Begin...

"Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night. turn on a singl lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture... has momentarily stopped...."

Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem.

"Make up you own ritual for courting the muse or creating the right conditions for inspiration. Fix up a place in your home or office to be your creativ space. think about setting aside a certain time each day to create. You don't have to commit to it yet; just think about what wold be a good time for you. When during the day do you feel most creative?"

John Dillon, The 20-20 Creativity Solution

There are two main streams of parody of American Life now current. One is the decrepit male, boorish, ignorant, lazy, clueless, as sexually obsessed and vulgar as he is inept and sterile. The other is the harried careerist, chasing after some socially sanctioned dream job that really sucks the characters dry. Both ring true from my experience.

At a different level, but also disheartening, I recall my work at a top notch Silicon Valley company as a leader mentor. My mentees were mostly graduates of graduate programs at Stanford and MIT. Not one of these 30-somethings had read a major book, in any area, since leaving school. Their reading consisted of the newspaper, the web and technical/business books. And, for good reason. All had insanely demanding jobs, young families and 2-hr plus commutes. What chance does good reading have against those demands? Not much.

So, the Breakout Creatives Project faces a hurdle, right out of the box: it takes time, study, attention, discipline, a love of being vulnerable to new ways of envisioning one's world to even appreciate other breakout creatives' works, no less produce ones of one's own. In my leader mentoring, I have realized that people only have so much time, energy, attention span or even desire, to engage aspirations that involve developing skills of character and attentive responsibility. If it can't be done with a mental trick... maybe another day.

Yet, I sense a deep yearning out there, among all those deep-minded and large-hearted young leaders I have worked with. And I feel it elsewhere in conversations with those who would be artists, mystics and prophets. For all the screaming of the comedians, the outlandishness of performers, the rage of slam poets, the fake passion of pundits, there is an implicit message: something is trying to find its way into our lives that is now thwarted at every turn. These faux dramatizations intend to capture and deflect this undercurrent and turn it into cash. But, that current is there, beating like a heart, pumping what, if it does not nurture life becomes bile.

There is no other way, my friends. You have to turn off the machine, switch off the noise. My friend John's 20-20 solution -- 20 minutes in the morning, 20 at night, is a technique for beginning to do the generative work. Then, after that preparatory time, the work begins: the difficult poem, the dense and obscure tract of fiction or non-fiction, that challenge passage of music, that idea that can't seem to be pried loose and into language.

Where can you "find" the time? (The construction of that notion is preposterous when it is put into writing -- and so is the idea it expresses:  time/Where/find...??). You can't. It can't be "found," as though it was "there" waiting for you. The only question is John's : When are you most creative? And then claim it; take it; protect it; you --- give it life by activating with the most challenging work you can accommodate.

The Breakout Creative figures we study have given over their whole lives to these demands, and paid a price. Most of us compromise. Even the great American poet Wallace Stevens worked in an insurance company (as did Kafka). Part of the mentor's job in working with people like us, who struggle with this demand, is helping them reconstruct one's waking hours. Do you want some help?

But then, after the conversation, you, alone with your thoughts, immersed in the demands of your work and family, smothered by the cultural imperatives of an overly extroverted work ethic, all inundate you. Still, it's up to you.

The good new is that the writers, artists, thinkers, poets, musicians and actors we cite in our project are so superb, if you give yourself over to them, they will reward you. If you make appointments with them, regularly, and give them your deepest attention, they will give you strength to go onward into your breakout creatives work.

But, begin.