E3: David Chislett

Transcript

[laughing]
[David:] Can we have a few more of these?
[Evy:] Oh we have more, and then shots.
[laughing]
[David:] Wooow!

[Evy:] Is it on?
[Webster:] It is.
[Evy:] Oh, we're on!
[Webster:] Testing one 2, testing one 2...
[David:] The red light is on!

[Evy:] Hello, hello, hello, welcome to Word Up Podcast. I'm Evy.
[Webster:] And I'm Webster.
[Evy:] And today we are with David Chislett.
[David:] Yes, that's me!
[laughing]
[Webster:] Welcome!
[David:] Thank you very much!
[Webster:] Was that the best way to pronounce your...
[David:] Chislett, yeah. You don't have to overemphasize the "lett", but you can.
[Evy:] I try.
[laughing]
[Evy:] To make it more special! So, you're a creativity coach and a poet...
[David:] Uh-huh.
[Evy:] And overall magical person with a lot of experience in the music business.
[David:] Yeah.
[Evy:] Can you tell us more about yourself?
[David:] Wow, where do you want me to start? Alright, well, I'll tell you the long story.
[Evy:] Yes, please.
[David:] I discovered poetry when I was 10 years old. During an English lesson, a teacher was − you know, as one does at school, making you read, I don't know, Robert Frost or something − and she was like [in a pretentious accent:] "You know, you can do this at home!" And gave us some basic introductions to rhyme schemes, AB-AB, what have you. And the idea of − you know − you write the first letters... like you write "LOVE", each letter underneath each other, and then you start the first line with L, the second line with O... She gave us a whole lot of systems and ideas which we all tried out during class and then for homework you had to write a poem. And I came back the next day with ten! [laughing] Because it was just like... Hey!
[Evy:] Overachiever!
[David:] ...This is fun! Yeah, I liked it and it clicked in my head, and I was like, "Hey, hang on, I can, kind of, do this." Um... And, yeah, I never really stopped. I've always been a writer. Particularly, I've always been a poet. But in-between I got waylaid by rock 'n' roll. I discovered how to play the guitar when I was 17. Quite handy, having a bunch of poems in, when you need songs for a band...
[Evy:] Right.
[David:] Played gigs and stuff. Moved into band management. Moved into music journalism. Moved into promotions, marketing, PR, all that evil stuff. Finally escaped the music industry with my sanity intact in about 2010. And went back to my core of writing and started, kind of, publishing books, put out a volume of poetry, a volume of short stories, a business advice book for beginner musicians about, "Hey, this is actually how the music industry runs, here's where the money comes from, this is what you should be thinking about..." And, yeah. Now, since living in the Netherlands I've also discovered Patreon, which I'm now using as my main platform for my poetry, aside for live performances. So, that's kind of the short version.
[Evy:] And you're originally from South Africa.
[David:] Actually, originally born in Portsmouth, in the south of England.
[Evy:] Ok.
[David:] But, yeah, grew up in South Africa, South-African schools, university, all that kind of stuff.
[Evy:] And you've been in Holland now for a while, also.
[David:] Uh-huh, 5 years.
[Evy:] Ok.
[David:] Yeah.
[Webster:] Well, tell us about your spoken word. I actually haven't had the pleasure of seeing you on stage just yet. But would you say that there's a theme to what you talk about on stage, or where do you get your inspiration and what are you trying to share with the audience?
[David:] I always kind of hesitate to classify what I do with my poetry live as being "spoken word". I tend to feel that that term is most often used when describing a much more rhythmic rhyming style of poetry, kind of à la hip-hop going slam kind of thing. I don't do that. I'm an overeducated and middle-class navel-gazer, so therefore I tend to write kind of unstructured broken verse, stuff that doesn't necessarily rhyme. But I come from a performance background. I did a lot of acting in school, I've done a lot of singing vocal training and so, even though it's not technically, I guess, "spoken word", I put a lot into actually making that stuff come alive when I do it live. It's really my focus.
[Webster:] Oh, ok.
[Evy:] And what inspires you?
[David:] Yeah, life... I mean... cliché... But, you know, life is endlessly fascinating and weird. We never really know what's going to happen next. We are not mind readers, history shows that we are extremely bad at predicting what's going to happen next, and as much as we'd like to think that we are the apex of the food chain and got it all tied down, you know, we don't. And therefore, we get in stupid situations and get broken hearts and make colossal blunders and I find that endlessly interesting from a poetic point of view.
[Evy:] Right.
[David:] And, having been self-employed for 25 years, I've made my fair share of colossal blunders and gotten into lots of sticky situations and got a bit of source material.
[laughing]
[Evy:] Yeah.
[Webster:] I guess it's hard to create art when you don't have much to get inspiration from, right?
[David:] Well, there's a David Bowie quote which I absolutely love. I think it's from... possibly even from Blue Jean... and it's: "Where there's trouble, there's poetry."
[Webster:] Boom.
[laughing]
[David:] Yeah.
[laughing]
[Webster:] And since moving to the Netherlands, tell us about your business, what do you do, what's your daily life like and how do you incorporate your poetry into that?
[David:] Well, the business is centred around the notion of creativity, as a fundamental human characteristic. It's something that I firmly believe, and I also believe the science backs this up. We all have it, in one shape or form. However, society has programmed us to mainly feel that creativity is about art. It's about poetry, it's about painting, it's theatre, it's blah blah blah. So, when I say to people, "Hey, I'm a creativity trainer", they go "But I'm not artistic". And I'm like, "Yeah..." So, every single thing you learn is a creative act, because you're taking a chunk of information − call it a dot − and another chunk of information − another dot − and you're putting them together, and in your head, for the first time, a new thought emerges. You've literally created it through the process of joining those two dots. That's a creative act. So, the notion of ongoing innovation, ongoing learning, life-time learning, all this stuff is inextricably connected to the idea of creativity and what the physical process of it is. So, that's kind of my jump-off point. And the scientific research, my own experience, psychological research all demonstrates that there are in fact very specific conditions and skills and thinking approaches that can allow you to be more reliably creative in whatever area you chose to output that. I mean, no one would consider Einstein non-creative. I do believe.
[Webster:] Absolutely.
[David:] And yet, most people think mathematics is dull, boring... rigid...
[Webster:] Stuff.
[David:] Right, but it's... it's... You know? You're problem solving − that's what they used to call it in junior school, right? "Here's some problems for you to solve." Duh, join the dots, create an answer.
[Webster:] Yeah.
[David:] So, that's my entire approach. And I'm trying to do that for anybody who needs to be in a position to change what's happening around them. Maybe they need to innovate. Maybe they need to modify their own behaviour. Maybe they need new ideas to start a business. Maybe their entire business or the company they work for, their entire job is around going to help other people with their problems, and they have to − hello! − create solutions. And because of what I know through experience and through research, I'm in a great position to help people get better at that solving of problems.
[Webster:] Right.
[Evy:] Nice. And what would be your advice for people who are stuck? How to "unstuck" yourself... how to...
[Webster:] How to "unstuck" yourself?
[laughing]
[David:] You've got to act differently, before anything will change. But, again, allegedly an Einstein quote, you can't solve the problems you have in front of you with the same thinking that got you there. And, quite often, that same thinking is demonstrated by the same actions. So, it's incredibly important, if you are stuck in any sphere whatsoever, to do something different. You know? That's what a midlife crisis is all about. Right? You know, those settled routines, becoming an adult, all that stuff... people change, they start doing different things, and that changes their perspectives. I mean, I believe so firmly, in actual fact, that so much of what we classify as someone's identity is based on our perception of their habit set. And if they change their habits, we will feel like we don't know them anymore.
[Webster:] Yeah, they become a stranger.
[David:] Right. And I think that's a really important concept. So, if you're stuck and you want to be able to do things differently, and essentially change some aspect of your environment, you're also pretty much going to change yourself. But it starts with taking some kind of action.
[Webster:] Hm.
[Evy:] Nice.
[Webster:] Why do you think...
[Evy:] Um...
[Webster:] Sorry, go on.
[Evy:] Sorry!
[laughing]
[Evy:] I'm just wondering, with you being born in UK and growing up in South Africa and now being here, does that change your perspective also? Does that help, or does that inspire, challenge your whole world view and the way you run business, and the way you write poetry?
[David:] I think changing your physical perspective cannot do anything else but change how you think and see things. I think that is inescapable. The role that's played in my life... Um, yeah, I've always pretty much felt like an outsider wherever I've been. I've never truly belonged, so that perspective has been quite different to many of my contemporaries and quite possibly is what led me to the desire to write about it anyway. It was kind of like a private processing system. And, you know, I haven't always had the easiest life, I mean not the worst or what have you, but... you know, shit happens, and I've always found that my writing has been a very efficient way to process those experiences and those things. Like there's a lot of poetry I write that I'll never show anyone, and I'll never publish, because that's actually not why I wrote it. I wrote it because I needed to figure something out. I tend to share the stuff where I've got something to say about something, rather than the stuff that I pretty much used as a tool for my own... I don't know...
[Webster:] Therapy.
[laughing]
[David:] Yeah.
[Evy:] Journaling and...
[David:] Yeah, yeah.
[Evy:] Ok. You had a question, Webster?
[Webster:] I do have many questions.
[laughing]
[Webster:] Um, I wanted to talk about how creativity is perceived in our community. You know, if you're doing mathematics or maybe some sciences − maybe even social sciences − people deem you uncreative. What can be done in the education space to allow children, kids, even adults, to know and recognize that they, too, have creativity within them, and that it doesn't necessarily have to pertain to art, music... for making... whatever...
[David:] Yeah. Well, I think we need to change our education system, so it's not designed to smash the creativity out of us by the age of ten. If you've ever seen Ken Robinson − Sir Ken Robinson − on how creativity is killed at schools, on YouTube, you'll understand what I'm talking about. You know... standardized testing, check the boxes, multiple choice questions, the mere idea of having only one correct answer. All imbues people with this notion that what goes on in their own head doesn't have that much value. And that's what ends up killing creativity. And then, there's also the socialization of anyone who's engaged with any kind of art as being essentially an outlie, a freak, unreliable, quite possibly, you know, a drug user, suspect personality, mentally unstable − I mean, there's still science going into this whole idea about the fact that people who are highly creative are, of necessity, mentally unstable. Whereas, I believe it's actually the other way around: if they weren't highly creative, they would not be able to deal with their mental disability, and people who are not highly creative succumb far quicker to mental illness than those who are. So, I believe our entire approach to the notion of creativity has been seriously damaged. Primarily by the industrial revolution, where it became incredibly important to have, essentially, meat robots who would not miss a beat, and didn't have to know anything about everything else that was going on around them. It's basically all Henry Ford's fault.
[laughing]
[David:] That's quotable.
[laughing]
[Webster:] No, that's true. I remember, as a child, growing up and, you know, changing education systems... Growing up in Zimbabwe, which is actually a very rigid system, very good in terms of, like, educational standards, at the time, but, you know, you grow up and, you know, "This is what we're learning.", "This is what we're doing right now.", and... "You need to understand these facts, because these facts will be asked of you in the exam and if you don't remember these you're going to fail". That's it. And then I went to the UK. It was a bit more loose. Very loose. And I remember, like, trying to answer these questions that I'd been given, and my teacher came to me − she says, "You know, you don't have to say it in this way". I was like, "What? Mrs, what do you mean? That's crazy!"
[laughing]
[Webster:] "I have to say it in this way." And so, I think we need to recognize that there's different ways of learning, that different people learn in different ways. I might say that I had learning difficulties at some point in my childhood, I didn't know it at the time, I recognize it now, you know. When someone's speaking at you, they're speaking to you, but the information is kind of falling short. You know? I understand what you're saying, but it's going to be gone within 30 seconds. So, I think, also, like, understanding how human beings work on a fundamental level is maybe how we can help people be more creative or just be better people.
[David:] Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think that if I had to go to school now, I would be medicated to the gills, because I would have been diagnosed as ADHD, hyperactive and I would have been definitely a problematic behaviour child. I was always high energy. But I was so busy with everything else around school, I did lots of sports, I took part in all these, sort of, clubs and associations and what have you, and I was focused enough to do well enough at school to pretty much be left alone. But I see now that this whole roboticization is so pronounced that any kid who cannot sit still for 6 hours in a cold grey room with very little stimulation is immediately classified as problem behaviour. It's like... that's not fucking normal. No one can sit still for six hours in a boring environment. And it's just like medicalization and almost criminalization of typical human behaviour.
[Webster:] ...human behaviour... yeah!
[David:] It alarms the hell out of me.
[Evy:] And especially with your little daughter?
[David:] That's... yes.
[Evy:] Right?
[David:] Yeah. I mean, I think... luckily in the Netherlands there are more than one option when it comes to education. From what I've heard the, sort of, standard public education is a bit like, tick the boxes, give the right answer and what have you. But there are other options. So, we'll see. I'm not sure I'm prepared to go radical unschooling just yet...
[laughing]
[David:] A friend of mine in San Francisco's doing that and I'm like, "Whoa, you're brave!"
[laughing]
[David:] But yeah, it does worry me. It does. Cause, you know, not just the stamping out creativity but all the stereotyping, all the prejudice that gets packed into that kind of approach.
[Evy:] Right
[David:] You know, the serious polarization that it entails on so many different levels. It makes me uncomfortable.
[Evy:] And ... because, also, the world that we live in is also not very equal and [is] very segregated in that way. Is there some way that you would advise people to behave or act differently, or, like... on a very basic level?
[David:] I think that one of the things that most average human beings lack and that we don't seem to have any way of, kind of, sharing or teaching is the ability to empathize, to literally put oneself in someone else's shoes. And the current political environment of polarization actively discourages that. "They're different, screw them." "Get 'em". "Push them out." "Build a wall."
[laughing]
[David:] You know, whatever. And it's just lazy, apart from everything else. It's so fundamentally lazy, and, in any situation where it's been practiced, it's been proven over and over again, long term, to be counterproductive, leads to its own failure, and yet we just don't learn, we just insist on continuing to do it. It's bizarre. We seriously just don't learn from our own history. We are, in many ways, just on this endless loop, in a little maze, when it comes to that kind of stuff. We just don't get it.
[Evy:] Right, of course, yeah. So, the things that we use, like social media, added, but the background story is the same, right?
[David:] Right.
[Evy:] It's just expression that keeps changing.
[David:] Yeah, and, you know, now we've got big data, which just reinforces every piece of prejudice everyone has ever had on the planet.
[laughing]
[David:] It can certainly be used to do that. If you look through the Cambridge Analytica Scandals, what they essentially did was profile people based on their online behaviour and play on their prejudices to deliver a desired result. And that shouldn't be possible. These are adult human beings we're talking about. How the hell are they so gullible, are they so manipulable, are they so unaware of their own motivations and the motivations of others around them, that they can fall for that nonsense? But we are.
[Webster:] Hm.
[Evy:] Here's the question!
[laughing]
[Webster:] It's strange, the human animal. We store... you know, we have all this information available, like, anybody who's anybody can read up on this and understand who they are, and how they're being manipulated, and yet we're still on the exact... I still fall for the same tricks. You know? Ad pops up, and I'm... uuuh!
[laughing]
[Webster:] "I will partake in this one!" But yeah, I definitely think there's a need for more freedom of choice when it comes to educating ourselves.
[Evy:] And, yet, you know, I always say, like, if the cage is bigger, does it mean it's not there?
[Webster:] Yeah, that's true. It's a good way of looking at it.
[laughing]
[David:] Yeah, and I think what's missing is the ability to see the cage. Cause you're right, just because it's a bigger cage, it doesn't mean it's not there. But do you know it's there? And for me, that's the crucial thing.
[Evy:] Yeah, of course. And to me, like, I really... coming from the ex-Soviet Union and being in that very, very small cage... and I came here, and people are like, "This is freedom!" I'm like, "It's not freedom..."
[David:] It's like the police state, they know where you live, they know what you did.
[Evy:] You have more options, but you don't have more freedom. So... this is very apocalyptic.
[laughing]
[David:] Yeah, sorry, sorry, I took that dark... like super quick. Oddly enough, I'm not a depressed or a negative person. Um...
[Evy:] Disclaimer?
[David:] Well, you know... because I think it's just... I still believe we have the capacity to act and that − I suppose that kind of makes me an old-school existentialist − that you will then create meaning out of what you choose to do. Yeah, ok, maybe that choice is illusory, maybe that's how small my box is, but, within that, I generate something, it means something to me within that cage.
[Evy:] But, it's also, like, it's not a bad thing to be depressive. It's just a thing that you are in the space, and it doesn't mean that you're completely handicapped by it, right? Like, if you can still write, and if you can still create something out of that...
[David:] There's a very interesting book on the depression called The Care of the Soul. And I can never remember who wrote it. But it's a dude who basically used to be a Jesuit priest and he's a psychologist. And he argues that, not only is depression − like you said − not bad necessarily, but it's in fact necessary. And he likened it to animals going into their caves to hibernate. I mean ok, look, we've got to make a distinct distinction − ha-ha − between feeling a little bit down...
[Evy:] Uh-huh.
[Webster:] Yeah.
[David:] ...and being annihilated by clinical chemical-based depression.
[Evy:] Yeah, yeah.
[David:] Those two things are generally quite different. Thomas Moore, thank you very much. The point that Thomas Moore makes in that book is that when you suffer from depression in any kind of... I hesitate to call it... normal kind of a way... but sort of like you have bad days bad weeks, whatever, you always come out of that cycle with something. A new motivation, a new idea, a new approach, a new reflection. You go deep. You go dark. And you come out with something. And I, again... this demonization and medicalization of depression, I think, essentially prevents people from accepting depression as basically part of life, but more than that, a necessary part of the developmental process which gives you the space to fetch something from within.
[Evy:] Yeah, for sure, and I think it's not just depression, you have all kinds of mental issues that are being stigmatized.
[David:] Well, we just used to call them shamons , really, didn't we? And now...
[Evy:] Yeah.
[laughing]
[David:] So, um. I don't know.
[Webster:] I was going to follow up on that with the idea of, you know, all these self‑help books and the idea that, you know, you're supposed to live a happy life, your best life, you're supposed to be fit and happy, and have good relationships...
[Evy:] Instragrammable!
[Webster:] And your life has to be instagrammable, thank you.
[laughing]
[David:] And I think that's teaching people the wrong thing. I remember when I was growing up and social media started to become a thing. Very quickly it was, "Oh my god, this is amazing, I can see what all my friends from around the world are doing!", and such. And then it turned on me and I was like, "Ok, I'm seeing way too much of what my friends are doing, and I feel like as if I'm not doing enough". You know? It can turn on you in that way. I thought, like, "Oh, great, well he's just got amazing presents for his birthday, I got a stupid Xbox, Jesus Christ..."
[laughing]
[Webster:] And I think we need to look at how, you know, not just the digital age, but social media and how we interpret the world on a grander scale... Like kids growing up today will grow up with an iPad and all the information available, and seeing what their friends are doing, and what's that doing to their minds. I think my generation, our generation, is growing up with the wave, so you saw we didn't have it and now we're growing with it, and, like, kids growing up today are just like, that's it. You know. This is the world, and this is how you interpret it. What do you...? How do you navigate that? How do you navigate that as a parent?
[David:] Well, as a starting point I'm quite wary of what you just explained. Because every generation thinks that. It just happens to be the internet and social media this time around, but before that it was, I don't know, intercontinental airplanes, the radio, television, you name it. Every time a technology that impacts the way our society works arrives, the generation who was adults or nearly adults before it arrived is deeply suspicious and highly critical of what the next generation chooses to do with it. And yet we're all still here. So, that, for me, is the first caution, it's like, you can't make those kinds of assumptions about stuff. It's dangerous. Because, again, we are collectively making the mistake that we are normal, that to the left is that extreme, to the right is that extreme. "Most people share my point of view." They don't. And you don't know that.
[Webster:] Right.
[David:] So, it's risky to behave like that. And I mentioned earlier this radical unschooler friend of mine. She pointed something out to me. When I was a kid, what my mum used to say to me was, "Put that book down and go and play outside." Repeatedly. Those words I heard repeatedly. What do I do for a living? I write. I work with words, I'm a book person, it is my entire functioning adult's life. We don't know what jobs, what occupations, what vocations will be available 50 years from now. It is entirely possible that these kids are training themselves through this use for a reality that we just can't conceive of. Because we don't have the dots. We don't have the wherewithal to see it. So, I'm a bit wary about that response. Having said that, it is, also, quite clearly proven and obvious that continuously being locked into your phone, especially on social media, puts you into an echo chamber where you learn very little new. That's dangerous. Um... because, again, all your beliefs are just being affirmed by people just like you, who think just like you, there is no chance for development. That needs to be monitored very carefully. In one's own behaviour.
[Webster:] In the same way we monitor, say, cigarettes and alcohol? You have to be a certain age, in certain countries. Do you think there would ever be a time when kids should not be exposed to certain technologies? Depends on how powerful they are and how...
[David:] Again, the research shows that the more controlling you try to react to these kinds of things, the more it just comes out under the edges and through the cracks, so no, I don't believe that.
[Webster:] Oh, jeez.
[laughing]
[Webster:] We're screwed, man.
[David:] No, we're not, because the opposite result is to educate people and trust them.
[Webster:] Uh-huh.
[David:] And say: "You're a switched on, intelligent, average human being, who's actually aware of what's going on, yeah? Choose. Deal with the consequences." Instead of trying to say: "No, no, no, no, I know better than you." I don't know what world you're going into, but I know better. And that's what we're saying.
[Webster:] Yeah. I guess you have to trust them to make those mistakes in the same way that we made mistakes, you know, in our childhood.
[Evy:] You sound so old.
[David:] Yeah, but what do you learn every time you do something right?
[Webster:] That it works? It's good, I like it?
[David:] Which you know already, right?
[Webster:] Yeah...
[David:] What do you learn when you make a mistake?
[Webster:] Don't do that again.
[David:] You learn something, like, that didn't work, I need to try something else.
[Webster:] Yeah.
[David:] So, it's actually a hugely valuable experience.
[Evy:] That's how wine was made.
[laughing]
[David:] And many other delicious wonderful things. What I want to know is who's the first guy who licked the back of a toad? Yeah. And how did that happen.
[laughing]
[David:] I mean that's clearly a mistake, right?
[laughing]
[Webster:] People be crazy out here.
[Evy:] So, now we approach the time of the podcast where we would love to hear a poem.
[David:] It's going to be interesting choosing one after that conversation, right?
[laughing]

The eye of the needle
Who is this "I" that we talk of?
Sometimes I'm not too sure.
The me from birth, a toddler, teen-ager, young man or old?
In so many obvious ways these are not the same person.
Yet I still call them all "I".
Should I still know you, then?
When it's been so long since we last met.
Are you more reliable than me?
Did I grow more than you? Or less?
Should I expect myself to hold to some core of being
that I cannot even identify?
And the same of you.
I recognize your habits.
The way you say certain words, hold your lips.
But someone could copy these, and not be you.
You could lose these, and still be you.
Tell me the name of your first pet.
Your mother's maiden name.
And the high school you attended.
I need your password to be certain.
The first pet name I give belonged to my sister, not me.
I sign into buildings as David Bowie.
I try change my habits and grow.
This is not the "I" that started this poem,
nor is it the "I" that is reading this,
cell by cell, habit by habit, one realization after another.
The world is new, in every single second. And us with it.
But it's easier to just say "Hi, I remember you. Do you still drink beer?"

[clapping, laughing]
[Evy:] Thank you so much for sharing that. Is that in your book or is it something that...
[David:] No, so, that's part of my current project that I'm busy with, I've discovered the crowdfunding subscription platform called Patreon. So I have a page on Patreon and I'm posting poems and the story behind the poem, and an analysis of my work and performance videos and everything on there. And it's kind of neat, Patreon, because instead of it being a crowdfunding platform where you, I don't know, put in whatever you are going to put in and you get a book or an album at the end of the day, this is like Netflix. You pay anything from 1 to 5 dollars a month and then you get access to all the content that I produce. So, very low paying point for you, you know, over a year − you're spending less money in a year than you probably do on drinks in one weekend − and because a lot of people are doing that, it provides me with some income from my poetry, to be able to do things like buy video editing software, go on interesting trips, you know, just dedicate hours in a day to be able to generate interesting content around the poetry I'm writing. It's really cool.
[Evy:] Right, and how long have you been on there?
[David:] I have been on Patreon since July last year. So, it's a new thing, I'm still trying to get my head around growing it. But it's awesome, because as a creator it keeps you seriously honest. And you've got to keep posting. We've been talking earlier about the pressure of social media, I've got to put something out there. I've got to. I can't just take your money and not put something out there every week, yeah? So, it's good. It really... And that repetition, that constantly revisiting, I mean, a lot of people hate that idea, they think, "Oh, I'm not going to be able to produce..." Yeah, you will. And yes, I'm a little bit bad. I mean, I've put poems up that basically aren't good. But... I say that. I say that... "I'm in a bad week, man."
[laughing]
[David:] And then you get comments, and people say, "Oh, but that line's nice" or "This is good." And, yeah, something comes of it. It's kind of turning the art process into a two-way street.
[Evy:] It's a discussion and you deepen it...
[David:] Right. Yeah.
[Webster:] Because, historically speaking, artists have always gotten money from patrons, whether it's a king or...
[David:] Here we go...
[Webster:] ...you know, some rich lord or whoever is going to pay them a certain amount to paint something, and that's how you get your money. But, I like how this has modernized everything and given the individuals power to say, "Hey, I like your artwork and I want to see more", so I'm going to give you a tiny bit per month and that's great for you, the artist, because there's less pressure on the individual to give you money and it's great for them, because they get to see work develop and grow.
[David:] Yeah. The sort of archangel of Patreon, who I follow, is Amanda Palmer, the musician, she's married to Neil Gaiman...
[Evy:] Yeah, she's amazing!
[David:] Man, what she does on Patreon is mindboggling. It just wouldn't be possible without something like Patreon. Just, the level of sharing, the level of input, the level of output. It's... truly flabbergasting.
[Evy:] But, that's how she started, right? Like, through crowdfunding and through opening up to crowds, per se.
[David:] Yes, well, that's how she became Amanda Palmer. Before that she had the Dresden Dolls, and she was doing a whole other thing, the label dropped her, she crowdfunded an album... million dollars, first person ever to do that, and then she moved on to the whole Patreon model. If you don't know about Amanda Palmer, seriously, go and look into it, it's... for anyone producing artistic work, who struggles with the current status quo and the gatekeepers and the finances required, it's a very interesting solution.
[Evy:] And she has a very cool TED talk, also.
[David:] Yeah, the art of giving [tr. n.: asking]. Brilliant. But I must say, like, I've been on there for seven months, it's heavy going, I'm not earning a salary off it, very far from it. We'll get there.
[Evy:] But you probably are exposed to people who would not find you otherwise.
[David:] Correct.
[Evy:] Which is also a very beautiful chance.
[David:] But like any other social media platform, there's a lot of clutter for me to cut through, so...
[laughing]
[Evy:] Sure.
[David:] If you're listening to this podcast, give me your dollar!
[Evy:] But you also shared with us your book, your published book, which is "For you or someone like you". Could you tell us a story of how it started?
[Webster:] I was going to say, for people who... you guys can't see this book, but it's a bright fluorescent orange book. It's very eye-catching and it's beautiful.
[David:] Thank you.
[Webster:] Yeah.
[David:] Well this book also has a social media history. I was on Facebook a good few years back and a friend of mine who is a respected published poet put a new poem up on Facebook. And I was like, "Oh, that's brave. I don't know if I'd do that." And then what interested me even more was the comments that came back. Like, people were reacting to that poem in a way I wouldn't have. They were literally seeing things in the words that I didn't think were there, that I hadn't understood. I was like, wow. I mean, of course, my first reaction was, "What idiots, they're wrong!"
[laughing]
[David:] But, later, I was like, "Hang on a second, there's something interesting going on here." So, I put one of my poems up and another one, and another one and the same thing was happening. And that's when I really began to realize that I had no control over my message. Like, what I was intending and putting out there bore no relationship to what came back. So, I published a poem a day for 18 months on Facebook. And based on the comments, the reactions, the likes, I then culled that down to about a hundred, and then I went through a literary editing process with two friends of mine who are specialists in poetry editing. And we put together a bundle of 90 poems that became the book "For you or someone like you". Which I then self‑published. And sent the manuscript off to a bunch of my musician friends before I actually went to print. They turned nine of the poems into songs, and I turned one into a song, as well, which I then bundled up and sold as a thing to people, here's the book and then here's some, like. crazy rock 'n' roll versions of the songs with it. That was a lot of fun. So, I've gone from traditional publishing with my short stories, through an actual publisher, to self-publishing and putting music together with my poetry book in 2012 to subscription publishing on the internet with Patreon, since 2018. It's an interesting journey.
[Evy:] Yeah. But do you still keep tabs on your friends from the music business?
[David:] Um... the people who I am friends with, I am still in touch with. But in terms of keeping up to date with what's happening in the music business, no, not really.
[Evy:] So your rock 'n' roll life is behind you.
[Webster:] He's living a rock 'n' roll creative life, though.
[David:] Yeah!
[Evy:] For sure!
[David:] Most of my rock 'n' roll life, as it were, was spent supporting the creative dreams and ambitions of other people. I'm now living my own. So, maybe not over. Just different.
[Evy:] Yeah, for sure, it's evolving and... transcending.
[David:] [makes zipping sound]
[laughing]
[Webster:] Zam! Do you have any pockets of advice for people who are feeling in a rut, uncreative, as if they don't know where to go next?
[David:] I think, apart from what we've said earlier, if you are an art producing creative person, the important thing is just to not stop doing. Because, yeah, maybe what you're writing right now is drivel. Maybe you are stuck in a rut, maybe it's not great. But it's better to have that bad stuff outside of your head than still waiting to be produced inside your head. Work your way through it. All good art is supported by razor-sharp technique. And you don't get any better, if you only think about doing all your life. So, even when you're going through a rut, when your content maybe isn't so good, you are still sharpening your skillset for producing work by continuing to do. Whether it's painting, writing, singing, acting, whatever it happens to be, keep on doing. Nobody said ever that everything you did had to be a masterpiece. It's... we just don't know how much junk Michelangelo made.
[laughing]
[David:] Doesn't need to say that he didn't. And that's you too, you're no different. I mean, to think that you're never going to produce junk makes you, basically, think that you're better than Leonardo da Vinci and T.S. Eliot.
[Webster:] Yeah. And it stops you from producing, because then you think, "Oh no, whatever I put out next needs to be perfect."
[David:] And it's a weird form of egotism, actually.
[Webster:] Yeah, like "I'm so good, I can't put out this rubbish!"
[David:] Of course you're going to write shit. Just suck it up. Write it. Get it out of the way, go on to the next piece.
[Webster:] Yeah, and you learn a lot that way.
[Evy:] And that's the whole concept of sketching, right? In art.
[David:] Yeah. So, there's a whole lot of these challenges going around. So, I did the poem a day for a year and a half on Facebook. There was that Inktober challenge, a sketch for a day. I met a guy at a creative networking thing during the week, where he literally did a sketch a day for a year!
[Webster:] Cool!
[David:] There's a brilliant study on a dude who had never done any art in his life who, over a three-year period, just made sure he did something every day and how he's selling his work for 20.000 dollars.
[Webster:] Wooow!
[David:] You know, I'm not saying that pure mechanical repetition is the key to artistic excellence. But I do know that without mechanistic repetition you won't get there, either.
[Evy:] Yeah, like the idea that in Greek times any artistic expression was mechanical, so, they believed that anything artistic, you can learn − may be drawing, music − and it's only poetry that was supposed to be muse-influenced... So, I really like that idea, yeah? Because, it's something like... you can learn anything, because it's muscle memory, and you can't be perfect, you might not be very inspired perfect, but you will be technically perfect.
[David:] And when inspiration hits... your tools are sharp! And then you... phew! Then you make something amazing. But if you just wait around...
[Evy:] Here is the free advice for everybody!
[Webster:] It's not free. Sign up to Patreon!
[laughing]
[David:] Gimme your money!
[Webster:] So, David, where can people find you?
[David:] My virtual home is davidchislett.com. There you can find news of my training and also download my poetry book and all my other books, as well. They're all available as free e-book downloads. If you're specifically interested in my new poetry, it's patreon.com/davidchislett.
[Webster:] Well thank you very much, David, for speaking with us today!
[Evy:] Thank you so much, thank you for coming, thank you for your time, thank you for sharing your poetry and your book and your album!
[David:] Yeah, thank you, it's been a pleasure! Great conversation. I look forward to the next one.
[Evy:] Uuuh! [laughing]
[Webster:] That's it for this week, everybody. As usual, you can find us on www.worduppodcast.com. There you'll find our social media, you can find links to past podcasts and generally engage with us in that way. Thank you.
[Evy:] Thank you so much and see you next time! Doei!
[laughing]

Transcript by Miruna