Boldly Go: Exploring Your Artistic Curiosity
Intro
As a sci-fi nerd, there are two things that are wired right into your DNA to send your nerd-senses tingling: The first orchestral blast of the Star Wars theme and the opening monologue from Star Trek. As a kid, my dad would pick me up from daycare and take me to work with him at the TV station. We arrived just in time to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation on the control room monitors. Patrick Stewart’s voice doing the monologue is probably one of the few things that can get my attention now matter how distracted I am (which is no small feat). I’m sure even the least nerdy people out there have heard it over a dozen times. In case you haven’t heard it before, here’s what I’m talking about:
Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her continuing mission; to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
*Cue Alexander Courage or Jerry Goldsmith fanfare*
As artists, we frequently hear another phrase that perks our ears up and not always in a good way:
“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”
This is an amazingly well-intentioned saying. It’s encouraging and offers a little bit of guidance to get people going in the right direction. However, it can drive many artists and non-artists alike to have unnecessary stress, unrealistic expectations, and generally unclear goals. This could be because many (myself included from time to time) take what is supposed to be a starting point and turn it into their driving force. What I’ve learned from many years of watching Star Trek and making music is that love is the ship, not the mission.
What IS the Mission?
Paul Graham recently wrote an essay entitled, “How to Think for Yourself”. It’s all about the aspects and characteristics of independent thinkers versus conventional thinkers. At the very end of the essay, he offers an alternative to doing what you love. He says,
“Perhaps, if your goal is to discover novel ideas, your motto should not be ‘do what you love’ so much as ‘do what you're curious about.’"
I’m a firm believer that the goal of every artist should be to make something new or novel. To take what the emotions and thoughts that are floating around out in the world and turn it around and put more meaning and beauty into the world. If that sounds daunting, that might be because it is. Something like that is a huge undertaking which is part of why so many artists struggle. Doing something for the love of it, is the perfect place to start. It helps you figure out where your first steps are and how to take them.
While love is the perfect motivation to start with, at a certain point it can start doing more harm than good. Even the things you love doing can feel like work after a while. You want to spend time with your significant other or your family (whom you also love) or go see that band who’s playing downtown. At some point, the album you’ve loved writing, starts to feel more and more like a chore that you can push off like your laundry. Let me tell you something, this is perfectly normal. The other normal part of this is the guilt when you haven’t touched your project in weeks which is followed by the doubt about whether or not you actually love doing it. This is all the start of a spiral that, if left unchecked, can lead to burnout. When love of the thing is your sole motivator, it just leads to chasing the feeling rather than chasing growth. This can show up as doing the same thing that gave you that first rush which isn’t good for you as an artist or for your audience. If you want to grow as an artist, you have to do more than just love making art. Love of space travel alone didn’t get Voyager home, curiosity did.
Voyager & Curiosity
In Star Trek: Voyager, the crew of the USS Voyager are stranded in the far reaches of the delta quadrant 70,000 lightyears from Earth. Captain Janeway (one of my favorite captains after Picard) is forced into the task of uniting a Starfleet crew with members of the Maquis terrorist group and get them all home safely. Rather than go straight ahead at warp speed towards Earth, Janeway makes the most of the situation and frequently goes off the path to explore the weird stuff that lies beyond the borders of the Federation (which is often a point of contention among crew members). So much of the show depicts the day being won through curiosity and taking risks. Why? As Janeway puts it, they're explorers.
The show’s finale, Endgame, hinges on taking a risk when a future Janeway comes back in time to advise Voyager to take a Borg transwarp conduit to get home decades earlier and save lives. Spoilers for a finale episode that aired almost 20 years ago: Throughout the episode, the debate rages on about whether they should trust future Janeway and take Voyager into the heart of the Borg (which are frequent adversaries of the Voyager crew). Eventually, Present Janeway gives the order and Voyager goes into the heart of Borg territory and arrives safely at home, years before Voyager originally returned. The finale caps off a great series about curiosity and exploration like Star Trek had never really gone into before.
Artists and creatives are also explorers. We explore thoughts and emotion, break down life experiences and turn them into photographs or music. It's not our mission to love making art, that's too broad. It's our mission to explore the things that inspire us or new techniques to help us express ourselves better. Being curious leads to deeper personal investment in our journey to create. Asking questions about why that nebula is the way that it is leads to questions about whether or not the gas can be used to power a warp drive leads to questions about how much it can reduce the trip by leads to questions about whether that number can be made bigger and so on. Being curious about how a thing works or what does that feeling sound like, leads to deeper exploration of ourselves, leads to more personal art.
All of this isn't to say that curiosity alone should be your motivator either. Curiosity has to come from somewhere. Love generates curiosity and curiosity can keep things moving when the love isn't there. Love of music can inspire a wanting to understand how it works. Love of photography can spark an interest in new lenses and experimenting with different lenses can inspire you to keep taking pictures on your off days. Curiosity is constantly evolving. It can freshen things up whenever it all feels a little dry.
Being curious about what you love can help you find new things to love. Like some musicians, my love of playing music in marching band led to a love of writing music. My love of writing music led to a love of recording music. That led me to a love of producing music which combines my love of writing and recording. So many artists follow similar paths. It helps you grow and evolve as you learn new things. This is why so much relationship advice revolves around the idea of constantly dating your significant other, even after you're married. You can't always count on the feeling of love to get you through your hard days. It's an emotion which can change based on any number of factors throughout a day. Curiosity is closer to a state of mind than a feeling. Adding curiosity into the mix takes the big broad feeling of love and narrows it down to something much more narrow and focused that has the potential to lead to strange new worlds to explore.
How to Generate Curiosity
So, how does curiosity come about? Fortunately, its a lot easier to find than dilithium crystals when you're 70,000 light years from the nearest Starbase. There's three simple things you can do to add a little more curiosity to your life and your art.
Ask questions
This is an easy one. Just ask questions about your inspirations or your techniques. "What if" is a great one especially. Finding new things to ask questions about will give you great fuel for your curiosity and you may just find bread crumbs to your next success.
Follow rabbit trails
Okay, this one is kind of 1a but here it is. Deep dives are amazing curiosity fuel. Following "how does this compressor work?" with "what happens if I chain two together with different settings" can give you amazing results that you can tinker with and learn from. Not all of your results will be great but given a little time and patience, you can build up your curiosity.
Avoid situations that suppress curiosity
With as easy as the first two were, this one probably stands a bit more of a challenge for most. Especially if you're like me and slews of other artists and creators who have a day job to cover expenses. Most conventional jobs aren't suited for curiosity or exploring it. There's a specific time to have specific things done in a specific way. There's not a lot of room to explore new ways to do things or to take a deep dive into how the expense report template works. It's nearly unavoidable. Finding ways to exercise your curiosity instead of having squished will work wonders.
Conclusion
In the essay I mentioned at the beginning of the post, Graham has this to say about most careers, not just creative ones.
It's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You can't publish papers saying things other people already know. You need to say things no one else has realized yet.”
Basically, he's saying that it's enough to make something. You have to do it in a new way or no one will take interest. Sure, you used the same photoshop template as that one YouTuber but if you don't have anything visually appealing in the first place, the right template doesn't matter.
As artists, our mission looks a lot like that of the Enterprise crew or Starfleet. Here's a helpful reminder for the next time you watch Star Trek (which the answer should ALWAYS be soon)
Explore strange new worlds: Don't be afraid to get a little weird. Get off the straight line home and see what's in that nebula (Janeway said there might be coffee there).
Seek out new life and new civilizations: Don't keep revisiting the same stuff. Find new things to tinker with, new people to collaborate with and produce something new. Sure the alien on this new world looks a bit like the alien from last week's new world, but you still sought it out.
Boldly go where no man one has gone before: Find your path and follow it confidently. You don't need to have the whole thing figured out. You don't need to have a plan in case you find a black hole along your course. Alter it as needed and explore what looks interesting. You just have to start down your path and be ready for whatever comes. You never know what new and exciting things will show up along the way.
What is it about your craft that makes you curious? What’s your favorite Star Trek episode or movie?
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As a creator, I love creating and helping others create art. If you're interested in talking about how I can help you on your next project, just shoot me an e-mail.