over the past years, i’ve been blessed to be able to actualize a few different creative visions. many have not seen the light. they’re more often than not the result of collaboration with other artists, engineers, and writers. reflecting on how many of the creative visions that have actualized, i began to notice a pattern. and, after some reflection, its changed how i view, understand, and engage with my own creativity. namely, that creative visions are seeds.
an engineer’s mind
to really paint the picture of why that’s even a realization worth sharing, i need you to understand how i understood creative visions. you see, i’m an engineer by trade. so when given a task or ticket, i break down the problem into a list of accomplishable sub-problems. then for the most part, i go one by one down the list and knock out each task item. if there’s uncertainty, i carve out time to do research or create further actionable items to “unblock” or gain clarity for myself to knock out a task.
this kind of thinking is really helpful when you are trying to get things done. it’s a linear process, you go down a checklist of sorts and knock things out. there are clear inputs and outputs, and, if there aren’t, its your job to figure out what those are by asking questions. and, to be fair, this sort of linear thinking isn’t exclusive to engineers. this is what many professionals do, and that’s what they’re paid to do.
but adopting this type of thinking as your only modality of thinking is risky when it comes to creative work. its a sort of “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail” type problemo. it works to get things done, but in matters of creativity, where one must rely on intuition, taste, and a number of other important but less “tangible” metrics, you just don’t get very far (unless ur doing a diy project!).
the intangible stuff
or the fuzzy stuff. people hate uncertainty because they don’t understand it. what am i referring to here? i’m talking about taste and intuition, and these two things can be much more tangible than you think. i found the following excerpt from Paul Graham’s “Is there such a thing as Good Taste?” exceptionally good at how tangible taste and intuition can be:
taste takes time to develop. it begins by noticing beauty and beautiful things, then appreciating said beauty and beautiful things, and, lastly, breathing inspiration from the beautiful things we experience and witness into our own creations. to have taste is to know what you like from what you don’t like, and why. its understanding that amidst all the stuff in this universe you could consume, you prefer to consume x, y, and z because it makes you feel/think/live differently in the way that you’d like.
intuition in this case is the expression of the subconscious ability to discern what feels right or what feels wrong because you’ve experienced the reference point of comparison a thousand times over. what do i mean by this? ever see an AI photo with messed up hands? the image could be 99.9% accurate, but if you see a blurry digital 6th finger poking out of the AI person’s wrist — you intuitively understand this is an AI generated photo. how? because your entire life you’ve seen what “hands” “should” look/feel like, so your intuition kicks into your judgement before you even have to take time rationalizing why the AI generated photo you’re looking at is wonky.
back to the garden
i take time to talk about taste and intuition because they take time to develop but also because there is no final development until we are 6 feet under. our tastes and intuition are consistently being refined and tuned every second of our existence through our sensory outputs. they are foundations to creative visions — to actualize a vision you have to literally see what it is you want to bring into reality first and that vision is shaped by them. its by understanding how these two things are developed less structurally and more, i suppose, organically, that i realized that creative visions are more like seeds. when i say organically, i think of how a flower blossoms or how bacteria grows. to me, that’s akin to how taste and intuition strengthen. and so if that’s the case, actualizing a creative vision is less like putting together lego blocks but more like gardening.
when you think of a creative vision like a a pouch of seeds, you can be a little more gentle with yourself. in this past year, i’ve seen visions i’ve had in my head for a minimum of 2 years come into fruition in ways that were far better than i could have imagined and also far more lack luster than i had imagined. once the idea has been planted by means of you taking action, all you can do is really just tend to it consistently and try to make sure it has the right amount of sunlight and nutrients in the soil.
and you might not always be able to get that combination of things for the creative vision to blossom right away. like imagine growing tomatoes in a garden for the first time. you plant a couple tomato plants. perhaps all of them yield fruit, perhaps half or 2/3rds, or perhaps none of them. if at least one of them thrives, than you have harvest and you work off of that. if you don’t, you pick yourself and try again. the second go, you change the mineral content in the soil, how much water you pour, or you plant in a different place. you run through enough iterations of planting these tomatoes, and soon enough you intuitively understand that best situation and environment to plant tomatoes.
stories of old
creative visions are the same. thus far, i’ve found a lag of at least 1 year between ideation to fruition. i’d like to take a moment here to differentiate execution from fruition. you can execute on an idea, do everything right, and if the timing isn’t right or some other variable is at play — the idea still may not come to life. fruition, like fruits in a garden, happens in cycles and to its own rhythm. the best way to bring our vision from ideation to fruition is to listen closely.
around this time last year, my roommate and myself were scrambling to throw a late night hookah lounge popup in oakland. we made a bunch of calls, sourced hookah vendors, talked to existing hookah lounges, the whole nine yards. we couldn’t pull it off despite the effort we put it. fast forward a year later, the idea returned to me once again but different. instead of a hookah lounge, what i really wanted was a laid back place where people could come together and just hangout during Ramadan. we’ve been meaning to pilot paid events through chai and vibes, and sure enough it was the perfect mixture of circumstances to bring the idea to fruition. within the first hour of selling tickets we sold out, and over the course of the week we gained 2x the amount of people we had capacity for.
tend to your garden, o’ creative one!
‘There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.’ (Pangloss)
‘All that is very well,’ answered Candide, ‘but let us cultivate our garden.’”
i tell you this story behind our first paid event at Chai and Vibes to prove this point: creative visions are seeds. you can plant them at different seasons, and it will yield different results accordingly. do not be too stuck to an idea, be patient with it. you can try again in a different way, or the idea could morph into a better version of itself with time. let the creative vision attract what it needs to come to life, and I promise you when it’s ready — you’ll know it. so be patient, and tend to your garden o’ creative one.
sincerely,
haroon