Episode 1: Exploring Creativity: Vulnerability, Hats, and Safe Spaces

• The Creative Work Hour podcast's first episode explores the meaning of creativity.
• The hosts and guests discuss the importance of vulnerability, self-expression, and environment in the creative process.
• The episode emphasizes that creativity is a personal and multifaceted journey.

Well, hello everybody. I'm Allesandre White and I am the founder and artistic director of Creative Work Hour. It's this crazy little group of people that we have managed to find each other across all odds, all lands, and all time zones. So, our Mr. Greg Shaw, he sits in America, but he is, as you will hear, a very fine Englishman, and he has a thing for audio, and he is our guide in this 2024 pass of creative work hour, the podcast, the minimum viable product, or what we may in slime just refer to as our prototype. So, Greg, take it away.
Hey, I figured we'd just have a, you know, a general talk. We'll let the subject kind of come organically or we can pose some questions and kind of have a discussion around that. But probably just to get us going, how would you guys define creativity and what do you think it means to be creative? in your daily life, not not just work. So, let's kind of have at that and just jump in popcorn style.
Pop. Right.
So, okay, I'll jump in both feet. Creativity to me is curiosity and vulnerability. Place where maybe the world gets to see it and maybe it doesn't and both are okay. But it's when you have enough of the courage and resilience to take that next step. And for me, it it requires knowing that there's someone within arms reach that loves me enough to know I can stick my arm out sideways and they're going to grasp it. And that gives me the strength for that next step.
Right. It does require a bit of vulnerability, doesn't it? Really, as well.
Yeah. I love that.
It does
because sometimes it's even just being vulnerable with yourself, right? Like a lot of creativity is being in touch with yourself and exploring what your body body and your mind has that it wants to get out of you in some sort of artistic or other way. Sometimes art is ugly. Sometimes art is beautiful, but there's always a connection piece to who you are, which does make it a vulnerable process.
Yeah. You know, and I'm glad you said it that way because I want to add in as a creator, there's too many people in the world that assume your creation is you.
And that may be the case, but murder mystery writers don't kill people,
right? Y, right?
But there's still like pieces of vulnerability, right? Like I I had a hard time a lot of the time thinking Willa is a writer writing fantasy. What is me about this? And I find like each character has a little piece of me in it that gives them a spark of life. Each fantastical thing is some sort of happiness or fear that we kind of bring into a more realistic and fleshed out thing.
Absolutely. Um, but the thing is that can be the real you, the fantasy you.
Exactly.
The dreamy you,
but you so I absolutely agree. It's elements of each of us, but it's nowhere near potentially who we both feel we are and how how we how people may see us.
Yeah. Like we have to be connected to ourselves to make that art, but that art is not like a onetoone of us, which is also hard because
I know as a poetry writer, I often write a lot of dark poetry. I've had a lot of people comment and be like, "Are you okay? Do you need help?" And I actually had to make a post at one point being like, "I am okay." I just write really, really dark poems sometimes.
I get that. I get that a lot, too.
Uhhuh.
I think of creativity as a hatst stand. Oo, I'm real deep. Okay. Is a hat stand.
Oh, that's cool.
And there's there's all these hats on it. Or Some of them could be lost and hadn't been seen in eons.
But, you know, you'll make a shift. You'll make a change. And voila, there's that damn hat. I don't know what to do with it. I'm going to put it on the hat stand and see what happens. See what weather rolls in.
Yeah. Because we have all these different for instance. Wing is not here right now, but Wing was at one of our more than 100 events that we host a month at Creative Work Hour, and it was the Thursday night Thursday Thursday weekly review. And and she was saying, you know, there are so many sides of us and depending on who we're with, like that's a kind of hat is the who we're with. And she she she had a chance to meet Bobby a couple of times. Bobby, didn't didn't she also meet Hillary at one of those times?
Both times. The first the first meeting was the three of us and the second meeting her husband came along.
Oh, Eric was there. Okay. And then the third meeting, most recently, who was there? So we met twice. The first one was just the three of us and then the second time her husband came along and one of my daughters and our grandson. So the six of us.
Oh, interesting. And so could you could you feel a shift in hats or a shift in dynamics because now you're attending to more people at the table?
It was overt and we all agreed it didn't enable us to engage in the way we may have wanted. wanted to engage primarily because of the location that we picked that would be comfortable for my daughter and her celiac disease. So, it had to have a menu that was enjoyable enough.
Oh, yeah.
And some place that my grandson, four-year-old grandson would be, not only he would be comfortable, but his mom would be comfortable having him there like not feeling social pressure of how her child had to act be within reason. But do you think that we're breaking the rules of polite society because we're kind of friends and we trust each other enough that when it's convenient, we'll actually see each other in person. You were the first one to do that for us, Bobby. You're the leader in the IRL version of Creative Work Hour.
So, you're right. It's I think it's first and foremost creating comfort and respect for the people you're around. Yeah.
Right. And but then there's certainly the okay, now that we have our bubble that we're going to gather in, what's what might be pushing on the bubble from all around us that's simply going to be a distraction enough that we are willing to put ourselves in that position.
I I like the idea of our getting to one see each other in person if if both people want to do that and then maybe the next level is is we we bring in a significant other or a daughter or a son either young or or older and that's another hat. And all of those things have everything to do with the creativity, the hat stand if you will, and getting to know each other better in these little light breezy ways is so much more effective than if we lived in the same town or worked at the same place and saw each other in that configuration.
Right? And so there's the one-off gathering Like in this case, we would certainly love to be able to sustain the ability to meet, right? Everyone's run into this where it's like you're you're polite, you're friendly, you're everything, you're neighborly, but you never want to be with that person again.
Don't meet your heroes. Have you heard of that, Greg?
Yeah. You know, I just thinking like Bobby hit the nail on the head when he talked about location. I think in a couple of different ways for me because one, this experiment that was creative work hour, you know, we're meeting And the location is our own our own safe space, right? Our own bubble. And I think there's a great degree of authenticity that's come out because of that because we feel safe and we can feel a bit more vulnerable because we're at home. So when we do meet people, when we do meet other members, those of us who have met one another, it's much more or even, you know, virtually or in the flesh, right? It's much more authentic than if we' have rubbed shoulders in the on the street or at church or an event or something met different way, you know, a cohort or whatever because, you know, we've been vulnerable and put ourselves out there, right? So, that's kind of interesting about location and also location and when you do your creativity, right, Bobby mentioned having the the menu having an environment which was conducive to, you know, whatever and that that whole location as well when we're creative, right? Kind of comes into play. Do we have to have a certain space to do that in?
I think we can do it any anywhere because there's there's There's this thought experiment that we run every day of look, whatever your address is and whatever your time zone is, we're all in the right now and the right here. And as far as I go with no makeup,
you're no x-rayed, right?
Yeah, I think I smell okay, but you know, you wouldn't know that. Devon, what do you have? You got that look, you got that thinking look on your face.
Oh, this sound like a very serious discussion. I had nothing serious to say cuz I'm not a serious mood. So, I think contributor
Well, I mean,
I was, you know, I was going to call out the elephant in the room, which is Allesandre lying to the group about being unchurched. Girl, I have jumped pews with you. All right? Don't be telling these good people that you are unchurched. You are un a lot of things, but church is not one of them. Okay. I was talking about mom and daddy.
All right. Nailed it on that one then.
We jumped a pew. That's so good.
I do find it interesting to think about how your space does impact how you create though, right? Or what you choose to create.
Both in like if you have a space that's set up that makes it easier to do certain forms, you're more likely to gravitate to those
as well as some things make it more conducive or less conducive like singing in public versus singing in an empty room that has a nice acoustic to it. Right.
There's a tiny little story that I would love Dubin to tell you from Stephen King's on writing. Stephen King and his desk.
Oh, yeah. Love the story. So, I think he may have moved into a new house, but in any event, he had a room. I think it was kind of like an attic sort of lofty space that he was going to dedicate that was going to be his writing room, his office. And he wanted a proper desk cuz he was a serious writer. So he got this huge like mahogany desk and that was the desk which he was going to produce his future masterpieces. And he bought it, got it installed, got it delivered, set it up, sat there and could not write a word and sat there and sat there and sat there and finally he got up and he went back into the cubby hole, some little cramped space where he'd had his typewriter before and sat back down at his more usual writing coach and just started banging it out because, you know, in the early days he worked in a utility closet when he and Tabitha just had, you know, he was a teacher. He did his writing like, you know, in this little utility closet. And so that's where he was comfortable writing when he made a big deal out of it and said, "I'm a writer and this is a testament to my writing and I'm going to ride here." Just fell completely apart. And then when he got back into his cozy, comfortable space, boom.
And I think that lesson has really stuck with me and has everything to do about the design of of creative work hour.
Stanley Cubri, a genius by all accounts, and he was making one of his war movies and it was in black and white and the felt was the wrong color for the warboard. So, he made them come in and recover the whole table. One of the the people said,
"Oh, who's going to know it's it's black and white? Who's going to know it's the wrong color?" He's like, "I did." So, yeah,
vibes matter.
They do. And and so, yeah, I think There's how do I physically feel in the location? How do I mentally feel in the location? How do I emotionally feel? And all three of those legs, you know, there's there's days I'd be a lot out of this space because it's like, you know, I'm just my head's down. I've got the clouds of reality are all hovering above me. I just can't
lurking
kick kick them away today. But no, this Yeah.
Nate, what did you got that I'm thinking?
Got a gem. Got a gem. When Devon mentioned the Stephen King desk, I thought he was going to tell the apocryphal story of how Stephen King was being interviewed and people were asking him like, "How are you are you a horrible person for writing these scary horrible books?" And he's like, "No, I have a heart of a child
in a jar on my desk."
I Where's Gretchen when you need her?
Yeah. Yeah, we'll get her. Don't you
We'll get her.
Gretchen Grown. Yeah.
Well, that was a that was a great first go of this, we've all been a little bit like, "Oh, no. We don't want to record anything." But I think we we did just fine because we're we're freaking good conversationalists with one another.
And it's a gold mine.
It is a gold mine. Okay, I'm going to switch the damn thing off.