Collect Things

It's the best advice for creativity I have yet received.

I was a bit lost when I first heard it, having just quit my job about to go travel for who-knew-how-long. I thought I might use my time off to figure out new ways to be creative. Before I left, I had a phone call with a close friend of mine who is a musician. Man, I love Zach.

When I told him my intentions, without missing a beat, he told me to collect things. I wondered, "what kinds of things?"

Zach told me he took pictures of things he found beautiful, downloaded bits of the internet on to his phone, and my favorite: he would write down phrases or words that didn't mean anything but that he thought sounded cool. These would often become lyrics in his songs. The category didn't matter so much. The important part was to collect.

"Oh, I get it. But, don't you have to have something you're working on to know what to collect?" I asked, trying to understand.

(To the best of my memory) Zach replied: "You don't do this to produce something. You do it for the pleasure of having your collection. That's it." So much of the process behind art boils down to decision-making, he posited. Therefore, it's really important to understand your own sense of taste. What from the world around you fits into that palate?

I told Zach then how much my process involved thinking top-down. For the few works of fiction that I had been noodling on at the time, I started at high levels of abstraction and worked my way down to the concrete and specific. I told him that his approach was as alien to me as it was exhilarating. I loved how much of the music and visual art that Zach makes comes from phenomena that he has observed and admired. I loved the challenge for me to pay attention to the world around me, to look beyond myself and within myself at the same time. And I love the mystery behind the idea of works of art that come primarily from outside my own mind, that are born out of happenstance and discernment – isn't this what Jung's synchronicity is about, at some level?

We said goodbye after talking for a while. He was living in LA and I was about to fly off to Australia. I left for fifteen months. By now, at least as of writing, I've added bits from the whole world to my collection. Boy, what a pleasure it has been! And, more than anything, I can't wait to pay Zach a visit and show it to him.