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Share Your Influences, Spread Fame

Your influences are all worth sharing because they clue people in to who you are and what you do – sometimes even more than your own work.

-Austin Kleon, Show Your Work, p. 77

I appreciate people who share their influences. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been helped by a couple of people who simply took the time to make a recommended reading list. That’s why I put one on this blog. I once threw a book across the room because it kept quoting people but didn’t give references for the quotes. By giving credit to the people that influence you, you allow others not only to see what has shaped you, but to dig deeper and maybe be shaped themselves.

There’s a C.S. Lewis quote that I would give a reference for if I knew where it came from (I got it from John Piper). Lewis is talking about the author of the Canterbury Tales. He says, “Poets are, for Chaucer, not people who receive fame, but people who give it.”

We should want to bring fame to those who have helped us. Don’t take other people’s ideas and simply make them your own. That makes those ideas die with you. Tell people where you got the ideas so that they can visit the source and be helped when you’re not around.

When you’re at a party, tell people about what your reading. Tell them about the people who are helping you. This way you’re not talking about yourself, but you’re letting them get to know you nonetheless. Share it on social media. Kleon says, “Don’t show yourself, show your work.” Instead of posting a selfie, recommend a book. Brag about a book or an author instead of bragging about yourself. More on this to come…

More on this to come…

Amateurs

Kleon notes that the French word ‘amateur’ means ‘lover.’ He quotes Clay Shirky:

On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the amateur and the good is vast. Mediocrity, however is still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something (pp. 15-16)

-Austin Kleon, Show Your Work, pp. 15-16

An amateur is a lover. That’s not a knock. More professionals need to be amateurs. Love something.

Scenius

There are a lot of destructive myths about creativity, but one of the most dangerous is the ‘lone genius’ myth…There is a healthier way of thinking about creativity that musician Brian Eno refers to as ‘scenius.’ Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals – artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers – who make up an ‘ecology of talent.’ If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of ‘a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at teaching other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.’ Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals; it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.

-Austin Kleon, Show Your Work, pp. 9, 11

To be a part of a ‘scenius’ you have to recognize what is happening in your field and be a part of the give and take. You then have to figure out what is lacking in what is happening and see if you can contribute to fill in that gap.

You might replace the idea of scene with ‘movement.’ Folks are fond, especially within Christianity these days, of calling things movements, though I’m not really a fan of that term. The idea is to figure out the big movements, take what you can from them, and contribute what you can based on what you’ve seen to be lacking.

If your a writer or artist or even preacher, do you have a scene? Are you a part of something? Biblical theology is a major scene at the moment. Have you looked at that scene hard enough to see what’s lacking? Everyone recognizes the need for narrative-makers. What’s lacking in that? How can you take other people’s ideas and contribute what’s lacking?

The idea is that you may not, and don’t have to be, a genius. But you can be part of a scenius. You can make a big contribution if you can read the times we live in and contribute something that is needed. And you don’t have to do it alone. If there is an ‘ecology of talent,’ then adding one little thing to it can change the environment, just as adding frogs to a frogless habitat can change the environment. What can you add?

Blogging Through ‘Show your Work’

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-Austin Kleon, Show Your Work

I have a lot of posts sitting in my drafts to get through before the end of the month (I hope). I have to try to do some blogging as the next few months will be frantic with work, my last semester at RTS (staring Feb. 1), seeking a church-call, graduation, etc.

I have been reading a lot of short stories (of the minimalist variety) and a lot of essays and interviews about writing. I need to write about those. But at the moment I am going to start posting some select quotes from, and thoughts about, Show Your Work by Austin Kleon.

I found this book to be extremely helpful. It scratches a major itch I’ve had for a while: how do you share what you’re doing without being a self-promoter? That’s a major question for any Christian, but especially for a preacher, and a preacher who really likes to write at that.

I have barely begun applying the ideas of the book, but writing through them will be a part of the process. If you’d like an idea of what the book is about, you can watch a talk the author gave HERE.

Recent Reading: Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut

I read Slaughterhouse Five a while back because it was highly recommended by Chuck Palahniuk, and because another of my favorites authors, Douglas Coupland, is a big fan of Vonnegut. So, when I saw this book on the for-sale rack (for a quarter) at my local library, I decided to pick it up. I’m in the lull between the end of classes and final exams at seminary, so it’s high time for some fiction for the sake of sanity.

– Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut

This book will be added to my list of recommended reading on culture and technology. Last year, I accidentally stumbled upon Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, and discovered that it was a story that dealt with scientism; it turns out the same thing has happened again with Player Piano.

In the story, another dystopia by the way, Vonnegut depicts a future for America in which the scientists and engineers rule the day. Machines have been invented to do essentially all menial labor that there is to do, which has left no work for the working class. Everything about your life is essentially predetermined by your IQ score. If you are smart enough, you go to college and become something of value and significance; if you are not, you join the army or some belittling government corps. If you really want to make it, you must become an engineer. And as an engineer, you care for the machines that essentially rule the culture. Just be careful not to invent a machine that will take your place. If you do your job well, you might climb your way up the managerial bureaucracy.

The story centers around one such engineer named Paul Proteous (a great name by the way) who happens to be the son of one of the most successful engineers in the history of the country – the engineer given primary credit for the current machine-driven system. Paul begins to consort with folks from ‘across the river’ and learns how miserable common people are in this system, a fact that he has been oblivious to all of his life heretofore. He, along with an engineer-friend that has given up on the system, meet a Protestant minister who tells them of his belief that the lower class are primed for the arrival of a messiah that will deliver them from their low estate of, basically, having nothing of any significance to do.

From this point on, Paul is caught on the threshold of two worlds and must decide what he truly thinks of the cultural system as it is. Should he continue to live his successful life without experiencing any sense of significance or purpose, or could he perhaps rebel against it.

As his name is Proteous, the name given to him by his father, the most famous name in the land, he is ultimately recruited to serve as a nominal messiah to lead to lower class in a rebellion against the bureaucracy. Still, he is torn between two worlds and must decide to which side he will pledge his ultimate allegiance, realizing that this coup may cost him everything. I won’t give away the ending, so I’ll stop there.

Vonnegut wrote this story in the 1950s, and his prescience is astounding to some degree. I am always amazed by the people that can see things coming. Personally, I find that I am good at diagnosing problems, but not so good at seeing where those problems will lead to down the road. This book belongs with Animal Farm, Brave New World, and 1984 in relation to dystopian visions of the future. It hits upon the basic question of what man is meant to do, and what man will do when that meaning and purpose is taken away – in this case by gadgets.

Recent Reading: Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut

Harrison Bergeron (a short story), by Kurt Vonnegut

This short story depicts a dystopian world in which all men are equal (America in 2081). All men being equal, however, it turns out, is not easy to accomplish. Equality is accomplished through government-imposed handicaps.

For instance, if you are more intelligent than the average person, you are fitted with a mandatory ‘earbud’ (if you will) that pumps in random loud noises every few minutes to make sure you can’t sustain a train of thought. Or, say you’re too beautiful, then you are required to wear a mask. You can always know who’s beautiful, since they’ll be the one wearing the ugliest mask.If you’re too physically able, maybe a fast runner, then you have to constantly wear a heavy load on your back.

As with Player Piano, which I also read recently, the book ends with the promise of a messiah that will deliver the world from its bondage to equality, and the ultimate failure of that messiah.

The story turns out to be a fairly good parable for a culture still coming to grips with what equality truly means – a culture that rejects the notion that God desires unity, not uniformity – and a culture that always rejects those (him) who would save it from itself. You can read the story online HERE.