Role Models

In which Star Wars collides with Uncle Bob in Dayton, Ohio, 20-something and 3.

Yoda. This one is almost cliché: “do or do not. There is no try.” As long as you try — as long as you plan and intend to do things — the longer you’re not doing them. This is tied to the old saying that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Practice doesn’t have to be a set of rote exercises and preparatory steps toward doing something real down the line. Practice can also be genuine action.

Do the actual work consistently, and that’s your practice. It’s better to do something real than to play at doing it in the shadows.

Robert Pollard. The most prolific songwriter anywhere, ever, is also a prolific collage artist. He started out creating fake bands by cutting and pasting pictures of classmates. He’d imagine what kind of band they’d be, make their album art, create track listings with song titles that fit the band and its style, and then actually write the songs he imagined that kind of band would play. He didn’t limit his creative output to his own experience, but brought the kinds of things you see in literary focalization and method acting to what he made.

But it wasn’t just posturing: he wanted to see and to hear that band, so he made it. The lesson is to create things that you’d be a fan of if someone else had done it. Don’t try to be a certain kind of creator, or to do the kind of work that you expect someone like you to make. Do what you want to see, read, and hear.