You are a wedding designer. When a bride and a groom contact you, you instantly know everything they have posted in their social media feeds for the last decade — where they vacation, what their pets are, where they like to eat, who their friends are, their politics, their family. You also know what every wedding designer has ever done and posted about for the last decade. So when the couple talks to you about their wedding you match the two universes (theirs and the history of all wedding design), sort by production budget and, voila, you have the perfect wedding design for the couple. Sound far fetched? Wait six months. This is what Michael Beneville and I were talking about on my podcast a few weeks back. The promise of artificial intelligence is to mine known data sets in profound, previously unimaginable ways. If it can be known about anyone given a history of preference, it can be mined and matched. I will not go as far to say that if you are a creative business that mainly mines history, you are lost, but I will say you are about to be marginalized by technology in a very big way very soon.
Reading the above might make you nervous, sad, skeptical. Or it might make you hopeful. Hopeful? You see, what the machine can never do is to be, well, human. The machine cannot interpret preference and desires that are not rational, yet wholly right. In a word, the machine cannot be truly creative as to discover other when there is no path to get to other. You can and you do and it is why you and your creative business are paid what you are. So my premise is this: if you want to thrive tomorrow, you have to believe in Wonderland today and be the Hatter. Madness is up to you.
If logic can not solve or define an outcome, then it is irrational. Meaning if two paths yield the same result and are simply a function of preference as to which you choose then the choice is idiosyncratic. When you try to apply logic to the choice you always fall down as the other choice is equally (un)supportable. How then to get someone to jump into your rabbit hole? And what will you do when they are there? Will it be an exercise in climbing back out as fast as possible, create the illusion that you are not in Wonderland, or revel in the idea of Wonderland and try to stay there as long as you can?
The future is Wonderland and if you cannot learn to revel there and know that it is your world, the world your clients most want to journey through with you, you will forsake the magic of trust. Trust lives in fulfilled promises but it thrives in resolution of the unexpected. The beauty of artistry is the power of art. Your world.
When you are convicted as to the path your artistry must take, you can construct the container for creation and find all that you need there. The real world awaits and it lives within the context of the container and when you leave Wonderland you will never go back. However, you will take with you the memory, the connection, the trust so that the real world can forgive your inevitable frailty. It really is never the falling down, it is only the getting back up. Having the permission to get back up will be what you have earned from Wonderland if you have taught your client to savor their time there with you.
To be specific, everyone — clients, employees, production partners — all need to understand your process to get to “it”. They need not have to agree with you or ever be you, they need only respect that it is what you need to manifest your best idea(s) and allow you to do you. Yes, you need to define the container for improv so that you can then create within the container. Wonderland. Your world where every emotional sinew lives. The ties that bind. The story is given meaning and transcendence beyond the direction and through the looking glass.
Once out of the rabbit hole, there can be no more hole. You see, the real world, where logic applies is your client’s world. They are better at living in that world than you are since they mostly spend all of their time there. There is no room for Wonderland because logic applies and you must defend the logic. The milk, eggs, flour and sugar only cost so much and you will be paid only so much to actually bake the cake. Inventing the cake in the first place (Wonderland) is worth what you say it is.
Wonderland is why I love creative business so very much. It is the heart of human relationship. To listen and be heard, to be seen in a light you yourself cannot yet understand about yourself, client and artist alike. From there the truly unexpected is revealed and we are all better for the uniquely and singular human experience. Logic has no place in Wonderland as the freedom of what will be will be. A delicious cake it is if you only choose to eat it. There will be time enough to bake it later.
