Why Do I Keep Going Off-Topic?

I’ve had a Youtube channel for a few years where I’ve talked a lot about making art. Most of the topics won’t come as a surprise to someone interested in the particular fields I’ve worked in. I talk about the fundamentals of drawing, what tools I use, recommended art books, ect. If you were to listen to my podcast How To Be An Artist, you might expect something similar and you might be surprised to find that things get pretty off-topic. I talk a lot about things like meditation, community and urban design and my plans are to range even more broadly.

What gives? One explanation is that artists should be generally curious about the world, and curiosity is certainly part of what drives me, but honestly, with all the podcasts out there listeners have many alternatives when it comes to basic curiosity. The other explanation I’ve given is that it’s about art looking from the inside-out rather than the outside-in. I’m not investigating art as much as I am using art as a vantage point to look at the rest of the world. That gets closer to describing what I’m trying to do, but it’s still somewhat vague and it doesn’t explain why this point of view matters.

So I wanted to make another attempt to explain what it is I’m doing with my podcast and why I’ve chosen so many topics that seem to have nothing to do with art. It’s a complex topic, but I’m going to my best to give a digestible, shorthand version of what’s going on. To help in the process I made a little chart that I like to call the simplified anatomy of the human superorganism.

You’ll notice it’s composed of three concentric circles each representing a domain. The individual is you, me, or some other guy. Community is the people we are connected to and the culture we share. Place is all of the physical spaces we inhabit. This includes our immediate environments like our homes or places of work; the various types of human settlements that we refer to as cities, towns and neighborhoods; and the natural world beyond.

The diagram is arranged in such a way to demonstrate that each domain is shaped by the domain that contains it. Place shapes community and community shapes the individual. Whether you think of yourself as an artist or not, the possibilities available to you are very much shaped by community and place.

Let me give a few examples to describe what I mean. Since the 1950’s in the United States we’ve built much of our cities around the automobile. For various reasons this has ended up spreading us out. Homes are farther apart and farther from places of work, shopping and school (think about the suburb you probably live in vs. the traditional main street where all the buildings are smooshed together). That spacing makes it more costly to interact with one another and as Robert Putnam has argued, it’s likely to be one of the main contributors to a widespread decrease in civic engagement since the middle of the last century.

Another example in regards to community: I grew up in a LDS Mormon community where there was an expectation for young men to dedicate two years of their lives to being missionaries. There was stigma for those who didn’t and acceptance for those who did. Not surprisingly, I made the choice, along with many other young men, to become a missionary.

There are legions of additional examples I could cite. Place and community create the path of least resistance. They are designed in such a way to make certain choices easier and others harder. It happens passively, and invisibly. It essentially runs on autopilot and we are mostly unaware of what it’s doing. We’re like fish in water, totally clueless about what water is and how it limits and guides our choices.

So why does this matter? When most of us think about what we want in life we think about things from the individual perspective. What things do we need to do to improve our skills, to meet the expectations of the industry (aka breaking in), and still meet the norms of the society at large. Most of what you’re gonna find out there on making art reflects this mindset and my Youtube channel is really no different. My most popular videos are those about developing basic skills as an artist.

If I were to map this mindset on to the diagram, it would look like this:

Most of the guidance out there on making art has to do with this border between the individual and community. I call this the domain of the “shoulds”. It focuses on the self we show to the outside world and how we fit that self to the norms and conventions of the wider community.

Less attention is paid to how we might tinker with community and place and how that might open our options even further. In fact, our culture is really built to make us believe that we shouldn’t be worrying about that stuff; that it’s the job of certified specialists and requires professional degrees and stamps of approval from serious people.

The truth is, this is the stuff that regular human beings have been doing since the beginning of history. It’s one of your basic rights to shape your environment, whether cultural or physical, in a way that you judge to be of most benefit. As an artist, it is your right to take ownership of these outer domains.

I’ve started exploring community on H2BNA. Step 7 with Lincoln Cannon looks at how organizations can provoke a “communal strenuosity” towards common goals, Step 10 with Miles Bukiet explores modern monasteries, Step 16 with Jackie and Dallin Cerva is a post-mortem of a real world experiment in community building, Step 20 with Dave Durocher is an investigation of the many innovations found within therapeutic communities and how they address issues of sustainability, morality and belonging that are essential to any communal project. I’ve also got an episode coming up with Michael Bishop of GWAR that looks back at the founding of the Slave Pit art collective and the conditions that made that possible. If you have an interest in forming a community of artists (or a community of any type), those episodes would be a fantastic place to start.

While I’ve made mention of it here and there, in upcoming episodes I’m also going to be making more of a dedicated focus on place and practical ways you can start tweaking your own built environment. I just wrapped up a discussion with Jeff Speck, who literally wrote the book on best practices for walkability (two books actually). I’ll also be speaking to upcoming guests on the topic of communal housing, small scale development, tactical urbanism and zoning reform.

Paradoxically, this actually brings the focus back to the individual. In order to do this right, being an artist can no longer be about fitting into a prebuilt system, but trying to figure out what system will be best for what you want, and making the design and construction of that system part of your body of work.

Of course, this means actually having a solid idea of what you want and of who you want to be. For this you have to travel away from the periphery of the shoulds and deeper into the territory of the individual as well.

There are lots of ways to explore that domain, whether it is through therapy, meditation, spirituality, or good ol’ fashion self help. Some great episodes for those interested in this domain would be Step 3 with Kohl Glass where we discuss developing a resilient self love, Step 10 with Miles Bukiet talking about standards of contemplative practice, Step 17 with Tim Farrington exploring the intersection of mental health and the dark side of meditation and Step 19 with Daniel Ingram where talk about maps of spiritual development and how they interface with art. My most recent discussion with David Habben (Step 21) on using values, intuition and intention to guide your artistic path is a great episode in this regard too.

Personally, this stuff gets really fun when it all collides together in some sort of brilliant singularity; when we see that it isn’t a bunch of disconnected topics or hierarchical domains but one expansive system, and that the places where we live and those we are connected to are all a part of who we are. Being healthy, happy and fulfilled can never just be a personal pursuit but stretches from the bottom of our souls to the edge of civilization. I’m gonna try and do my best to find guests that bridge these gaps and demonstrate the unexpected ways this stuff is all interconnected. I hope to also continually find topics that will be surprising, compelling and hopefully generative of better artists and better art.

If that sounds like something you’re interested in you can follow along at http://anchor.com/h2bna.