Creative Quest

by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson

That’s one thing about being creative. Don’t be too set in your own ways. Be suggestible from time to time.

Big ideas grow from those little things. Writers tend to be people who are sensitive to words. Artists are sensitive to color and line. If you want to encourage your own creativity, try to pay attention to the creative acts of others. More than that: try to pay attention to the ways in which the things that you didn’t think of as creative acts are actually perfect examples of creativity.

If we’re always discarding our thoughts to fit in with what’s acceptable, or correct, or accurate, we’re not going to have ideas that leap away from the ideas

that are already there.

Being creative is a mix of unfocusing your eyes in the right way, while still remaining focused on the picture.

Creativity is not about letting everything in—it’s about refusing to keep things out.

To truly get in touch with your creative side and the ideas it generates, you have to look through the organized and focused thoughts and find out what’s behind them. There might be nothing back there, or there might be something brilliant.

Don’t imagine what you will become—imagine what you won’t become. It helps to reinforce which parts of your creative identity you can’t live without, and which might be there only because you’ve been told by someone else that they should be there. Imagining what you won’t become is a necessary refining process.

This is a second fundamental point: once you are making things of your own, you’re no longer completely in anyone’s shadow. You can be derivative, or you can be trying too hard to distinguish yourself, or you can hope in your heart that the older artist recognizes the way you’re paying homage, but the fact of the matter is that once you start making things, once you take that leap, you have the same status as any other artist. I’m not saying that you’re as good. I’m not saying that you’re as important. But all of a sudden it’s a difference of degree rather than a difference of kind.

If something makes you very uneasy, especially if it’s something that’s being done in a creative field where you have experience, pay attention.

Influence isn’t primarily about comfort food. It’s about challenging your expectations of yourself.

Be sure to summarize what you’re learning. Isolate your insight and turn it into a short thesis statement.

The Mismatch is the Match Attach yourself to people who are doing things you don’t quite understand.