 and welcome to The Creative Life, a collaborative production of Think Tech Hawaii and the American Creativity Association. I'm Darlene Boyd, your host for today and our guest is artist, writer, and speaker, John Pearson. John is coming to us from his own home office in Oxnard, California along at Canal. And welcome to The Creative Life, John Pearson. Thank you, Darlene. I'm very, very happy to be here. I understand it's raining today, this being the 7th of December. And I also know it's a very solemn day. It was exactly 80 years ago that Pearl Harbor was bombed and it's a very sad thing. And I will be speaking about creativity and joy. So that seems a little like a paradox. On the other hand, maybe it's not because I think the world could use some creativity in doing one. Yeah. At all times. And thank you for mentioning that, John. And I share my feelings too. So thank you for starting out. And now we'll move into a little joy along the line. John, you've been a cartoonist for the Oakland Tribune, college professor, a mailman. I wish you were my mailman. Things get really mixed up here. And an extra for the Metropolitan Opera. You've written over 300 short stories and received two Pushkart Prize nominations, which are quite prestigious for short story writers, I believe. And to top off your list of accomplishments, you've written three unpub published novels. So it seems to me I'd like to start off by taking us back to the fact that you were a cartoonist for the Oakland Tribune. And I assume that meant that, and I know you've shared that you drew a lot growing up. How did all that drawing effort affect the way you approach living in today's world? That's a great question, Darlene. You can maybe see some of the artwork behind my head. I did that. I love to draw. And I've got a, I like to think a wild imagination. Somebody once told me as a speaker, he was sitting in the audience and he was very quiet at the end. I thought he didn't like what I said, but he said, you know, you're very good. And I thought, can you tell me more? Not out of ego, but could. And he said, you know, your chaos that knows exactly where it's going next. And I thought that was a perfect description. I, as a little kid, drew all the time. I was a kind of a brainy, runty kid who felt lonely and my brother was off doing things. But I found that if I got a blank piece of paper, I brought one. Here's a blank piece of paper. And I had a crayon. I could just go crazy. I've been a drawer all my life. I've been an imaginer all my life. And what I like about the drawing process, I get to break all the rules. And I bring that into my speaking and into my writing. Oh, so you've already touched on that you've done some wild and crazy things. Yes. And you've invented a nonsense lab. What's a nonsense lab? I got enthralled with the idea. I got into education through a lot of back doors, I guess. I was an artist. I was a philosophy major. I got into the University of Chicago philosophy graduate school. I didn't go there. I went into the Peace Corps. I didn't go there. I went all over Europe with a knapsack, traveling and just drawing like crazy. So I had a very mixed background and sort of fit in nowhere. And when I got into education because I love kids, I thought children love humor and they love nonsense. And if I made a museum, a laboratory actually, where people could actually go outside their normal thinking patterns, they would learn things much faster and it'd be fun. So I developed a whole huge thing about getting kids to think using rapid drawing techniques that open their brain and then having conversations that went all over the place. It was very nonlinear and tons of fun. And I will never, I'll never forget that experience. I developed it in Pasadena on my own through a CEDA grant. And yeah, it was a ball. It was years ago. I hope that answered the question. It helps me. And I also, I also read that you also had a human computer. Yeah, I went to San Francisco State. I got a I got a master's degree in the creative arts interdisciplinary. And what I did was I got a huge dollhouse, which I opened up, got inside and became a human computer in the Quad at San Francisco State because I thought engineering is not talking to literature, literature is not talking to the arts. But if I, so I had this menu of thought things that I did in the Quad and they'd come up and punch buttons and whatnot and I'd answer. So it was like being a human computer that I was inside of. I always felt that I was always, I kind of broke out of every box I'd ever been in because my mind was always out ahead of itself somehow. This, this brings me to thinking about that you're referred to often as a creativity guru. And I think I'm better understanding that now if you're, if you're a human computer standing in the middle of the Quad. So tell me what you think you're referred to as a creativity guru. That's a good question as well. I mean, I could be called, I mean, creativity expert, sounds pretentious and consultants sounds sort of tepid. Guru to me is also pretentious, I think, for this. I think what I do when I speak to groups is I don't just give them a handful of techniques. I try to give them an experience. I once did a talk in South Africa on that they gave me the title. It was a humor, the short road to genius. And I thought, well, I'll do that. It was a keynote thing, if I, if I may brag. And I had about 180 pages of notes going in. And when I stepped up to the, on the stage, I had nothing was jelling. So what I did was I just intuited the whole thing. What I try to give people the experience of is somebody in the moment being creative, putting things together. I did that as a teacher. I did that as a cartoonist. I do that as a writer. So knowing a lot of things is great, but not knowing things and being highly present is where the good stuff always happens. And I think in that sense, maybe there's a guru aspect, because I don't know what I'm going to say next. And yet it's a very practice not knowing what I'm going to say next, because I'm mindful that I want to be saying something insightful, useful and succinct, which is what I hope I do today. So so it, it, how do you, do you think you have this urge to do things in new ways? Do you think you've always had that urge and does it continue? Yeah, that's a great question. Also, I, I keep saying great question. I mean, that's sincerely why I love it when you say great question. I think in me, I've always had a foot in childhood. I've never left childhood. And, and I think, you know, we can put away child-ish things, but not child-like things. And as a child, my mind was constantly going. I think in third grade, I got a report card that said I was graded down for being, quote, happy for no reason at all, which I thought was this, why wouldn't you be? I mean, if you need reasons to be happy, how happy can you really be? But my mind is always thinking funny, always thinking, oh, there's a story there, always going outside things. I think as children, children are often put on hold, you know, at the weight there for mom and dad or whatever, and they can only do two things. They can observe and they can imagine. So I got really good at observing everything, pencils, dust, tabletops, and then imagining, you know, where do pencils come from? What if doors were not rectilinear? So I sort of internally asked myself two questions that I like to teach. What if and what else? And I'm like the energizer bunny because I'm constantly asking that even if nothing's going on. I mean, people normally think if something's funny, they'll laugh. I don't operate that way. I find stuff funny that isn't, and not everything's funny. But if you've got a child like mine, you'll see all kinds of stories and everything and everything. It seems to me your passion to be a creative producer was always with you. And I did see that when you talk about your childhood, you say that you were like God. No, you had mentioned being pretentious before. That's pretty pretentious that you were like, you were like God creating worlds within worlds. Yeah. And when I say like God, I don't mean that in gee, I'm really important and you're not or I control things, which I don't. It's more that like I say, I was a little kid, a big brother, my parents were all taller and I went off on my own a lot. I had a huge interior world and I found that when I drew, I just got a piece of paper and just drew stuff, I get to play and I get to invent things and I get to create worlds within worlds within worlds and just felt really good. And I've done that all my life. I think I gave you one example when I talked to you. This is on Naughty maybe to the viewers or maybe not. I was slamming my van door 20 years ago. I had an old Chevy Astro van and the phrase, he lived inside Edward G. Robinson's head popped to my mind. I don't know why. Edward G. Robinson, if you don't know, was an actor who played gangsters in the 1930s in American films. And so I went home and I wrote this thing about Edward G. It was called in the nostrils of an icon and it was about a guy who was in a stucco replica of Edward G. Robinson looking out the nostril in an amusement park. And I wrote about life, death, bugs, insects on Mars, rodeo, clowns, anything. And when I got stuck, I just said it doesn't have to make sense. And I wrote an 850 page book if I can brag just by following my nose. And at the same time I was doing teacher workshops. I do workshops all over the country for business and schools. I was doing teacher workshops and they were all very left brain. What are the objectives? What are you going to teach? Did you teach it? Test for it? My brain doesn't work that way. I mean, I can do that. But when I got home, I would just open up the book and just roar ahead. And the net feeling was my mind is infinite. And I don't just mean mine. I mean, your mind is infinite. If I'm in a workshop with kids, I've done a lot of workshops with kids, I want them to feel two things, smart and happy and irreplaceable. That's the third thing. And the same with grownups, that your mind is amazing. And the only thing keeping it not amazing is your thought that it's not, which is backed up often by society. Maybe this is an appropriate time. We often ask our guests and you may not want to do this. And sometimes I don't myself care to do it because it does kind of trap us and confine us. What's your definition of creativity? Do you have a favorite? Oh, you know, I don't spend any time thinking about that at all. But let me take a stab at it. I think it's fitting things that are profound or useful. And I think profound is also useful. And many of the definitions that I've come across in creativity, it's sort of being original. It's originality plus you can use it somehow. So in other words, you're not just thinking cool, fun things, and they don't go anywhere. But I add to that the dimension of the artist and the writer, as well as the product designer or somebody who's doing practical, practical things. I'll give an example. I'm going to give an example of what I think creativity is. A number of months ago, I had written a piece and I share it with my wife. I am married to the beautiful Elia Braden. She's a poet, a brilliant lady. You can look her up on YouTube, probably. And she looked at the piece I wrote. She said, John, this is not all that good. And I thought, not all that good. It's one of my best. It's enough. And now you know. And I went out of the house. I was miffed. I was angry. And I went to my favorite Starbucks, and I just started banging something out on my computer. Now, here's what creative is. Instead of going in a circle saying, you know, my wife doesn't get me and blah, blah, blah, I just wrote a piece called A Clandescence of Angels. And I want to read you the first paragraph. Yeah, I mean, this is a mind that's on fire. It goes, I live in the lavender gut of a horse. Now there's a beginning. Where did that come from? I'm angry at my wife. And I live in the lavender gut of a beating heart just beyond the wall, a beating heart just beyond the wall. And beyond that two old ladies sipping tea on a white porch in the crab apple south. Why crab apple? I mean, I lived in the south. So hoping for something that might squirrel up out of the ground, the age old ground, the southern ground, the ground at the top of a hill, a thin line of angels listening all boneless and hospitable from above. Angels listening all boneless and hospitable from above, managing nothing with their tiny modest angel hands, hands that might just as well be days of the week. The long gone civil war is wearing a small red and gold cap once worn by an organ grinder's monkey. Now you could say, gee, John, what are you taking drugs? All my life, Darlene, people said I am two things. I'm intense and I'm weird. I think only people who were intense and I mean intense appropriately so being able to be intense and be appropriate. And I looked up weird weird as an ancient Celtic root that means he or she who's found her destiny. So when I see you could be designing widgets, you could be in a very, very buttoned up whatever world. And I would like to say, look, you still have an amazing mind that can go out of bounds. They call it out of the box. I don't even have a box. Everybody has that, but then they mistrust it, distrust it, belittle it. They don't want to look weird, they don't want to look dumb, they don't want to whatever. And so they're striving to be successful when what they really, really could do if they stopped, it seems to me, is stop and be more fulfilled. And the difference between success and fulfilled is you're doing what you love because you love it. And success is you're doing what you think will be good. And if you did that, then you'd be somebody someday. I did that for years. I mean, I was, if I may brag, I was a straight A kid and I went to good schools and, you know, and I thought I had to bring home trophy after trophy. It was a really, you know, it was nuts. What I realized was I had a huge inner critic and that's why I call this fire your inner critic. And the inner critic was always saying, you got to do better. You got to do better. You're not enough. I realized once I was sitting in church once in a very broad minded progressive church and it popped into my head. What if instead of being successful, whatever that meant, famous, rich, whatever, I simply stopped beating myself up. In other words, instead of, they say if you could, what would you do if you could fail? Mine was what would you could do if you couldn't fail? What would you do if you failed and you still liked yourself? And suddenly, I drew a picture of it here. Here is my critic and I just blasted it. I just blasted it away. And then next I felt this feeling of lightness or ease like I was floating. So the one was, you know, I thought, what if I didn't have the critic? And so every time the critic came up, I imagined a little rocket going up and blasting the voice out of my head. Now that may sound violent, but I keep it within my head. And without the critic, I felt like, gee, I have nothing to lose and nothing to prove. And there's a sense of peace and almost lightness. If you went into a meeting and thought, I have nothing to lose and nothing to prove, that doesn't mean that you're arrogant and you're loud. It just means I don't have to prove anything. And I can be a little girl or a little boy and come from this wonder place that's infinite. And even if I'm dealing with a very small problem, I'm going to bring infinity and joy to the problem rather than I hope I do well. I hope I sound smart. So the thing was, I went get rid of the critic. And the next was I feel light. And the next thing was I felt like this little dot floating in air. And then lastly, because I got to bring this up, I was at a workshop with a wonderful man named Tim Herson. And I think you know Tim, he did a workshop at the Creative Problem Solving Institute. And I was there. And the closing slide was three questions. Who are you? Who are you really? And what are you for? And so I did a lot of drawing because I love drawing. I draw everything. I draw the taste of mayonnaise. I draw anything I can think of. I draw. So I do who am I? And I discovered instead of having a self image based on my history, my history, based on my history. And it's being unconscious. And it sort of runs me. What if I could pick a self image that I consciously chose? And so this will sound nutty, but I picked this. And to me, that's the sun. Now I'm not actually the sun. But what it means is when I think of the sun as being big, peaceful, happy, shining, generous, good, hey, that's what I want. So I was going, and I'll wrap this up in just a second because you'll probably have more questions, but I wanted to get this story in. I went to, I was applying for work at Disney in the Imagine area. And I thought, gee, they'll like me because I draw and it'll be cool. And so I'm in the parking lot. This was several years ago. And I'm thinking, oh boy, I hope they like me. I hope because I'll get work and it'll be really cool. And then something in me reminded myself, John, wait a sec, dude, you're the sun. You're not some schmuff looking for work. You're the sun. You don't care whether they hire you, fire you, smile, don't smile, like you, pay you, don't. It doesn't matter. So I went in there. I had this sense of peace in here. This is what I do if you like it good. And if you don't, I'm happy because when I leave here, guess what? The place is going to be 15 degrees colder because the sun drove off. I mean, it's like, and it's a funny little thing. But what I suggest to people is instead of having an inner critic, which operates in the dark and kind of bugs you, and what have you said, okay, I hear it, stop it, let it go, and then invent some surreal image. My wife is the ocean, for instance. And I think, well, you know, as the sun, I'm not bothered by almost anything. And since I'm not bothered by things, I'm way more free to hear better, listen better, ideate better, come up with ideas, and not be angry at people or things as much. Does that make sense? Yes, I think it does. Now, if we fire that inner critic, does that voice of the critic, does that get replaced? Do you think by a voice of commendation? Yeah, that again is a very good question. The inner critic, I think, is kind of always there. I mean, it's the voice, if I may be a friend that says, gee, I hope I do a really good interview today. It's always there. So you're never, I suppose, ever going to fire it so it goes away. I mean, that would be lovely, I suppose. But what I do is I just notice it now. And what I say to people is, own your feelings, just don't buy them. In other words, if you're feeling scared or grumpy, the critic to me is Mr. Grumpy and Mr. Worry, or Mrs. Grumpy and Mrs. Worry. And they're always there. The voice tries to scare me and punish me and I got to prove stuff. But it does it in the guise of protecting me. And I wrote these down, actually, in the guise, where do I put this, in the guise of protecting me, improving me and validating me. But the inner critic doesn't do that, just keeps me scared. If I say, okay, I notice you're there, now get out, that's cool. If I take a moment and say, wait a second, I'm the son. Now, in a way that doesn't make any sense at what do you mean the son? Are you a metaphor? Yeah, I'm a metaphor. In other words, what would I be if I were big enough that I weren't worried about success? See, the stuff I'm worried about, the son is not worried about. I hope I do well. I hope the son doesn't care. So I'm that. I once, I was with my beautiful wife before I asked her to marry me. I made the mistake of saying, I think I'm going to need to ask you at some point to marry. I bobbled that thing. And she got really insistent, what do you mean? You're going to have to, wow. And she was getting very sort of frightened or mad. And she's very beautiful. And I was sitting there, I was having an apple pancake. And normally I turn into a puppy dog and say, oh, gee, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. But I let her have her feelings. And then stopping him. He said, wait, I'm the son. I mean, I'm not worried. And then after she finished, I said, look, honey, I love you. I'll marry you. I'll ask you. I won't. I will. I'm going to decide. Nobody tells me what to do. I've been paddling my own canoe long enough. I'll tell me it's I don't have to anything. And she got smile, and she got brighter and happier. But when I get rid of my inner critic and think, what do I want to be? I just feel a sense of peace. I also meditate each day. And that's a huge help. You do. Yeah, I do. And I realize, see, when you wake up in the morning, you think you're waking up into the day, mostly you're waking up into your mind. I mean, I wake up and I got worried. That's my mind. So my mind, I just step outside my mind and say, you know, gee, there you are again, bugging me. That's the critic. And I say, and the point is when I'm doing artwork, like what's behind me, or when I'm writing something like a clandestine of angels, or every day I make a card for my wife, here's something for the guys out there. Every day I have a gift for my wife. Here's one of them. And I'll read this. It says, this is called telepathy. Rupert was taking a bath in the kitchen in his favorite bowl, when he wondered if just by thinking about it, he could make time go backward. He'd been making it go forward for so long. So here's this Rupert. And every day I give her a little, it's funny, it's philosophical, it's whatever. Here's, here's today's looks like that. Then John, oh, that's pressure one a day. Well, you know, I just do it. And what, and what I do, what I do is I can't see, here's something I can't worry. So it's night, I'm tired. I got to make the card for my wife. I can't be afraid. In fact, I made her a whole book. She went to Africa and she was working in a safe house for girls in Africa, because my wife does that brilliant sort of thing. And I wanted to draw 150 pictures of 50 different animals. And then I made up the animals, and I made her a book. So it's called imaginary animals. And I'll read you the introduction. This is the opposite part of it. This is the opposite of the worry voice. Enjoy this book. It's a funny book. It's a serious book. It's a bicycle ride through my head. It's a box of cookies, start anywhere, jump around. Oh, and the book will bring you good luck. I promise, especially if you share it with friends, read the book and everyone's dreams will all come true. Absolutely. That's my prediction. It says I feel lucky having written it because I wrote it for my wife in a hurry from love. And I learned in the process that speed and ease and joy can create a special depth and beauty that perfectionism and procrastination procrastination cannot. So if I have one message for people out there, it's notice that you got a critic going on when it wants you to do better and wonder how well you can do. And if you can say, I hear that be quiet, find a little bit of peace. And then maybe you'll have your own power image that you choose consciously. Maybe that's joy. Maybe that's luck. I don't have to be bothered by stuff that I don't choose to be bothered by. And now it's the tech describe and delete the critic and displace it with something better, which in my case is the power image. So that's a lot to think about. John, I suspect you've experienced this quite often for both of us and those of us who do work in the area of creativity. And that is usually after we've given a talk or shared something about our feelings towards creativity, someone will come up and say, I listen to all this, but I'm not really creative. I know I'm not. And then you start to talk to them and they start to talk about things they've done. And it's very, it's sometimes difficult to convince someone and often, often people that we know very well that say they're not creative turn out to be some of the most creative people that we know. My mind comes to a philosophy professor that always said that yet the fact that he emerged ideas from all of us in such an unusual way. And so deeply, truly, he was creative. He just didn't seem to think that there weren't a bunch of drawings behind it. So I think it's important for us to share with our viewers that creativity takes many forms in many directions. Yeah, I think that's so, so true. And the fact of it is also the truth of it is, is that no one is not creative. If anyone had a childhood, you are creative. What I mean by that is every test ever done on divergent thinking and creative thinking has little kids going off the charts, then they get into school and they lose a lot of that, unfortunately. But when children were when we all were little, we observed a lot, we imagined a lot. See, we're either in one of three months observation, imagination or judgment. Adults spend most of the time in judgment and kids spend most of the time observing and imagining. If we return to that as adults, there's nothing we can't do more creatively. And I'll give you an example. I say to people if you want to add three hours of energy to your day, three things, drop all negative judgment. That doesn't mean discernment. You can still not like stuff. Secondly, do everything you do with a flourish. And thirdly, have something to look forward to. Like, for instance, I'm going to get six months paid vacation to the Sorbonne where I'm going to be, you know, wind and dine for the next six months. It's amazing. Incredible grant. I love it. It's like it's a scholarship. And the truth is, I'm not, I just made that up. But my mind doesn't know I'm not because I made that up. So even if you invent something to look forward to, the other thing is that you can be situationally creative. I was doing things for gifted kids in New Jersey. And I was at Princeton actually asking a young man behind the desk to give me directions after the workshop. And he helped me. And I thought, I want to thank you. But then my head said, give him a little more. So I said to the young man, I said, I want to grant you three wishes. And he thought three wishes. I said, yes, three wishes. What's the first? He said, well, I want to do well on my midterm. I said, done with a sweep of my hand. Second wish, my girlfriend, I want to have a better relationship. I said, done. The third one, maybe it was world peace. I said, done. My point was, I was able to be creative in the moment without drawing something, just being with the person, having a little fun. It takes courage to seize the present moment and do something with a flourish. But three things, drop negative judgment, open a door with a flourish, pet your dog with a flourish, and have something to look forward to make it up. John, we reached our close here. And I have to say, I think that's a great place for us to end. I really appreciate the three points that you brought up. With that in mind, I want to thank you for joining us. And I want to tell our viewers, thank you for joining our guests, John Pearson and me for our discussion on living the creative life. We hope today's discussion has provided you with greater insight into your creative inner self. You have done that, John, for us. The creative life returns in January after a brief holiday break. Happy holidays to all our viewers, safe travels, and aloha.