🪚 TREE 592: Craft without art

I’m reading ‌Creativity, Inc. by the founder of Pixar Edwin E. Catmull and Amy Wallace. The following quote comes from a section about the importance of doing your own research in the real world so you your work isn’t merely a rehash of what has been made before:

When filmmakers, industrial designers, software designers, or people in any other creative profession merely cut up and reassemble what has come before, it gives the illusion of creativity, but it is craft without art. Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft.

So I says to Bill – ‘Bill’, I says, ‘I think I would know if my head was on fire.’ Well then Ol’ Bill, calm as a dead rabbit, pulls a mirror out o’ his pocket, which is remarkable on account of him bein’ a bear an’ not wearin’ clothes. He pulls out this mirror, ol’ Bill does, an’ holds it up to my face an’ – would you credit it? – my head is on fire an’ I didn’t have the foggiest notion! ‘Why, Bill!’ I says, ‘You’re right as rain’, which may not be the exact right metaphor for my present situation only I find myself bein’ in a powerful hurry an’ not spendin’ as much time thinkin’ on the expression as maybe I shoulda done. An’ ol’ Bill says – fount o’ wisdom, that bear – there I go metaphorin’ about water again while I’m on fire – he says, ‘You might want to get that seen to’, meanin’ o’ course the conflagration you now see springin’ from my head with your own two eyes. So I’ve ambled out here wonderin’, if you don’t mind me askin’, whether you might be able to spare, say, a small bucket o’ – well here’s a thought: maybe them allusions to water was a foreshadowin’ o’ this here request I’m makin’ to you now for a small bucket o’ water or p’rhaps just a large cup, as the heat is startin’ to pass through to the more inside parts o’ my head.

Veruca Salt frontwoman Louise Post has a solo album called Sleepwalker on the way. This is the second single. The rhythm is as driving as the questions.

Grow slowly
Jeff