5 Things Every Creative Person Should Consider (Inspired By Wendell Berry)

one of the most influential writers on my life over the last two to three years is Wendell Barry today I want to show you five creative principles that I have learned from an essay that he wrote in 1968 called a native Hill it is in a collection of essays called the world ending fire this book has taken me almost two years to read I'm not that slow of a reader it's just because it's so full of stuff that impacts me and I have to think about it put the book Away pick the book back up

it's amazing so I want to share five principles from the very first essay in this collection lindle Berry is a bit of an enigma because he is a brilliant writer but he's also a farmer he writes a lot about agriculture America living and treating the Earth properly he's an environmentalist he's also a poet he has collections of poetry you can find the fiction works that I've mentioned before a ton of agricultural essays and even a very famous collection of writings about patriotism and the history of prejudice called The Need to Be whole that many of

you may have heard about he has a massive collection of work and I feel that when I read his stuff I resonate with all of the societal things and all of the things things that are ethical but I also feel it speak a lot to me about my creative life and the way I approach making things so let me share with you these five points that really stood out to me in this essay and hopefully they'll apply to your creative work as well lesson number one embrace the past I highlighted this I seem to have

been born with an aptitude for a way of life that was doomed although I did not understand that at the time free of any intuition of its Doom I delighted in it and learned all I could about it if I had been born 5 years later I would have begun in a different world and would have no doubt become a different man this really speaks to me because I was born in 1982 I played with sticks in the dirt Hot Wheels on the front porch I rode a bicycle around in the woods there was no

internet no smartphone no apps no digital downloads but I got a computer in early High School dial up internet and the world was at my fingertips so I'm from the generation of having nothing to everything I have embraced both of those worlds I love technology I love all the things that it affords us but I also miss the past and the Simplicity of it I miss not having a smartphone beating down my door constantly with messages and notifications I miss the feeling of being bored I think that there's something magical in that for creatives where

I would encourage you just like wendle would encourage you to step away from all of the modern things for a moment and remember what it's like to live on this Earth even if you never experienced it you can to set still listen and be without the technology I love he just says a way of life that was doomed I very much feel that way but I know that a lot of what I create especially in the photography that I work on is capturing the past that I know is doomed for a lot of you reach

back to that place that used to exist and preserve it paint about it write about it take photos about it preserve that and there's something really magical about taking the past going back to it and creating from it before I go to number two here's a quote from another work of his in the unsettling of America essay collection the past is our definition we may strive with good reason to escape it or to escape what is bad in it but we will escape it only by adding something better to it I think that's beautiful what

can we take from the past and add to it instead of destroying it I think so many people nowadays want to delete the past and move completely into the future but that never ends well think of all the amazing things we can pull with us into the future that might be lost because so many people seemingly don't care lesson number two the beauty of small let me explain finally there was the assumption that the life of the Metropolis is the experience the modern experience and that the life of rural towns and Farms the Wilderness places

is not only irrelevant to our time but archaic as well because unknown are unconsidered by the people who really matter that is the urban intellectuals I'm from an incredibly small town in rural Northwest Alabama I remember growing up dying to get out of that small place because there's not a lot there there didn't seem like there was a future I used to look at album covers study the cities they were in and look at the photography that was how I learned about the world through music and those visuals that surrounded mus music and then I

got away from that small town and now at 42 I find myself wanting to go back to that Simplicity over the last several years I've driven thousands of miles around the Midwest with a camera and film just photographing rural desolate simple America the takeaway here is there is such beauty in the mundane in the simple we constantly want to push forward to something better but so many of us are in a place that you might be tempted to put down or say there's nothing here there's nothing I can do here it's just not cool well

that might be the best place to make your art I'm reminded of William Egleston when I first saw egon's photography I was blown away because he photographed the Mone M things around him in Memphis look at this but he's legendary I saw my own mind and thoughts and photography style in Williams photography the thing is you don't have to leave where you're at to make something great something great can be made from where you are that's Point number two wendle says in another one of his writings if you don't know where you are you don't

know who you are I think that applies here belong where you are and own it the third thing that really grabbed me in this essay is he talks about how the Native Indians of Kentucky they would build small fires just enough to keep warm and not too much they wouldn't destroy the land around them and they would even make paths they never made a road because they didn't want to destroy anything making a road was destructive but a path was was gentle when settlers came in they started tearing down timber making massive fires and building

massive roads they overc consumed what was available so he says this right after that the idea was that when faced with abundance one should consume abundantly an idea that has survived to become the basis of our present economy it is neither natural or civilized and even from a practical point of view it is to the last degree brutalizing and stupid point three here is resist over consumption I've tried for the last year to use what's in front of me to make something and not constantly feel the need to acquire new things to create I don't

need a new camera to take better photos I just need to take photos having a new camera is fine but that shouldn't be the crutch that you think you're finally going to make good art because of we tend in this Society to constantly want more and when we get it it actually paralyzes us we are overc consuming in every way and this really does need to be said to the creative Community you don't need more you need a pencil and paper to draw you need a simple inexpensive camera to take a photograph you need a

simple instrument to make a Melody you don't have to have a ton of things at the end of the day those are just going to be an excuse for why it's not good enough when in theory what you're making is good enough if you're enjoying it number four I am not important this is a big one let me read this to you so I go into the woods as I go under the trees dependably almost at once and by nothing I do things fall into place I enter an order that does not exist outside in

the human spaces I feel my life take its place among the lives the trees the plants the animals and the birds the living of all these and the dead that go and have gone to make life on earth now of course he's writing about agriculture and Earth and outside and it's really beautiful but there's a parallel here and it's in this line I am less important than I thought I rejoice in that my mind loses its urgings senses its nature and is free we live in a world where if you don't get enough Instagram likes

or if your YouTube algorithm is too low you feel unsuccessful because you feel unimportant we think that everyone's staring at us all all the time and that we're so important but we're not we all have the same problem I'm sitting here making a video hoping you watch it and you're probably writing a song or working on a book that you hope someone likes we all just want to make things but we're slightly crippled because we think they have to be accepted that's not art that's not creativity you're not that important I'm not that important we

should do what we want to do that brings life to us simply because we're made to make things it's that simple if you don't like what I make I'm still going to make it that's been the biggest lesson I've learned in the last few years number five is the necessity of community really short and sweet it is not from ourselves that we will learn to be better than we are every single one of us us need a community to be creative in there are no lone genius creatives because we learn from everyone around us and

everyone's ideas in our sphere affects our ideas so the more creative people we can be around have relationships with the more our ideas mature if you're alone find a community to create with find a group of people that you can show your work too and they can show their work to you it might take a little bit of effort it might be scary but you need to show your work to people and be a part of something bigger than yourself Community is extremely important for the creative life so number one we need to embrace the

past we need to go back and look at the things that are doomed and we need to pull them forward creatives can pull pull from that wealth of information and visuals and history and make things with it and it's only going to help the future of our entire Society number two embrace the beauty of the mundane wherever you are there's something amazing to be made you don't need to move and you don't need somewhere better to be number three stop overc consuming use what you have and make something beautiful let the limitations that are in

your life be the roadway that you create from number four you're not that important we all think we are but at the end of the day what someone thinks of you or me shouldn't determine what I make or why I make it and number five you need a community community and collaboration make better creativity in closing wberry said what I stand for is what I stand on I think it's important to have some foundational ethics to our creativity something that drives us and guides us so that we're not just randomly making and swaying all over

the place we should make things out of a principle of why are we making this who are we making it for and who's it going to help I think this is something that I love about Wendel Barry because he has such an empathy and compassion for Humanity and the Earth that it really comes through as a creative when I'm reading it I know he's writing about agriculture and America but man it really speaks to me about the creative spaces in my head I hope these five things that really struck me inside of a windberry essay

have helped you today if you think you might enjoy windberry I have put a link in the description with my absolute favorite of his works you should definitely read some he is incred incredible and you can even go on YouTube and search Wendel Berry and you'll see him in conversations at universities he is really fun to watch and such a brilliant humble person if you like this episode hit like subscribe to the channel and click the Bell icon to get notifications of future episodes if you have anything you'd like me to cover on this channel

concerning creativity my thoughts on topics drop that in the comments below bye-bye