great art takes time [video]

And I think a lot of us know this, but I think a lot of us forget this. I see a lot of fans online saying things to their favorite creatives like, Uh, hello, where's the next project? uh, hello, did you forget about us? Uh, hello, you're neglecting your fans? uh, hello, are you taking us for granted?

Uh, hello, are you being fucking lazy? Where's your next creative project? What else could you be doing with your time? Why is it taking months to years to come out with the next thing? What's the holdup?

And I kind of understand this frustration in a way, because, although no one owes anything to anyone. Technically, it's very easy to look at creatives as godlike entities, like, Oh, being creative for them is just automatic. It's just who they are, it's what they live and breathe. And if they're not coming out with stuff left and right, it's because they don't want to. It's not because they're burnt out or they're exhausted, or they don't have an idea.

They're so good at what they do. The only excuse for them not creating is because they're too lazy, or they don't feel like it, or they don't care about their fans. But that's very far from the truth. Art just takes a long time to create, and not necessarily in the way that you would think. Creative endeavors can take one day, and creative endeavors can take ten years or an entire life to complete.

So it's less about how long the creation of the actual product takes, and it's more about the process that it takes to develop an idea. That needs to be discussed. Because I think that that's often forgotten, and so I want to talk about it today. I want to talk about why good art takes time. A crucial piece of the creative process is sitting around and doing nothing.

Now this is sort of unexpected, you would think. When it comes to creating anything, the most obvious first step to take is to start working on it. But when it comes to creative endeavors, sitting around and doing nothing and being bored is crucial. And the reason for that is boredom inspires creative thinking better than any other activity, honestly.

When we have nothing better to do with our minds, our minds just naturally start coming up with different ideas, different ways to problem solve, different ways to see things. True. Boredom is crucial for coming up with new ideas. A lot of creative people have to spend days alone, doing nothing to come up with a new idea. I've come up with some of my best ideas, laying in bed, staring at the ceiling for hours on end, I've come up with some of my best ideas. Driving in the car, sitting in traffic, with no music playing.

I know that that sounds weird, but I do it quite a bit because I always come up with the best ideas that way. Nowadays, it's much harder to be bored because we have access to stimulation as much as we want, We never have to be bored anymore. If we don't want to, we can throw on a podcast, throw on a TV show, open up a social media app.

We never really have to be bored. And I think that makes the current time particularly challenging for creative people, because it's just a lot harder to motivate to get into that bored state of mind. But yet that's such a crucial piece of time in the creative process, so naturally, there's this incubation period where the creative person is bored. And they're just sort of ruminating in their minds, coming up with good ideas and bad ideas, and good ideas and bad ideas. And then they're like, Well, this isn't going to work because of this, but this could work if I do this.

And there's this sort of rumination period that happens during a very silent and bored period of a creative process. But I think that process now takes longer than ever before because it's so hard for us to be bored, you know? So that's why I bring up this very stimulating period of time that we're in now. Because it's actually made this piece of the creative process take even longer than ever before, and it's so crucial for creating good art.

So a process that already took a long time now takes even longer due to the circumstances of our time. Now. That's not for everyone. There's probably a bunch of creative people out there who have removed all excess stimulation out of their life so that they can truly focus on their creative endeavors. But I think for a lot of creative people, especially young creative people, it takes ten times longer than ever before to get into the right mindset.

And that's kind of unfortunate. But in one way or another, you need to be in a state of boredom in at least one part of the creative process. I would say it's one of the main ways that you come up with good ideas. But being bored doesn't just help a creative come up with ideas, it also helps the creative person recharge in a lot of ways.

I think a lot of creative people experience extreme burnout, usually due to the intensity of working on a creative project. There's something about immersing yourself in a creative project that is all-consuming. It becomes your entire life, it requires the entire mind, body and soul in order to complete, and usually that's no problem for a creative person.

They couldn't complete the project in any other way. It's like an automatic choice. But when the project is complete, there's this extreme burnout and exhaustion. Because it feels like the creative person ran an intense marathon to complete the project. And now they're so depleted that they need to think about nothing for a while before they can come up with their next idea and heal their brain from the exhaustion. So boredom plays those two roles, right?

Regardless, it takes time, these phases of nothingness can be long or short, but regardless, they take time and they're almost always crucial. On the other hand, creative people also need to experience life. They need to go out and experience real life, not through the lens of a camera.

Not through the lens of writing a book, not through any creative lens. Creative people have to go out into the real world and experience real life, not through a creative lens. And the reason for that is because good art is based on real, genuine, authentic life experience, for the most part.

The more experiences a creative person has, the more real, genuine shit they have to pull from the archives of their brain when it comes to creating something right. An artist cannot create genuine art about something that they have not experienced, unless the art is about the fact that the artist has not experienced something. If that makes sense, the relief that comes from not experiencing something, or the longing that comes from not experiencing something can be turned into art because the experience is not experiencing that thing. Okay, so now we're like, really getting confusing here, I really, I really....

Is this making sense? I don't know. It's hard sometimes when you're recording a podcast into the abyss of an empty room and there's no one else with you. Because you can really just talk and start saying shit. And it can really start to not make sense when it's said out loud, but in the brain, it makes sense. But then there's no like sounding board, it's just you just spitting nothingness, and it's like, wait, does that make sense? But there's no one there to be like, of course, or to be like, No.

And so it's just sort of a free for all over here. Anyhow, I feel like all good art comes from some sort of real life experience. Now, obviously, there are phenomenal works of art that are fictional, but even fiction has to be rooted in genuine experience, or else it will not translate. Weirdly. Like, let's look at a fictional movie that is a masterpiece.

Batman, Spider-man, superhero movies, these are very obviously fictional, yet they're works of art, and the reason why they're works of art that connect with people is because the personalities and the experiences and the emotional turmoil that the characters feel in the movie are rooted in real life. Like those are real life emotions and challenges and feelings that we as humans have. And I don't know much about the writers for Spider-man and Batman and Superman and all these things. But I can imagine that the writer probably put their own life experience into that movie. And that's why it translates.

That's why it feels genuine and authentic and special, right?

I don't even think I've seen those movies, so like, I don't know, but listen, you get what I'm saying. Actually, I saw Batman, the newest Batman, and it was actually really good. The one with Robert Pattinson, you know, it's like, sometimes it's like new celebrity crush unlocked a few years later. Even though he was in Twilight, I never really even watched Twilight, which is also weird.

I'm the only person on the planet who's never watched Twilight. But seeing him in Batman was like, really eye-opening for me. And I was like, maybe I do have a little celeb crush on Robert Pattinson. It's not out of the realm of possibility. So okay, back to what? sorry, huge tangent back to what I was saying. Creative people need to experience as much life as possible through their own personal lens, not through creative production lens, right?

But living life takes some time. Your favorite creative might put out a project and then decide. I need to remove myself from this for a year and just live my life and see what I discover, see what I experience, et cetera. A creative might say I need a month to experience life, a creative might say I need five years to experience life, it just depends.

Simply living life is a part of the creative process, and it just sounds so dystopian in a way, the fact that creative people have to just simply exist in order to create things. But it's true, I think that it gets a little bit more complicated when a creative person is making their living from their creative endeavor. Because there's money involved and it's like, all right. I need to be creating in order to pay my bills and that doesn't leave me a lot of room for this phase of the creative process, this actually also applies to the boredom and nothingness stage of the creative process. When your job is to be creative, you have much less time for those two phases, and you almost have to schedule in those two pieces of the process, which makes it sort of weird and meta.

The fact that you have to schedule in boredom, schedule in living life and existing normally, and living life. And seeing life through your own personal lens, instead of through a creative lens of some sort. But it's crucial. Similar to the stage of boredom, the stage of living life also helps the creative person heal the burnout that comes with immersing yourself into a project. As I mentioned earlier, the intensity of putting your mind, body and soul into a project can leave a creative person feeling drained beyond belief. And I think a healthy balance of boredom and experiencing life can quickly get a creative person moving again after they finish an endeavor of some sort.

And the timeline looks different for everyone could be two weeks, could be five years, you know, it just depends. Creative people also need the space to fail a lot, because as fans of creative people, we all see their best work. We don't see the movie that got scrapped, we don't see the clothing collection that got scrapped.

We don't see the music album that got scrapped, we didn't see the book that got scrapped. We didn't see the video game that got scrapped. We don't see the stuff that gets scrapped. All we see is their best product.

And I don't think there's one creative person on the planet who doesn't scrap a bunch of shit. It's a part of the creative process, trying something, it not working, learning from it, trying something else. It was closer, but it wasn't quite there. Scrapping it all of that is a part of the process, and having the space and time to experiment and fail is so crucial. To create something that's really good and is ready to go out into the world. And I think when a creative person has that space to fail as much as they want, they don't feel pressure, and they don't feel stress, and they don't feel fear.

And so they're able to experiment at a level that creates the best art. But again, trying, failing, trying, failing, trying, failing, trying, succeeding takes a long time. that process takes a long time. Not always. Sometimes there's a miracle and it doesn't take a long time, but for the most part, it takes a long time. And so having the freedom to create in that way is somewhat crucial.

When there's not the freedom to fail and try again, then the creative person feels immense pressure, which creates a terrible state of mind for being creative. Feelings of pressure, doubt, stress, anxiety severely inhibit a creative person's ability to tap into the mindset required to get into the flow state of being creative. And I can't necessarily explain it any further than that. I don't know what else there is to say, it's just that.

To get into this flow state where it's just like, Oh, I'm going to try this, and if it fails, I don't care. Oh, it failed. Okay, I don't care. Fuck it, let's try something else.

Like to get into that happy, lighthearted, creative, fun flow state. There can't be pressure, you know?

Creatives tend to lose their creative edge under the pressure of a deadline. They can still create things, but they're not going to be as good. Usually, a deadline can be no problem if the creative person feels like it gives them enough time to fail, try again, fail, try again. But if they feel like it doesn't, which is usually the case, then a number of bad things can happen. Number one, the creative can fail to get into the right headspace to create because the deadline's causing them pressure and doubt and stress and fear.

Number two, they can cut corners and get lazy because they don't feel like they have the space to truly explore all the different ideas that they have. So they end up just cutting corners and settling on something that's less innovative, less exciting, less creatively satisfying. But it hits the deadline, you know, number three. They're not going to try things that are a little riskier, you know, the best art takes a little bit of a risk in a way, and it doesn't feel responsible to take a risk when you have a deadline. So risks that could take a project to the next level might not be taken out of fear that there's no time to reverse and change directions. If the risk didn't work out in the way that, you know, the creative wanted it to, and so, yeah, risks aren't taken, and that's not good either.

So all of this about the deadline, to say that good art takes a lot of time. Because it usually doesn't have a deadline attached to it, or if it does have a deadline attached to it, it's a deadline that's far, far, far in the future. So the creative feels like they have a safe and comfortable amount of time to experience their process, and there's not a lot of pressure, right? I'm talking about why good art takes time, not why art period takes time. Because there's art that is okay and good-ish, but it's not great, it's not really good, it's not whoa, you know? And last but not least, good art takes sometimes a long time, because a lot of times the process to create art goes through a trillion different steps.

A musical album can take a long time to produce, a movie takes so long to film, and so long to edit. A book takes a really long time to write, and a really long time to edit, and a really long time to produce the copies. You know, it can take a long time to paint a painting or draw a drawing. all of this can take a really long time.

There are occasions when these processes are shorter. You know, in theory, you could create a movie in a month, in theory, you could write a book in six months, in theory, you could paint a painting in an hour. So the process itself isn't always the time-consuming part, but it can be.

I think what really takes up the most time is the stage of boredom and the stage of living life. And those are the two pieces that tend to get neglected the most in the creative process, because they're not productive. On paper, you know, it seems like a creative person's just fucking off doing nothing, but it is a crucial part of the process. And that leads me to why creative industries are not necessarily structured for creative people's optimal performance. Industries care about making money.

That's it, period. Okay, that is it. If the word corporate is around, it's all about money, it's not about creative integrity, it's not about good art or bad art.

It's about making money, that is it. And by the way, okay, that's fine.

Like, who am I to say no, that's not good, I don't, even, I can't even go there. It just is what it is. But I will say that it definitely doesn't create the best art. I think that's why a lot of people are so into things that are indie, you know?

Things that are not as involved in the industry. I think that's why so many people say, like indie music, indie films, indie books, indie this, indie that, so much better. That's because they don't have a deadline, they don't have a big, big company with a lot of money saying you need to finish this by this date. Or else they're creating freely because they don't have to report to anyone because they're indie.

They're their own, they're independent, you know, they're doing their own thing, and you know, that makes sense, it makes sense why. A lot of indie creative endeavors are more creative and more interesting at times. Not always, by the way, not always, but stereotypically, indie projects are more creative and more edgy and more interesting.

It's not always true, though, you know, it's more just the belief. I feel like a lot of people believe that, right? Not everyone, though. Some people are like, No, that shit's too weird, or that shit's obviously not backed by a major company for a reason. It depends on who you're asking, but independent artists are not controlled by anyone.

You know, there's no one giving them deadlines, there's no one telling them how to do what they want to do, there's nobody giving them guidelines, no deadlines and no guidelines. So, independent creatives are able to do whatever they want, and I think that that environment inspires a healthier creative experience.

Whereas the industry of being creative is much less supportive of the creative process. Because there are those deadlines, there are those guidelines, et cetera. Creative industries have a tendency to prioritize quantity over quality. Why? Because the more that's made, the more money is made a lot of times, and this philosophy goes against the creative's natural instincts completely.

I think most creative people would rather create one incredible piece of art than a hundred okay pieces of art. Again, everyone's different, but I would say most creative people think that way. And this pressure to be creating more, more, more, more, more just stifles creativity altogether. But yet it's where the money is, you know? It's like it pays to create quantity over quality, and a lot of creative people rely on the creative industries to make money. So it's like, Yeah, it makes sense why this is kind of a mess a little bit, right?

And I think this is why it can be so challenging. For creative people to turn creative endeavors into their job is because creative people, by nature, know what they need to do to create good art. They need a lot of time, they need a lot of freedom, they need a lot of room to fail, but creative industries do not support that process usually.

And there's a huge conflict of interest. Every creative person dreams of making money from their creative endeavors, but when a lot of creatives end up succeeding at that, they find that they're being forced to create things that they're not fully proud of, and this can ruin the beauty and passion for the person. They create things that they're not proud of because they're rushed, or they're on the hamster wheel of creating quantity over quality and never taking time to go and be bored to go and live life. And they end up burnt out and out of ideas because they're not giving themselves the time to go through those crucial phases.

I think this also explains why a lot of times we fall in love with a creative for their first project, or like from one of their first projects. And then over time, we're like, Wait, they're not creating good shit anymore. What happened? It's because their creative process got destroyed by the industry in some way, and it's so unfortunate because it's just unfortunate.

In conclusion, good art takes a long time, and I think if you're a creative person, the best thing you can do for yourself is allow yourself to go through all of the crucial phases it takes to create something that's good and to give yourself that space. Because I think the industry is not the only force telling creative people to hurry up and create more. I think a lot of creative people themselves feel the pressure to create fast and as much as possible. Because on paper, it sounds bizarre to say, being bored and experiencing life is a part of the creative process.

It sounds ridiculous, but it is absolutely a part of the creative process, and I think a lot of creative people are like, No, I don't need that. That's wasting my time, that's just prolonging me, releasing my next piece of art to the world. But it's a crucial part of the process.

And I think when the creative gives themselves space to go through the process. And the industry gives the creative the space to go through that process. And the fans give the creative that space to go through that process. Really beautiful things can happen, and good art just takes a long time, and that's all I have to say. That's it, okay, I'm done.

I'm closing my fucking iPad, iPad closed, mic dropped, Okay, done, that's it.

That's all I have to say today, that's it okay. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope something in it was interesting or reassuring, or inspiring, or comforting, or I don't know.

I hope you got something out of it. I really appreciate you tuning in. New episodes of Anything Goes every Thursday and Sunday, you can stream and watch video exclusively on Spotify, or you can just stream audio anywhere you get podcasts. I really appreciate you all coming and tuning in every week.

It really warms my heart. If you want to follow anything goes on Instagram at Anythinggoes, follow me on Instagram at Emma Chamberlain. Check out my coffee company, Chamberlain Coffee chamberlaincoffee.com to go shop. Also, Chamberlain Coffee might be sold near you, so go on chamberlaincoffee.com. Go on the store locator, see if it's in a target or a Walmart or another store near you, because it might be. And that's all I have for today.

I really love and appreciate you all and thank you all for listening and I just can't wait to hang out soon. Yeah, I'll talk to you later. Love you.