ways, and unique tricks for mastering her three meters of road. And it’s not just the metal boxes under her dominion. In my haste to get back and start work on my first-ever ‘drop-off’ day, I accidentally undercut her. Let’s put it this way: she didn’t shout, she didn’t gesture, she didn’t even turn to look at me, but I won’t be doing it again.

A Burst Ball

The burst basketball sulks in a nettle bush.

I fish it out with a stick and kick it as far as the basketball court in the park.

It’s deflated, but there’s enough air left in it to throw at the hoop.

It misses. My dog’s not interested, off rolling on his own ball.

The guilt creeps in. I’m on my lunch break and there are project amendments awaiting me in the studio.

But where is the guilt from? The client? No. They’ve been great. The end user? No. Myself? Yes, a learned behaviour. But on what level?

Conditioning? Yes. I think so. Productivity, the great self-soother. If we’re going, going, going, then we’re closer to success, aren’t we?

Telling someone they don’t work hard might as well be an insinuation their old man works for Avon. That’s how much glory they’ve coated that notion in.

Recognising the artificiality of this guilt, I shove it out of the way. It doesn’t go, but stands off, shocked by my retaliation.

I shoot the ball. Woefully wide. But this bending is good for my back. The throwing works my chest, arms, shoulders, and neck. It refocuses my brain, and the lethargy that had been settling like dust on the top of a picture frame is blown away. Finally, I score one, and take a pathetic amount of glee from this win.

I get back to my desk five minutes later than I intended to, but I work with far more focus that I would have if I’d adhered to my systemic guilt.

It’s a valuable lesson to remember.

Council Coffee

I’m out with the dog, observing the patches of grass the council has left to grow wild in the parks around my house. Slightly bigger than last year, but not enough. Not given the biodiversity crisis we’re facing.

If your gut instinct is one of apathy, check that. It’s easy to hear these words so much that we switch off, but our generation is charged with the reparation of nature. Not because we have any kind of dominion over it, but because our abhorrent ignorance of the system we belong to – and I’m not talking about capitalism or neo-liberalism – has royally shafted it and now we are just as endangered as the rest of it. Now is not the time to bow to how troubling that fact is, but to spring to action, however small it might be.

On that basis, I email the local council to first congratulate their efforts here, but in the next sentence, suggest there are many areas that still get mown, that could be left to wild.

A few days later I’m sat in front of the head of environmental services. This is to be applauded. They could have ignored, or pacified me with some copy and paste FAQ, but they asked me in for a natter. An natter we do, about the way it all works, about how the council must always try to listen to everyone, and find compromise.

Sadly, this averaging restricts the serious, significant action required as we try to make up for lost time.

It’s not as if I don’t already have my hands full. Hectic career, two kids, dog, social life – even if it is brittle at best – but we all live and die by the ailing ecosystem that needs our efforts to fix.

What I do leave with is an open invitation – there’s no budget for any kind of art, but they will do their best to support the efforts of their constituents in other ways. And so my unconscious gets to work on ways I can channel my negative emotions about people overlooking the vital importance of their garden spaces. Why they shouldn’t be felling trees, or shaving that lawn to death just to ‘keep it tidy’ as if this is a post-war flex from the late 1940s. What I learned from the council invite is that if you don’t just criticise and attack people, they might be more open than you think to welcoming you into a bigger conversation. One that can facilitate an action that supports our mental health, our environment, and creativity.

We live in an unbelievably interesting time, and I think we have a bigger part to play in it than we allow ourselves to believe, and the role of creativity in it is monumental.

Natalie’s Garden

Natalie is in her garden again.

For most of my working week, I’m in the small studio space I had built at the bottom of mine.

This has been both a beautiful and terrible experience.

Terrible because humans are thoughtless and stupid sometimes; wielding chainsaws and bringing down the trees we rely on for biodiversity – the bugs we need to produce our food and sustain the ecosystem to which we belong – and always for silly shit like ‘not enough light in my kitchen’ or ‘I want a car parking space.’ This is agonising for me, a parent of kids who rely on the generations who went before to pave (no pun intended) the way for theirs, and as a lover of the natural world.

Beautiful because there’s Natalie. Natalie, who has taken some time out from her career following personal change, and has poured so much time into transforming her garden into a soul-nourishing green space.

And when she’s out there, it’s incredibly comforting to me. I leave the studio door ajar just to listen in on her digging or arranging while listening to podcasts and BBC Radio 4. In the evenings, in this drought we’re in, when the pink sun sets on another unseasonably hot day, it’s incredibly soothing to take in this domestic tranquility.

That’s when the space I made for my creativity is just perfect. In these moments, I feel that whatever next, it will be OK.

The Watch

I forgot to say, but I did a live art job for a swanky watch launch event. Luxury, heavy on the wrist, rip out your arm hairs James Bond shit.

I sat in the café next door, drank my black tea, and took off my £20 Casio.

I take pride in this because it’s who I am; a man still in awe of its little night light and the fact that if I forget to take it off in the shower, it’s absolutely fine. Water resistant, ohhhh yeah.

Peace in self is everything for creativity. As it goes, the client and audience loved the work, but I’ll stick to my Casio.

It’s Easy to Forget

It's incredible how the clueless graduate pops up no matter how long I rack up as an artist.

After a challenging couple of years on the commission front, I Hook a decent job to transform the first quarter of 2025 from a reasonably improved one into a decent one. The brief is a good fit, the client genuinely excited to work with me, and I them, but after the first day, I realise I've reverted to my BTEC college self, tensing up, drawing like a fucking robot - stiff, lifeless, far too perfect to be interesting. Then when the feedback confirms it, I scuttle into the kitchen, whining to my wife about the chances of now being dropped. She assures me, with a smirk, that this is highly unlikely, that this is a part of the process.

And I know it.

I discussed it just yesterday for an upcoming podcast episode with Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, a scientist who studies creativity and author of The Creativity Choice.

I've even helped my coaching clients with this issue many times over. But here I am, melting down.

It's creative self efficacy.

Our self belief in our ability, despite inevitable moments of fear, doubt, and uncertainty. The data shows that this is lowest, no matter the experience of the individual, at the beginning of a project. Highest by the end. Blocks, changes, side quests, they're all built into creativity's system. I know this, but I freak out anyway. It's also about acknowledging these salty emotions and walking that sap self to a stronger place from which to power on through.

Existential Night Shift

I'd like to see statistics of how many people wake up in full-blown existential panics.

I used to get them more often when I went out drinking more often, but they've always been around in some grotesque shape or other.

It happened last night. Heart doing a demolition job on my rib cage at 2am.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH?! WHERE WILL I BE?

One close friend with whom I share this, knowing he gets this too, chirpily assures me, 'worm food.'

There's comfort in that.

Embed Block

Add an embed URL or code.

As a person who doesn't believe in any particular almighty, certainly not in human form, but recognises my belonging to something bigger and far beyond my smart ape brain's comprehension, this works.

In the night, when it happens, it's black forever. Oblivion. Utter horror. Yet now, removed, observing the life and death cycle of everything, I’m able to cling to a certain peace, considering this cellular and subatomic expanse around me.

Worm food would do.

Ask my kids. They'll tell you how important that job is. That'd be a noble onward journey.

Eventually I went for a piss and came back to bed slightly calmer, my brain returning to the dimly outlined shapes in the bedroom, anchored here, now, with me.

But about those stats. I bet there's a line between those who lead with creativity and those who wake in dread.

The Big Reset

How addicted are you to the things that lurk behind your screens?

I hadn’t realised just how deep my digital habits had burrowed into my brain. How many neural pathways have been formed? Murky Meta-financed trenches in which the range and potential of my creativity is trapped, tromping around with trenchfoot and all kinds of ghastly ailments.

I was gardening this weekend, and playing out with the kids in the sun.

I’ve made an active decision to stop using Meta’s Instagram and Facebook in light of their role in too many dubious happenings to remain in bed with. It’s a sacrifice in some senses. These places have enabled nutritious relatonships. But those relationships can only flourish if they exist in a permanent state, as opposed to getting lost under the digital dust these places tend to gather.

Anyway, given this, I found on numerous occasions that it was now a default learned behaviour to reach for my phone when I saw something I liked, or found interesting. As I did start patting my pocket, I stopped, and returned to the point of interest because now, I have no immediate place to share in, aside from directly with another human. This felt good.

What did I ever get from Instagram anyway? Granted, a funny or warm comment or two, but what was I surrendering in the time it took me to edit, share, and ‘engage’? This weekend I found I was present, and I kept the enjoyment for me. And, if I was moved enough to share it with another, well, I’d have to think about who might resonate with this thing the most, and that is much more personal.

As far as creativity, this is all so much better for that cause than a toss of this thing into the digital void, where those algorithms would stand before it; judge, jury, executioner. Fuck that.

The Joy of Straight Shooters

Straight shooter. I love that term. It can translate to dick head, but it can also indicate an incredibly valuable presence in your midst.

Genuine people who make you feel discomfort by raking their fingernails down the blackboard of truth are incredibly valuable.

Dick heads are not without lessons, but require more tolerance and a willingness to seek understanding to access them, and rage must be felt along the way.

My friend Andy is genuine. He attributes at least some of his inability to bullshit people to his autism. Wherever it comes from I bask in it, sometimes accepting it’s worth being late to start work just to get a couple more laps of the dog walk in with him.

He’s also an engineer.

I’ve asked him to help me get a couple of shelves up in the studio. Yeah, go on, laugh. I’m at peace with my shocking lack of practical skills. I can write a great story and I’ll probably sketch his daughter or dog in return for this favour.

This morning he asked me to ask the fella who built my garden studio how thick my plasterboard walls are. Then, about to explain his thinking, his beautiful frankness burst out.

‘Right, this is boring as shit, BUT LISTEN.’ And we both cackled.

The truth is always funniest.

If it’s not something that fires my passion, it takes a gargantuan effort to apply myself, to counter the way I’m wired, which Andy knows well.

This isn’t an insult or cheeky – it’s recognition and respect for what he’s dealing with. It’s why I like to delve into all those frustrations, quirks perceived as flaws, and background with my interviewees and coaching clients. Until you establish common ground and real understanding, creativity will be impeded, challenged, or worse, choked out because it is subject to the chemistry of all things, especially the nature of the relationships through which it must pass to manifest in a final product of any kind.

Best of all, the laugh is still in my belly one hour later, and it’s nice to feel known.

Talking to Jen

I talked to Jennifer Murtell.

Jen was a force of nature – a talker, a whirlwind full of great ideas, insights, and observations of the human condition.

She’s the Vice President of Innovation and Strategy at Marks.

I keep calling Marks an agency, but they go under ‘next-gen creative platform’. Anyway, they do some cracking work, and Jen’s been part of a team of women working on the brand for MUSA, a female healthcare brand designed by women for women.

We talked about this, but our brains just f*cking careened into each other’s and the collateral is one hell of a deep discussion about these changing times, the many issues and opportunities at hand.

As part of the chat, I asked Jen if she believes that such work can make a difference and inspire positive change, and she echoes my feelings with a fascinating response. On some days, she tells me, I absolutely, wholeheartedly do. On others, no, no I don’t. But she points to the tension between those feelings, the importance of the dark and the light, the push and pull of optimism and something more barbed, something dank.

It left me in a reflective mood.

After each interview – now over 250 in my career – I have to find ways to decompress because I won’t have just anyone on the show (I curate hard). This means I’m usually bouncing, equipped with new ways of seeing, thinking, and going about things. I cast my mind back to harder emotional times in early parenthood, how the weight of the world I felt as a new parent drove me into some anxious places, but also pushed me to find my fight in the f*ckery, my cause. My why.

Without landing on creativity as my life’s work – not making or doing – but championing, supporting, and spreading creativity as arguably our most powerful tool for fulfilment and a better future, I could have spiralled into a rotten state of mind. Today, I’m up for the scrap, but on the next downturn, I’ll lean into the shadows and think of what Jen said.

For more creativity insights, interviews, coaching opportunities and more, head to https://thecreativecondition.com

Biography

It’s a coincidence that I’m reading a lot of biographies at a time when I’ve just written my first biography, and I’m discussing my second. In my effort to reduce time wasted on screens, I’ve made the bathroom my biography zone. Biographies because I find that once I connect with the subject, once I’m there in this person’s life, it becomes compulsive reading, so even with only 2 minutes to sit and do the job, I’ll take out two pages.

I hadn’t given the nature of a biography much thought before, and then, suffering that strange ‘break-up’ sensation of having to part ways with characters in a book before I’m ready to do so – in this case football manager Brian Clough – the author, Duncan Hamilton, writes something beautiful about this. Referring to Clough’s obituaries after his passing in 2004, he offers:

Each story, different in its own way, underlined for me one thing: that there is no absolute truth in biography, only judgement. Every subject is posed, cropped, and framed, as if in a series of photographs that capture a lifetime of distinct, frozen moments. As a biographer, you produce a piece of work that honestly and accurately reflects what you witnessed, were told, felt, or discovered about the subject. You try to join the diverse dots of life, creating a picture that takes into account the interpretation and the assessment of others who saw things from a variety of perspectives. And you can only ever contribute to an understanding of the person concerned. You can’t be definitive.

The Reason You’re Doing It, Héctor Ayuso’s story was by no means a traditional biography. I have no interest in writing that way. After all, there are 1000s of better biographers if we’re thinking standard form. We set out to make a piece of art. A vicious, tender, and inspiring mood piece that bared Héctor’s soul while peaking intrigue and leaving space for the interpretation and imagination of the reader. Duncan’s words filled me with joy because he’s described exactly what I realise, with hindsight, I was trying to do, other than making art. It is what I’ll continue to do and I’m excited to see where, and through who’s life, it leads me.