I am watching the Olympics and remember my visits to Japan. My last visit to Japan changed my life forever. This image of Mona Lisa forking a strawberry I took in Odaiba. I don’t know why it took Japan to give me a direction in life but thinking about it over many years – Japan has influenced the life stories of many artists. Its aesthetics and very strong vision on things from tea to video games. Japan also has very strong values, many of which I don’t agree with but I do respect.
To be a creator is the greatest power in the world.
Don’t be worried about anything else.
I have always appreciated the sense of humor of the people in Japan. This photograph of the Mona Lisa I took on my first trip to Tokyo. She is eating a strawberry with a fork.
The model in this picture has been dead for over 500 years. Why do people still care?
This one hit me like a brick on the head when I visited, three times, a once in a lifetime exhibition of Michelangelo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It was the Met’s gift for us for the Holidays.
There is no greater power in the world than that of being a creator. When you are a creator you are in control. Everything else is an agenda fed by someone else.
We are constantly told by media, papers, whatever visual and auditory space available, that we should be eating, drinking, remodeling kitchens, buying and saving money, I think that one last thing has in such a great way deformed our consciousness that there is this anxiety that we have to be constantly on the intake. We walk around with this anxiety for the next intake, I am astonished by the amount of time and energy spent discussing, cataloging, and planning past and future meals, and the acquisition of objects.
Yet, there in the dim light of the Met were these really faint (by modern standards) marks on paper that produced in me such great pleasure to observe and contemplate them, and I bet in others too, judging by the crowds. Really, nothing of substance at first glance, certainly nothing to be chewed on. Just marks going here and there, up and down and in circles. These markings, however faint, produced great emotions and appreciation. Pretty wondrous effect given that the author has not been around for the last 500 years and hardly ever comes up in conversations and on television.
The greatest power in the world is the power to create, we have hardly control over the first 20 years of our lives, we are placed and educated somewhat unwillingly and the only thing we can truly will is something of our own, something no one has ever produced before us and no one ever will after.
Kids directly engage the world, they immediately embrace brushes and fun and engage the world through play. I always tell kids whenever I teach my technology stuff - technology is just a tool. Learn how to be a creator. The creator is in control and this is the only true power in the world. When you are a creator you are in control. You hold the magic cards. And the wand.
As a creator, you are in control, in the driver's seat.
As human beings we are more, we are more than the sum of our parts, our DNA, our muscles, and our urges. We can apply sustained effort to create, for creativity’s sake.
When I first saw Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel I was floored. What is in it that makes people 500 years later be astonished out of their minds, in silence.
Sistine Chapel is not a particularly large structure, St. Peter’s in Rome is much bigger and greater, yet, after sampling room after room after room of the great treasures at the Vatican, the Michelangelo frescoes completely overwhelm the mind. Why is it, what’s in there? I remember standing down there amongst equally astonished people from all over the world who braved the lines to come here and pay their respects to this great artwork, looking up and marveling at the power of this thing.
What is in there is the creative power of Michelangelo. Hundreds of other painters could have used the same exact paints, brushes, themes. But it is the power of his imagination and the dexterity of his control as a creator that really takes us.
And now that I have come to measure my levels of astonishment at various things, I have realized the greatest sustained power in the world is the power to create. The same power that made people line up around the block to see a movie with silly spaceships and whooshing and beeping. I mean, there’s a character in the movie that only spoke in beeping. This is the power of the creator to pull the curtain over our eyes and create magic.
So what is the point of having the keys to the magic kingdom - the point is to be empowered as a creator.
The most important job of the creator is to develop a taste. And then to use that taste to overcome the mundane. If you stay entirely with the mundane as a creator but without taste - you can end up making kitsch, or worse - Windows. Okay, just kidding.
It is important to often re-calibrate our consciousness because it is so overwhelmed by ordinary things. We end up using these literally magical devices to stare at cats.
There is an insight into the meaning of tools and technology in our lives from an Indian teacher. He says machines are Yantras, deities that enhance what we already are, we are enhanced beings.
So what is the problem with technology? People often complain and the media propagates this spiritless image of humans mindlessly staring down into phones and devices. We are bored already after a playlist or two and surely fatigued with pictures of french fries stacked against stadiums.
But can you imagine Steve Jobs (rip) or Elon Musk scratching themselves on the back of their heads with their phones, bored out of their minds?
This is what it means to be a creator, you use technology to be in control. You are only in the driver’s seat when you create, when you generate output. It is a one-way street, it is a drainpipe with a one-way flow - you are either on the intake or you produce.
I had the privilege of teaching very little and very bright kids recently, and when kids are super bright there’s no hiding, all is reduced to a string of truths. I tell them that no matter what software they learn or what sort of science they master - they need to be aware of the fact that the only true power in the world is the power to create. When you are a creator - you are in control.
When you are a mere consumer you are at the mercy of what has been generated for you. When you are the creator, whether you create objects of the mind or make cakes - you are in charge of the content and the process. You can use your faculties to get better at either. Software is just a tool, the computer is just a tool, once you have learned how to use a couple of different software products - you get clarity on the principle and you can quickly grasp any other.
To be a creator requires a lot of mental and physical energy, it is a lifestyle and it can’t be done just a little bit.
Be 100 percent in control 100 percent of the time of the most powerful intelligence on earth.