5 – You Are Not A Tool

MODULE FIVE

Core question

Do you believe that what lies within you affects the things you make and the life you live?

Core practice

Slow down and start confessing.

You’ve made it to Module 5! Hooray!

There is a trend – it’s not new – but it says that art is utility.

Art is only useful for what can be squeezed out of it.  A piece of work is only valuable if it can be used.

It says that art is a mechanism for movement, and therefore the artist is a tool.

But you’re not a piece of steel! You are not factory! You are not an assembly line, cranking out art to be devoured then discarded. You have guts and blood and bones and a brain. You have a heart and soul.

You aren’t a tool, you are a human!

So how do we avoid making art in the name of utility? To go even further, how do we avoid turning our lives into cookie-cut, factory-fabrications, when we were meant for so much more? And how do we do this without becoming bitter.

Something my best friend Jarrod and I always say is that a person working within a healthy process, will in turn create a healthy, beautiful, more holistic product, whether that product be your art or your life.

In this module, we’ll dive even further into the principles of such a process.

As we proceed, though, we must guard our hearts, because it’s messy out there. And it takes a considerable amount of energy and courage to keep ‘making’ in the best way we can muster, even in the face of utility.

Pushing our way through a nuts and bolts world as our bosses, critics, or Resistance itself, are telling you what to make or even how to make it, we can easily lose ourselves. We can become robots.

Woe to her who becomes like the heartless Tin Man standing in the deep part of the forest, hatchet in hand, frozen mid-swing, without the patterned thump of blood running through her chest.

Your heart is what makes you human and you must protect it with everything you have.

Before we continue, I have confession to make.

This course isn’t about becoming a better artist – though, I think it’s possible that at the end of this you might make better art. Really, this is about becoming a better human.

And in this module we get serious about the practice of becoming better humans.

Ever heard anyone say the following:

“Can you just make the logo bigger?”

“Can you just put it in a different key?”

“Can you make it reflect my personality more?”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s good – just get it done.”

“Can’t you just make it work?”

“Why do you take so long?”

“I just don’t like it. I can’t put my finger on it, but I just don’t like it.”

“I’m not feeling it.”

“Jazz it up!”

“Make it pop!”

If you’ve ever heard such a phrase, below is the cure! (The video is a little long and you’ll get the idea in the first couple minutes, so don’t feel obligated to watch the whole thing.)

Ok, so there isn’t exactly a salve to make the issue of art as utility to go away.

Also, let’s be careful not to put all the blame on our bosses, clients, or leaders, since it seems like sometimes we’d prefer to be tools instead of humans.

Have you ever overheard yourself say the following:

“Oh, I’ll just work on it a few more hours.

“Sure, I can take on one more project.”

“I don’t really need any sleep.”

“I’ll see my family later.”

“Of course I can do that (even it costs me everything). Yes!”

I have another confession to make.

Often I find myself stuck – unable to be a better human. Often, saying yes to too much. Often, I too, find myself being a tool.

Just before I sat down to finish up this module, a friend asked: “How are you doing?” And I said, “I’m kind of a mess.”

My wife and I are trying to get out of debt right now and so we’re taking on every extra job that we can.

As I write about not being distracted, I’m answering emails and texts and phone calls about a shoot that we have coming up, about an edit that needs tweaking for a huge event, and about a rebrand with deadlines right around the corner. As I sit here staring at the blinking cursor, all I can think is this: “I am so frazzled. How can I teach about not being a tool when I most certainly am one myself?”

So really, I must begin with the following confession:

I’m not a good human yet.

And I’m wondering how many of you reading this feel same way?

This week, I want to walk you through some of the things I’m trying to do in my own life, some of the most important principles for becoming a better human. Also, you’ll get to see a few videos I’ve made over the last couple of years illustrate exactly what I’m talking about.

What I love about this week is that we all get to do this work together AND I get to introduce you to one of my favorite books.

Allow me to call your attention to a lovely passage, in a lovely book called, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. It’s by a guy named John O’Donohue.

As you move ahead to take in the passage, I hope that you can be present, still, open.

Turn off apps in the background.

Turn off your phone.

Silent your mind and take a few deep breaths.

Ready? Ok.

John O’Donohue writes,

“If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person, or deed can still.

To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together.

No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of an inner world.

This wholesomeness is holiness. To be holy is to be natural, to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you. Behind the façade of image and distraction, each person is an artist in this primal and inescapable sense. Each one of us is doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries and shapes a unique world.”

So if being an artist and becoming a better human is about regaining our humanity – our interiority – how do we do this in the midst of the craziness of deadlines, of people telling us to make the logo bigger, of our own voices?

Are you ready? I’m about to tell you.

Drumroll, please…

1. Relax, breathe, and get alone.

We’re crazy. We’re maniacs. We are crazy people, and I’m afraid we don’t believe in God. For if we did, certainly we wouldn’t act the way we act. Of course I’m using hyperbole, but perhaps I’m not at all.

As I write this, Ruby is three. So often I catch just kind of walking around, she has this little sway, most times she’s humming a little tune to herself. In her eyes is trust. And in her heart, I imagine something like this: “Oh, someone will take care of me today. Someone will feed me when I get hungry. If I poop my pants, someone will clean it up…probably.”

I wonder how many of us sit in our offices or in front of our computers or wherever we make things and say or sing, “Surely if I sit here long enough on my knees or my buns, God will give me an idea. Surely God will give me wisdom for that really difficult relationship or for this pain I’m experiencing. Surely, God wants to take care of me. Surely God will give me what I need today.”

It doesn’t appear we think any of this is true. If we did we wouldn’t be running around like maniacs working so damn hard.

This one little principle may be the most important thing I have to offer, and it’s honestly what I think we as artists and good humans can uniquely offer to our communities. You don’t need to look closely to see that the Bible is rife with relax and breathe. “Fear not” is the narrative throughout it. “Be anxious not.” “Mechanize not.” “Be present, rest, pray.”

And of course, we want this. “Yes,” we say. “Yes, I want this better way.” The hard part, as always, is the how. How do we expect to relax and breathe in the midst of the crazy? We must be alone. Everyday.

Even Jesus said, “I’m sorry I’m not enough for you today. I understand that you want more, but I have to go be alone for a little while.”

In the book, Essentialism, by Greg McKewon, he brings back something from Module Two:

“Think of Sir Isaac Newton. He spent two years working on what became Principia Mathematica, his famous writings on universal gravitation and the three laws of motion. This period of almost solitary confinement proved critical in what became a true break-through that shaped scientific thinking of the next three hundred years.

Richard S. Westfall has written: “In the age of his celebrity, Newton was asked how he had discovered the law of universal gravitation. ‘By thinking on it continually,’ was the reply…What he thought on, he thought on continually, which is to say exclusively, or nearly exclusively.”

In other words, Newton created space for intense concentration, and this uninterrupted space enabled him to explore the essential elements of the universe.”

Real understanding about how we’re moved, or how to move others, whether in art or our lives, takes space and intense concentration.

Relaxing, breathing, and getting alone – these are things artists can uniquely lead others in. If the artist doesn’t lead the community into relaxing, breathing, and getting alone, who will? Our CEO pastors? That isn’t likely. So if we can’t do this, the rest of what I’m talking about won’t matter.

For more on this, check out this incredible podcast from On Being about the power of breathing and yoga – “Breathe and everything changes.”

Confession: I don’t do this well all the time, but I want to.

TIME OUT

We feel, and create, less like ‘tools’ when we move toward balance in the internal and external parts of our lives. This allows us to meet the demand for output with health, hard work, and presence. How are you doing with this balance?

How is this expressing itself in your work? Your art? Your relationships?

2. Embrace the obstacles.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The names in the following story have been changed.

My friend, Jacob, is a music video director. He lives in LA, and he was doing a music video for an up-and-coming rapper named Barrel on a label owned by a very big guy named Trick.

Jacob had spent over a year planning out this music video. They were 12 hours away from starting the shoot. They had done all their casting, all their location scouting, and Jacob gets a phone call from a woman named Aquarius, who is Trick’s assistant. Aquarius says, “Stop everything! Trick says the video has to change! There’s a conference call in three hours.”

So Jacob gets on this conference call. It’s Trick, Aquarius, and a bunch of other people in Trick’s entourage. Trick yells out: “Whose idea was this video?”

Again, Jacob was directing, but it was really Barrel and his entourage’s concept, but no one wanted admit it. Trick yells out again: “Whose idea was this?”

“Mine,” Jacob finally muttered.

He said, “Jacob, I have a question for you. What would people say if I went on SNL wearing a red suit?”

Silence.

“Jacob, what would people say if I went on SNL in a red suit?”

“I don’t know. What would they say?”

“They would think I’m ripping off Kanye.”

“Oh.”

The video they were about to shoot was an autobiographical approach to Barrel’s life. Well, Barrel has a very similar past to another very famous rapper. Hence, the problem.

Trick went on, “If we do this video, everyone is going to think we’re ripping off Eminem. We can’t have that. The video has to change. You need a new idea.” And with that,  he hung up the phone.

This was an obstacle. A very, big obstacle.

I don’t know how Jacob did this, but instead of staying up till all hours coming up with a solution, he tried to relax, took a deep breath, and went to bed. Even as a write this, I still can’t believe that’s what he did.

What do you do when one of the biggest rap star / producers in the world calls you and says the idea needs to change and you have eight hours before the video starts? You don’t go to sleep! You work. Not Jacob, he went to sleep.

Around three o’clock in the morning, his phone rings. He answers it, and it’s Aquarius.

Aquarius says, “Trick is a genius. He fixed the video.”

So Jacob says, “Great! What’s the idea?”

Aquarius says, “Have you ever seen the movie Magnolia?”

He says, “Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

Aquarius says, “Trick says to make the video like Magnolia.” She hangs up the phone.

Jacob just shrugs and goes back to sleep.

He wakes up an hour before the shoot.

He gets in his car, and he’s like, “Trick said make the video like Magnolia. Make the video like Magnolia.”

Like, if he says it enough times, he’ll figure it out. Like it’s a puzzle. So he gets to the shoot. Their first set-up was shooting in a hospital. They were there because in the story, Barrel’s daughter had gotten sick and he had been going around the city stealing so he could make enough money to pay for an operation.

“Well, we can’t do that,” he said to himself as he walked past the operating room being prepped with lights and cameras.

So he just starts walking around the hospital, and he notices there is a chapel.

He’s like, “Oh okay. Well, what can I do with a chapel?”

So he tells the costume designer to go get suits and church dresses for all the actors who were supposed to be doctors and nurses.

He’s like, “We’ll make a revival scene. We’ll just do like a church revival.”

And while it had nothing to do with the original storyline, he just kept saying, “Well, we can’t do this, so let’s try this.”

There were about seven setups throughout the course of the two-day shoot and that’s what he just kept doing.

I was in LA and had dinner with Jacob the night in between the two days of the shoot.

As we ordered, I said, “What is going on? How are you? I can’t believe this! Your video, your big debut, is totally ruined.”

Without missing a beat, he said, “I think this might be the best video I’ve ever made.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I would have never thought to put these people in a church and have this revival scene because we were doing this other thing, but if I hadn’t ever had this obstacle, I wouldn’t have ever thought that.”

Then he went down the line, scene by scene.

There were all these obstacles, but instead of pushing against them, fighting them, he chose to embrace them.

But what do we usually do?

We fight, and we whine, and we complain, and what we don’t believe (or ever consider) is that the obstacle might actually bring us to a new, “more better” idea or place.

In the movie, Hugo, an orphan who lives in the walls of a train station in Paris in the 1930’s, is wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton.

There’s this amazing scene where Hugo, and his dad before his death, are building an automaton – a small robot, essentially. They’ve been building it for months and months and months and months and months, and they are so close to finishing it when…

…they go to crank it to turn it on when they realize that it’s missing a key. They quickly discover that the key can’t be made, it must be found.

Hugo falls to the floor. He pounds on the wood planks of the workshop. He punches the air in frustration.

“We were so close! This will never work!”

With a sweet and gentle touch, he father approaches him and whispers in his ear, “Ah! Another mystery to solve.”

TIME OUT

When confronted with an obstacle, what is your default reaction? Complain, grumble, blame? Breathe, think, work?

What do you think would happen if you approached obstacles as mysteries to be solved, new discoveries to be made, rather than as battles to be fought and won?

Submit your answer in the Facebook group if you’d be so very kind.

 

3. Your art is a cofession. Your life is a confession

Have you ever gotten a seven-word title of a talk or a series, and your pastor said, “Make something.”?

Have you ever got a creative brief that was so brief it contained nary one word of actual creative direction?

Have you ever found yourself in a situation relationally that left you stuck and you didn’t know whether to push back or embrace?

When faced with these situations, I try to ask myself two questions:

1. What is God doing in me?

2. How does He want to use what He’s doing in me to speak to the community / relationship I find myself in?

We must see all our work as confession.

Confessing, as in, the holy work of bringing into light what is puttering around in the dark. Giving words to what sometimes feels unspeakable. Giving shape to a world that can feel impossible to grab. Pulling movement or color or melody from the ache or the beauty.

And in our braveness, it’s confessing the darkness that is hidden in me and it’s confessing the belief that I have. This is always where I start.

My pastor said he wanted to do something on confession.

I took those two questions above:

1. What is God doing in me?

2. How does He want to use what He’s doing in me to speak to the community / relationship I find myself in?

…and made this:

My friend, Dan Allender, who founded The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, always says, “You can never take anyone farther than you’ve gone yourself.”

And I think about that in terms of the way we, as artists, lead and create for our communities.

Over and over, you are inviting your communities into the deepest places of their souls, offering light into sometimes dangerously dark places and calling out goodness in the mocking face of shame.

So to say, “Yeah, you know, we all struggle with stuff, and I’m a sinner too; I’m a broken person,” in between capo changes is not enough.

TIME OUT

Is there anything, big or small, that you need to confess? What darkness will lose its power if you bring it out into the light?

Obviously this is a very personal question. I’d like to encourage you to ask this first question alone, in a journal of some kind. Then, find someone you trust to share it with. This doesn’t need to be the biggest secret you have, but rather think about some pocket of darkness you know that needs a little light.

Where is a specific place, moment, project or relationship that you can infuse with this holy work? Now, tell us how you can tangibly infuse this light. In other words, how you can share your darkness in such a way that it blesses someone or something?

4. You must need as much as they do.

Not only does the “art as utility” phrase permeate the air, there is another that goes has cluttered the sense of those of us who make things, and it is this:

“Our community needs this.”

Or we’re making something, and we say to ourselves:

“Oh, they’re going to love this! Oh, this is going to be so good for them! I can’t wait for them to see this!”

These thoughts aren’t inherently bad, it’s just that they often put the cart before the horse.

As we discussed in Module Two, the best way we make art is when we feel more connected to ourselves. Like The Woodcarver, we make the best art when we’re not making it for them; we’re making it for us.

Now, hear me when I say, I’m not talking about making art for the sake of art or to simply please ourselves.

I’m just acknowledging that I need the truth as much as they do.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. MATTHEW 7:3-5

Before I can say, “What about that thing over there that you’re doing? What about that secret you’re keeping?” I must be willing to show my own cards first. You’ve heard the phrase “speed of the leader, speed of the team,” well what if you lead your team (or friendships, or families) by being the first to the table of confession.

Before we head to the interview this week, I’d like to show you a little longer piece if you will oblige me.

A number of years ago, we made a short film for our Christmas services, and we came up with the story of a reporter living in Chicago, suffering from an unknown ailment. The subplot or subtext is that she’s the woman with the issue of blood and her ailment is getting worse and worse throughout the film.

Although a skeptic, she’s been assigned to follow a mystery man who can’t be tracked, and who seems to be performing miracles. All of this is happening in modern-day Chicago.

Once I heard Donald Miller spoke about big projects like this. He said, “You have to know the final climactic scene first.”

So that’s where I started…writing the final climactic scene.

I got some really great music. 

And I thought, “Oh, this is going to be amazing!”

I remember during a pitch where I was saying, “Oh my gosh, people need to hear this so much. I can’t wait for people to see this. I can’t wait until they feel what we’re feeling in this room.”

It was then I knew I’d already done it. I’d already made something for the other without really taking the time to understand how it was affecting me.

I need this the way they need this.

I need the scene to be true.

So then when we went to go shoot, particularly the last scene, I remember shooting it in such a way that was desperate – desperate, because I needed this to be true.

You must need the truth more than the people you’re giving it to, or else it isn’t actually true.

Below is the final act and climactic scene of the film.

In the end, if are going to try and create work and lives that we hope will function more as art than utility, we have to ask ourselves,

“What am I really making?”

So if I make songs, am I making good music at home?

If I make designs, am I designing a good and healthy schedule?

If I make photos, if I capture things with light, am I reflecting as much light as the sensor in my camera is taking?

If I make a message filled with love, how much love am I really giving to others? Am I loving my neighbor well?

If I am married, am I making good love to my spouse?

Am I making good meals?

Am I taking good naps?

Because, you see, the product, the utility, the things that we make…you guys, that’s not the art.

The art is the process.

The beauty is, and my hope and my prayer is, for you and for me, is that the work we do will inherently be better if we choose to be better humans, friends, spouses, pastors, confessors, lovers.

You are not a tool. You are a human. You must remember that.

INTERVIEW

In this week’s interview, I talk to my good friends, Allie and Adam Lehman of The Wonder Jam, a boutique branding agency. They are awesome.

If you don’t want to watch the whole video (though why wouldn’t you!?), just below it you’ll find a breakdown of everything we talked about and where exactly to find it in the video and elsewhere online. Enjoy!

0:40 What is The Wonderjam?

4:24 What is the robot kingdom?

8:10 Do you want to be the best designer in the world or do you want to have a lifestyle?

12:42 The importance of solitude.

17:24 Flourishing projects

21:06 How do you stay human in the midst of opposition and obstacles?

28:55 What can we do today to destroy the robot kingdom?

FINAL QUESTIONS

What kind of human do you want to be? Put specific words to this.

What practices that you learned this week do you need to put into place to keep you moving forward? What is one thing you will do today to make this happen?

Additional Reading & Resources