Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way
Yeah, darlin’ gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space
Born To Be Wild, Steppenwolf (1968)
✱
Get your motor running. How? Reinhabit what got your motor running in the past. Look around at stuff you like. Relevant Nietzche quote here. Figure out your throughline, the line of action that runs through you through the things you care about and further outwards and there will be clues about what you oughta make, wanna make.
Creative motors run almost by default. The same way your heart beats, and the way you breathe without having to think about it- though can consciously choose to inhabit the breath. You’re probably noticing your breath now. That’s a rather magical thing, that you can drop into awareness of something that you might not have been attending to a second ago.
Children tend to know what they want. You seldom see children who are creatively blocked, unless they’ve been unfortunate enough to have gotten feedback from their environment that being creative is somehow dangerous or wrong, displeasing to adults and authority, or their peers. A lot of what we think of as socialization is sadly about negative reinforcement: what you’re not supposed to do. Don’t behave like that, don’t act like that, don’t touch that, that’s wrong, improper, nasty, disgusting. Some of it is quite important. A lot of it is nonsense. It’s hard to tell the difference
Civilization can be thought of as iterated potty training
People don’t actually stop being creative. If we’re not creative in making things, we’re creative in making excuses. We’re creative in our inhibitions. We find all sorts of ways to explain why we can’t do something, why something isn’t possible, why something is bad and wrong. And we could be right about those things! And there’s a seductive pleasure in being right about things. (Notes from Underground?)
So it’s funny. Get your motor running is a way of saying “get creating”. But we are always creating. There is a sort of shadow motor that runs on fear that inhabits the motor that runs on love. Ideally these two are balanced. But a lot of people are out of balance. My suspicion is that it’s because fear is easier and cheaper to mass produce. I think I want to explore that in some future essays
Motor running… long games. You know them by the roar of their engines. Remaining a public figure is a choice, because people decay out of it. You find out who is serious by who sticks around. And sure not everyone who is serious is *able* to stick around,
✱
There’s something funny and humbling about how, even after about two decades of writing, I don’t really have a lot of clarity about my own creative process. I take solace in the fact that someone like Meryl Streep has said “I’m so inscrutable to myself” about her own process. Which isn’t to say that I think I possess Streep-level talent, but rather that I’m relieved to learn that one can possess Streep-level talent and still be a mystery to oneself. And I’d like to think that some mystery keeps things exciting, compelling, interesting. Wouldn’t it be boring if creativity were a completely mechanical, predictable, “solved” process? There’s something about transcending the bandwidth limitations of communication to convey something profoundly universal. I’m not going to argue for ignorance, I think it can be good to learn as much as we can, but it’s important to not get swept up in the pretense of knowledge. Real humility is having the honesty to know what we know and feel what we feel.
I also find myself thinking about a conversation between Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle, where Dave is talking about how it’s the idea that drives the car:
Dave: “Like, if I had an idea, it’s the driver. It’s like, “Get in the car!” – I’m like, “Where am I goin’?” – the idea says, “I dunno! Don’t worry, I’m drivin’…” and ya just get there.
Jerry: The idea’s driving.
Dave: Sometimes I’m shotgun, sometimes I’m in the fucking trunk, but the idea takes you where it wants to go. And then other times, there’s me, my ego. and I go, “I should do something.”
Jerry: I should be driving!
Dave: Yeah…
Jerry: …and that’s not good…
Dave: …because there’s no idea in the car! It’s just me. That formula doesn’t work.
Jerry: If the idea’s in the front of the car, honking, Let’s go! Pulls up in front of your house going, ‘Let’s go!’ [That’s how it works].
Dave: That’s exactly right.
Jerry: You’re in your pajamas,
Dave: “I’m not ready,”
Jerry: “I’m not ready!”
Dave: “You can go like this.” “Where are we going?” “Don’t worry about it, you’ll see!”
I laugh again with recognition upon rewatching it. So many times that I’ve written something good, I hardly feel like I was there at all. I felt like a witness. I was shotgun or in the trunk. And every time I put myself in the driver’s seat, it doesn’t work. I have hundreds of pages of drafts, dozens and dozens of drafts, all of which have me in the driver’s seat. It doesn’t work. I have to let the idea drive.
tbc