All truth is one. In this light may science and religion labor here together for the steady evolution of mankind from darkness to light; from prejudice to tolerance; from narrowness to broadmindedness. —inscription on the first Hayes Hall Tower Bell.
I’ve heard about the TED conference for the past few years as a few of my acquaintances have gone and twittered about being there or otherwise mentioned in, but I didn’t find out until recently that the conference has started posting all of the talks online for anyone to download. Since I was planning a five hour flight to get here for RailsConf, I decided to download a few. Wow.
The quote above is from one of the craziest (but most effective) talks I’ve ever seen. It’s by a scientist named Clifford Stoll and the title of the talk is 18 Minutes With an Agile Mind. In it, he jumps around the stage, makes odd chirping noises and nails perfectly the role of “mad scientist”. He wanders the map from single-dimensioned objects to measuring the speed of sound to campus riots, and then ends with that quote (sorry to spoil it for you – watch it anyway).
The first time you do something it’s science. The second time it’s engineering. A third time it’s just being a technician. I’m a scientist. Once I do something, I do something else.
I love that quote too. I think the same thing applies to art or any creative endeavor. The difference between Rembrandt, Renoir, Picasso or Georgia O’Keefe and the thousands of people who’ve sat in museums and copied their work is not necessarily skill. I saw a blog post recently (that I can’t find now… Google has failed me) about a whole city in China that’s pretty much dedicated to creating copies of famous works of art. The artists that do this work are very talented, because even reproducing great art is difficult. But, they’re not the masters. Why? Because they didn’t do it first. They’re definitely craftspeople, which is something I consider myself. I’m struggling to find, in his definition, where craft fits in, because when something becomes a craft, you do it over and over again, but differently every time, until you can both predictably repeat the process and get it perfect. There’s something to ponder there. How do you balance the thrill of invention and being first with the long-term satisfaction of becoming a master, because Picasso didn’t start his career by inventing cubism. His early work was very classical, and it wasn’t until he had mastered that form that he invented cubism.
It’s something I tell people when I do training on web standards: you can’t bend the rules until you understand them completely, which I think is the intersection between craft and invention. You can’t invent something truly new (except in rare cases by complete lucky accident, but you can’t count on that happening) without knowing what already exists and understanding the fundamentals of the medium you’re working in.
I had a whole paragraph about invention and creating cured meat products that had never been seen before, but I deleted it because I think this stuff about craft is more important. It’s so important to understand the fundamentals, which is why people telling me that ficlets has improved their writing makes me so happy (I also love it when people who initially complain about the character limit embrace it).
So, instead of going out there and inventing something totally new, let’s try a different game. Take your favorite author and try to figure out what about their writing makes them your favorite. Pick their paragraphs to pieces. Take their sentences apart and examine them with a magnifying glass. And when you’ve figured out that essence, see if you can mimic their style convincingly.
And then, after you’ve done that, go invent a cured meat product that’s never been seen before!
(and yes, I know this is blog post number three in as many days, but I had some topics saved up I wanted to get to… there may be a few more)