The Right Questions with James Victore
The Right Questions is designed to help you get paid to do what you love and stay sane in the process.
The Right Questions with James Victore
Episode 35: Love and Creativity
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Love is the most powerful tool for creative people, yet we often fail to recognize it, understand it, or use it effectively in our work.
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All right, let's do this thing. Howdy, I'm James Victoria and you are here, so I must be in the right place. This is the Right Questions, and today I have a topic that I have been completely remiss on discussing with you, and I apologize, because it's my favorite topic. Actually, it was always my very first assignment every semester at the School of Visual Arts, because it's a funny one, it's a doozy, it's a big one, it's important to us, it's important to us, and yet we fail to recognize it, we fail to use it as a tool, we fail to recognize it, we fail to use it as a tool, we fail to understand it. And, of course, that topic is my favorite topic. It's love. And I know you're going to say, james, hey, james, what's love got to do with it? Rah, rah, rah. Well, I'll tell you, tina. The idea is that you are creative. I know y'all. I know you are because you're human. I believe all humans are creative. We're all born wildly creative and some of us just forget right, but you are creative. We're all born wildly creative and some of us just forget right, but you are creative and you love doing that, you love being that. That's such an essential part of you and as creative people, we fall in love. We do. We're very, you know I was.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid I was called a lot of shit, right, and some of it. You know, none of it. None of it really sounded good to me. I was called creative and I knew it wasn't a compliment and I was also called this and I've hated it most of my life. I get it now. I'm starting to get it. I was called sensitive. I was a sensitive child, right, and to me that just like reeks of weakness. It reeks of weak, thin skinned. But I was called sensitive and to me that means I'm a lover and I fall deeply in love and you do too, because you're creative and we fall in love with different things. We fall in love with movements, we fall in love with words, we fall in love with film. We fall in love with an idea. That's the thing. We fall in love with an idea and that's really important. It's really important for what we do. Or we fall in love with a scribble. That's all we want to do and that's all we should do then. Or we fall in love with a color then, or we fall in love with a color, even a color.
Speaker 1:I have a good pal who loves yellow. Yellow is just his thing and I see him every week. I see him following through right, and that is so hard to do. I have watched him his entire career. I've been watching this guy for 10 years at least and he's never given up on yellow. And the weird thing is the reward is not there for him yet, because it's slow. But it's also, I think, that love is the reward, that his love of yellow, his love of his work, his love of that idea is the reward we often think of.
Speaker 1:The other side of the equation of love is money. You know it's an either or thing. You can have one or the other. But that's not how it works. You know, I was always told that you could either do great, beautiful work or you could make a lot of money. But I don't think that's how it works, because the money comes because we love. Money follows love. Love doesn't follow money, right? Money does not love you, and that's where money gets kinky, right. It will leave you, but love will not. It will always show up.
Speaker 1:When I first moved to new york, when I was 19, I wanted to be a poster designer. I wanted to be the best poster designer on the planet. Right, this is a small town kid coming from a military base at upstate New York. Right? No precedents, no poster designers in my hometown, very few artists in my hometown, except for some ladies who did watercolors. But I was very lucky. My father traveled the world because he was in the military and he brought home well, you know what he brought home Posters, Spanish bullfighting posters, fake Toulouse-Lautrec posters. Right, I had posters in my room. There were posters in our house. That was the art form of my house and I fell in love with posters and that's what I wanted to make.
Speaker 1:And I moved to New York and I worked really hard so I could make posters and and it almost killed me financially because I was young and I wasn't smart and I wasn't doing it correctly, but I needed money. So I did the stupid thing. I did what everybody else does. I took a job. I took a job and as soon as I did that, you know what I did I told love that I didn't love it anymore. I left my purpose instead of riding it really fucking hard.
Speaker 1:You know, what happens is that in doing what we love, and following that trail becomes difficult, partially because we have so few real life examples. Right, how many of your neighbors are doing something beautiful, doing what they really, really love? So we begin to do a smaller version, a bad copy, of what we love, in order to get paid. I took a job as a commercial designer. I did good to great commercial work, but it wasn't. It wasn't what I loved. That work didn't get me around the world. That work didn't get me to meet some of the most important people in the world. That work didn't get me here where you, my dear friends, are listening to me. Love got me here.
Speaker 1:You know, many of us take a creative job right out of school because it's creative and we see the potential for love in that and there's hope in that. Yay, I'm working in the creative field or industry. I'm working at an agency. I've always wanted to work at something called an agency, but only to realize very quickly that there is actually no love in it. There may, may, may, perchanceance be money, but no love and all we have left is a J-O-B right. All we have left is actually the job. Part of a creative job Is doing what you love hard. Yeah, it's hard. It's maybe harder because we have to love, but without all the bullshit emotion.
Speaker 1:We have to see more clearly. We have to see the goal. We have to see the end result. We have to have vision. We have to have trust. We've talked about trust before. We have to have trust. We have to trust ourselves, we have to trust our work. We have to trust ourselves, we have to trust our work, we have to trust our audience.
Speaker 1:And if we don't, then you know we fall out of love. And there are a lot of reasons we fall out of love. I think the most creatives on the planet fall out of love for a number of reasons. Right, Financial stability. Right, financial stability. You know passion does not provide immediate financial stability. This can deter us from pursuing our love full time. There's societies. Nobody does this shit, you know we love watching them. We love seeing Rick Rubin, you know, sitting cross-legged with his crazy hair, pontificating beautifully about creativity.
Speaker 1:But we're like that's not for me, because we don't see other people doing it, we don't see ourselves doing it. Normal people don't do that and a stable career takes precedent over our unconventional passions. Or we have family expectations. You know family and friends might create peer pressure. You know, hey, you might want to choose a career, that's, you know it's going to take care of you and your family. You know, you got to think of it. You got to think of your family.
Speaker 1:I heard that. I heard that when I was fucking 16 or 15, I wasn't even working yet, it was all about taking care of a family that I didn't even have. What are you going to do about your children? Wait, wait, I have children. Shit, I haven't even had sex yet. How did that happen? Check out of the cabbage patch.
Speaker 1:Right now, you're thinking, oh man, I wish James Victoria could be my mentor, my guru. Hell, I wish he was my coach. Well, you can make that happen. Go to yourworkisagiftcom. There's a questionnaire that will probably help you out, but it'll also give you access to a free call. So let's talk. Let's free you from overwhelm and creative frustration, let's build your business and help you get paid to do what you love. Again, go to yourworkisagiftcom, let's talk.
Speaker 1:But our family wants to protect us, they want to take care of us and they want us to have secure and prestigious jobs, right? And then there's the personal side of it, right? The fear, the fear, the fear, the fear. Oh, my Lordness, the fear. How much fear is there in love? Right, why is there fear in love? Because we have to surrender to love, we have to give up, and that's crazy. That's like taking one of those backwards falls right. Don't worry, dude, I'm here, I'll catch you. I'll catch you seriously.
Speaker 1:You know the fear of not succeeding in a passion once. It didn't work one time. I'm not doing that again. I'm not going to fall backwards again. You know, the fear of not succeeding in your passion project can prevent you from taking the necessary risks.
Speaker 1:So there's the fear. There's the self-doubt. The self-doubt Again, those pre-recorded voices that tell you you're not worth it, or that it's not worth it, or that the ideas that you have fallen in love with aren't perfect. And then there's the struggle. The struggle, because there is struggle. It's going to be hard, yeah, but the struggle is all you've got. And the struggle is necessary. It's biologically necessary so you can train and retrain your body and your senses and your nervous system. That's what you're doing. You're retraining all of that stuff to be cool. So, yeah, the struggle is a big part of it.
Speaker 1:So I got to tell you there's nothing better than love, than learning to express your love in your work, because you get to see that reflected in your audience, right? Because they want to see themselves in your work, because they want to see themselves in your work. I am currently working with at least three of my coaching clients right now who don't even know that what I'm trying to do is to get them to put their love into their work. And I see it and it's fucking beautiful. And I see it and it's fucking beautiful. So when we work together in my coaching program, I'm a collaborator on your career for however long you need me. So we work together and I say, hey, here's something you might want to think about. Have you done this yet? Let's do that, let's try it. And it's such a pleasure to see them light up when we start to put play and fun and joy and love into their work.
Speaker 1:I'm working for a well, I don't work for anybody I'm working with. I'm working with a podiatrist. Seriously, he's in my coaching program. He's a great guy and I'm helping him put play and fun and joy and love into his work, because you know what His audience needs, that His audience is going to recognize. That His audience is going to say His audience is going to say hey, this is who I want to be around, this is who I want to sit next to the dinner table with, and that's the goal, because we want our audience to feel that. We want to feel it. We want to just. You know, I don't sit around with a shit eating grin every time I'm working, but I do get that kind of that kind of what do I call it? The, the Joker from Batman.
Speaker 1:Every once in a while I'll be working and I'm like, wait till they get a load of this, right, that's such a great feeling, can't wait to share. Hey guys, look what I got. And that's the goal to share your love freely. Listen here. It is Three things If you want money, you have to help others make money. If you want attention, you have to pay attention. And if you want love, you have to pay attention. And if you want love, you have to give love. You see, it's this back and forth constantly. Those are the rules, and I don't even believe in rules, right, but those are good ones, right, those are three good ones. Here's a funny thing. Ones here's a funny thing.
Speaker 1:When I wrote my bestselling book Feck Perfection, I only hinted at something. I only hinted at being weird. You know, that's where I wrote the line that says the things that made you weird as a kid make you great today. But I didn't hit that idea real hard in that book. So I've got to write another book about weirdness and I'm on it. It's in my head, it's just got to get shoved out through my fingers right now, shoved out through my love.
Speaker 1:But I've realized something, because it's not about being weird, because it's not about being weird. You know, it's not just about being weird. I've realized there's so much more to it. Because being weird and I mean really weird where you're just like you can be on stage and people are just like oh my God, I don't want this to end, right, you've experienced that. You've sat and watched other people or seen work, where you're just like I want to talk to this person. Right, I don't know what you do, but I want you here. That kind of weird. That's what we're talking about, because being weird is an act of self-love. I've only recently realized that and I have to share that. It's an act of self-love. Do you get that?
Speaker 1:Because being really weird is allowing your love of who you are and what you're capable of to show and it's also the source. It is the source of all of your confidence and all of your courage. You can't budge me because I love. Think about that. You can't phase me. You can't change me because I love.
Speaker 1:So here's the right question. Here's the only question, but here's the right question Do you love yourself so much that you can express it in your work and not be hemmed in or blocked by your job or your job description? Because your job description is not you or what society thinks or what you think others will say or do or feel or think about you or about your work, but can you show your love and then can you make your work a gift. Your work is a gift. I love you. I'm James Victoria. Thank you for being here. Thank you for this exchange of love, this exchange of energy. I appreciate it greatly. You help me do what I love and I want to be here for you. Do what I love and I want to be here for you. You guys, go out, make and do and dance and sing and sew or make knives or blacksmith or leather goods. Do what you love and I'll be here for you. Adios.