Monthly Archive for November, 2008

Why the World Needs Corporate Thinking

Published on November 23, 2008 in being corporate defined. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Here’s a choice for you to consider: The first option involves doing something because it is the right thing to do. It will benefit you and the people around you somehow, and you’ll be able to delight in the truth that for at least once in your life you did the right thing.

Then, there’s the second option. Choose this, and I’ll pay you five million dollars to do something and to do it well. Now this thing I’ll ask of you may or may not be a decent thing to do, but who cares; I’ll be paying you a lot of money to get it done.  Obviously, you’ll have to sign a contract, and if you don’t do it exactly as I tell you, I’ll take you to court.  If I still don’t get the results I want, I’ll ask the militia I control to resolve the matter with force.

3050950934_ee4448a192

image from flickr.com/thomashawk

You can make this decision in private.  No one else will know.  So, which one would you choose?

Let me state the obvious: I’m a writer, at least on occasion, so of course I don’t have five million dollars … yet.  But also, most people would, I believe, admire the idealism of the first choice but acquiesce to the seductive second one, in spite of the potentially corporate or ugly consequences.

I’m not even sure how I would respond to such an offer.  I’d like to think that I’d go with the first option, but then doing the right thing can involve uncertainty and risk.  There’s no guarantee that the journey will be easy, and doing the right thing is hard to quantify.

I mean, how could I use my attempts at doing the right thing to establish status and superiority over others?  Besides, doing the right thing involves trusting others for support. Good luck trying to  stand up against injustice for a prolonged time period without the financial, moral, or physical help of others.

Now that I think about it, I don’t like having to depend on other people because almost everyone has let me down at some point, and five million dollars could sure buy a lot of compliance.  With that kind of money, I could compel others to do my bidding with bribes or coercion.   Wait a minute … I don’t want to be that person, but I could see myself, in a moment of weakness, making the choices that lead me there.

Perhaps though, money doesn’t sway you.  You’re too bohemian to care about that stuff, right?  Well then, what if it came down to doing the right thing or building up indie-rock street cred? For example, you could help a struggling friend start a business, something no respectable indie-rocker would celebrate, or you could jam out for weeks at a time, get awesome reviews from all the right publications, and sip indie-friendly Sunny Delight cocktails while ignoring your friend’s calls.

What if it was a choice between the right thing and respectability? That poor black fellow does look lonely sitting in the church pew all by himself, but really what would the other church ladies think if you sat next to him?  Or, what about a choice between doing the right thing and being surrounded by friends?  For someone like me that could be the hardest choice, since meaningful friendships sometimes feels like the scarcest of resources in my world, and the things most scarce to a person often morph into the roots of temptation. The Devil offered food and power to Christ when he was famished and weary not by accident.

Our society has learned the hard way that people can’t always be trusted to do the right thing, and so we write banal laws and vapid corporate policies, put fences around things, and gravitate toward impersonal interactions throughout the day. A wife nags her husband because she doubts that he’ll do what needs to be done on his own or when asked in a reasonable way.  Some teachers prefer to read their lessons word-by-word from a book so that they can avoid real interaction with kids who might respond with thoughtlessness or cruelty.  Companies stuff their quality control departments with bureaucratic and sometimes nonsensical procedures, because  they’ve learned that employees won’t always do what they’re supposed to do if they aren’t monitored carefully.

All of these examples develop from our reasonable doubts that others will do the right thing or from our own apprehensions about doing right.  But then, we often associate the right thing with the boring thing, at least I do.  And yet … it isn’t, not when it’s done properly in harmony with the present moment.  Think about a favorite movie of yours.  Do you cheer with everything you have in yourself when villainy or goodness prevails?

If your heart’s in the right place and you listen to the moment, or more precisely to God’s whispers in that moment, then you’ll know what you should do without having to depend on a list of rules. I get that kind of thing right less than half of the time, but I know from experience that it’s the well from which true playfulness, joy, and love will sprout.

Heaven is, I suspect, the one place where everyone does the right thing without obligation or pressure.  Until then, we have our vices and our struggles and our corporate ways of doing things, but what’s wrong with trying to bring a little bit of heaven here on earth?

If you reward others with respect, sincerity, excellence, gratitude, and affection instead of offering all the corporate trimmings, then maybe you’ll persuade a few more people to do the right thing rather than the corporate thing. Often enough, that kind of thing even translates into financial benefits from the opportunities that cherished and respected individuals offer you, so maybe you can have your turkey and eat it too.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and God bless.

How to Avoid Being a Corporate Artist

Published on November 17, 2008 in art and storytelling. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

(Normally, I aim to do updates every Saturday, but this is a subject that means a lot to me, and it took me a little longer to get things right, or as close to right as I could manage.  Sorry about that. The length is also a little longer, so you can get the main ideas from the words in bold if you prefer.)

A corporate artist is not an oxymoron. It’s what a creative-minded person can become when he or she pursues fame, money, or passing fads instead of the deepest things in his or her heart. That’s a tragic thing, but sadly it’s not an uncommon occurrence.

At its best, art inspires and enlightens.  It helps us understand each other, and it reveals the problems in our societies and the evil in ourselves.  A great piece of art encourages us to do and dream great things that are worthy of its company.   That’s why it makes me sad to see creative types become corporate artists who screw up the world in uniquely monstrous ways.

Plumbers do important work that requires training and specialized knowledge, but I’ve never a met a plumber who  puts his soul on display when fixing the sink.  (Perhaps there is such a plumber out there, and if he exists, I’d love to watch him work.)  In contrast, artists I admire, whether musicians, actors, writers, or painters, captivate me by putting at least a sliver of their souls into their work. It’s hard enough to show that part of yourself to the world, but it’s even harder to do when faced with potential rejection, criticism, and exploitation that comes with the territory.   If you think this is easy stuff, try going to work completely naked, and do your job while everyone else stays fully clothed.

"Ballet Class" by Edgar Degas

Ballet Class by Edgar Degas

I’m not trying to be provocative.  There is a point to the nudity.  It is not gratuitous, and so it meets my criteria for use here.  (I apply the same criteria when considering the merit of nudity in art.  It’s like Madeleine L’engle writes in her book Walking on Water, “A painting of a nude body can glorify the wonder of incarnation, or it can titillate and degrade.”  With that said, dear Hollywood friends, you don’t tend to err on the side of wondrous incarnation very often, so be careful.)

Anyway, I believe we were meant to live in harmony, with our hearts naked and exposed to each other. They were once naked in the Garden of Eden, were they not?   There was nothing to hide from each other, so Adam and Eve could be themselves without hiding behind lifeless, corporate facades.

Good artists do what they can to slowly nudge us back toward the harmonious state of being that was once found in the Garden. But it is hard to live with an open heart, whether professionally or just in general.  Try sharing that light long enough, and some vultures and villains are sure to notice it, and they’ll try to stomp it out or consume it for their own selfish ends.  There’s a real risk that these dark forces, whether outside or inside a person, will turn an artist corporate.

Take another look at the painting above.  Look at how lovely the ballerinas are, but the dark gentleman on the right isn’t very interested in their overall beauty.  He’s a little more preoccupied with a certain part of the ballerina’s body.  His compatriot in the picture doesn’t appear to be much more noble.  Note also the disturbing blotches of black that frame the dancers, trapping them in their confined space.  When these kinds of dark forces infect artists, they corrupt them and turn them into horrific variations of Britney Spears, who is perhaps the ultimate corporate artist.

Yes, Britney is a talented dancer, she looks hot, and she’s making a lot of people a lot of money, so what the hell is wrong with that, right?

I’ll tell you.  Instead of helping me better perceive truth and beauty, corporate artists like Britney Spears try to sell me on sex, popularity, and mass produced sounds and movements. I get a cheap thrill, but each time I indulge I’m trading against the possibility of future lasting happiness with a girl who has character, who doesn’t sell everything  to anyone who will make her famous.  You see, the more I listen to Britney Spears, the less convinced I am that there are still attractive girls with integrity out there.  That’s why I’ve stopped listening to Britney Spears.

It’s so easy for us in general and for artists in particular to do things just to validate our egos or to scratch a burning impulse or to overcompensate for insecurities. I’m just as guilty as anyone of that kind of thing.  When I treat a lady like she’s a mere source of physical gratification, I am taking away something from her that she could better enjoy with a man who truly loves her.  Maybe she’ll never get married, or maybe her future relationships won’t be as sweet because of the way I used her up.

Whatever the case may be, I’m ripping the social fabric, the unseen threads that keep our society cohesive, when I act only to satisfy myself.  With the wrong focus and the right circumstances, I too could become the ultimate corporate artist, but that’s not something I want to be.  Knowing that is half the battle.

I don’t want to come up with a list of dos and don’ts for art.  I’m just asking artists to stop making decisions just to make more money, build up street cred, or do anything for the sake of doing work.  Instead, dare to build a career by bringing the depths of your heart to light. I’m not arguing that every piece of art has to be full of eternal meaning.  There is a place for light romantic comedies, singable pop songs, well choreographed dance routines, scary films, and mystery books.  Still, all of these things can be presented using good taste within the context of a moral universe, or they can be built out of a narasistic, chaotic framework that is filled with pandering to the basest human instincts. William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alfred Hitchcock could convey a moral universe even when exploring darkness.   Can you?

When you undertake whatever creative ventures you pursue, dare to stand for something.  Just because so many modern artists mistake vulgarity, cheap thrills, and chaos for artistic technique doesn’t mean you have to go along with that.

I don’t mind profanity when used with restraint to make a point, but if you use it in every other sentence, I start to suspect that you are compensating for a limited vocabulary.

Also, Grace Kelly never did a super-skank stripper movie for the sake of getting more exposure to new audiences, or for proving herself as an actress, or for whatever the preferred PR phrase is these days.  I think she still did OK for herself, don’t you?  She was attractive, but she maintained a sense of class, and that is much more alluring, much more sexy, than any of the shiny, transparent strings and sequins posing as clothes that the mass-produced Britney clones wear these days.

I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen, but you can’t be everything to everyone. A writer may get acclaim for writing both family dramas and perverse sex books, but to me he is no longer someone with enough integrity to avoid writing a reprehensible book.  He’s just a corporate climber, doing anything for more money, power, and fame just like everyone else, and that will make me less likely to buy his next book.

Again, I don’t object to depictions of vice in art as long as the depiction is not the gratitious, glamourized selling point of the production.   There are prostitutes, thieves, and murderers even in the Bible, but they don’t get the glamour girl treatment, now do they? Context and purpose behind depicted vice can make all the difference.

The folks who come in to see your self-loathing play or art exhibit probably won’t know that you’ve been trying to get a break for months and months, or that you were going through a difficult divorce when you wrote that ultra-violent misogynistic film.  All they know is that they worked hard all week, faced their own difficulties, and gave you some of their money and/or time so that they could be entertained, inspired,  enlightened, or engaged by what you have to offer.  Do you really want to be the one who demoralizes them, with a reprehensible role in a reprehensible production just because you were desperate to get whatever work you could get? Is that really what you want your legacy in this world to be?

I can’t tell you what you should and shouldn’t do with your art.   You have to listen to your own conscience for that kind of thing.  But don’t be so selfish and so corporate as to not take into account how your “art” will affect other people. If a plumber’s shoddy work caused physical injuries to others, we would ask him to make amends, or we’d put him out of business.  And yet if an artist’s work strains the social fabric by encouraging infidelity and violence against the innocent, while driving people away from their God-given sense of dignity and faith , we smile and talk about the bold artistic choices involved.   That’s nonsensical corporate talk, worse than the stuff that comes out of the most corporate of meetings.

I used the word “Being” in the title instead of “Becoming” or something altogether different, because you can stop being one thing as soon as start being something else.   Just like anyone can choose to become a corporate arist by thinking only about themselves and their money and fame, anyone, even Britney Spears can choose to start being a true artist who creates from the heart and does so out of love for others.

America was once a land that inspired others with the noble sentiments found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Now we send the world works of hateful bloodlust, porn designed as story, and vulgarity masquerading as art.  Let’s fight to change that.  If you’re an artist, then make meaningful stuff.  If you talk about art, don’t celebrate reprehensible stuff just because it’s popular. Together, we can make the world a less corporate, and a more beatiful, more harmonious place.