"This election is something of an indictment on the political information complex. The story that was portrayed was not true. We were just ignoring the fundamentals."
Scott Jennings does a flawless job taking down an entire panel of woke CNN hosts.
This is one of the greatest displays of the creative process I've seen.
It perfectly demonstrates something known as the "Creativity Faucet."
When you go to the studio, John Mayer was asked, what do you do to generate ideas?
âWell, I donât always do it,â he admitted, âbecause
it requires a stupid bravery all the time.â
He strums a couple chords without singing. A nice melody begins to formââyou can sit here all day [doing this] and go, âOkay, maybe thatâs something.'â
âBut if you donât go,â and then he improvises vocals,
âSunlights beating on the corner of the walls / and Iâm a Mr. know-it-all / heaven calls / get yourself right / get yourself right,â he stops playing, raises his finger to his mouth, and explains, âif youâre not ouija boarding immediately, youâre wasting time.â
âYou just stare at the corner of the wall,â he says, before he improvises some more,
âStare at the corner of the wall / try to get it going on / but I canât sometimes / you just keep going 'til you get something / maybe Iâm a little bit shy / maybe someday Iâll tell you why,â he stops singing, âyou gotta keep forcing it, forcing it, forcing it.â
âIt doesnât matter [what comes out of your mouth]...You gotta get fearless, fearless, fearless, fearlessâŠItâs hard to do.â
Takeaway 1:
In the clip, we see John Mayer's ability to generate vocals steadily increase.
It's a perfect display of what Julian Shapiroâwho (among other things) is incredible at deconstructing how things like creativity workâcalls the âCreativity Faucet.â
Essentially, creativity works like âa backed-up pipe of water,â Shapiro writes. âThe first mile is packed with wastewater. This wastewater must be emptied before the clear water arrives.â
At the beginning of a creative session, almost always, bad ideas come out of the faucet first. The John Mayers of the world have the discipline and âa stupid bravery,â as Mayer said, to get through the backed-up pipe of bad ideas, to empty the wastewater, to âjust keep going 'til you get something,â as he sang.
Takeaway 2:
To let out bad ideas, to empty the waste water, Mayer said, you have to âget fearless, fearless, fearless.â
In another interview, Mayer was asked how he defines writerâs block.
âWriterâs block,â he said, âis when the two people inside of youâthe writer and the readerâwhen the reader doesnât love the writer. Writerâs block is not a failure to write. It is a failure to catch the feedback loop of enjoying what youâre seeing and wanting to contribute more to it.â
A creative block is not a failure to create. It is a failure to accept that you must empty a lot of bad ideas before good ideas can flow. It is a failure to get fearless, fearless, fearless, fearless.
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âYou gotta keep forcing it, forcing it, forcing it...You gotta get fearless, fearless, fearless, fearless.â â John Mayer
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