Creating vs consuming
Lately, I’ve been spending more time consuming than creating – the increased time between these updates is testament to that. It’s left me restless and with a sense of unease.
Upon reflection, it’s clear that we all have an innate need to create, and that a healthy life requires both. Unfortunately, the world today is designed to fuel consumption and limit creation. It promotes hyper-efficiency and convenience, which in theory should create more time and energy to focus on creating, but instead makes consuming the easier choice.
When we’re young, we’re dependent on others and spend more time consuming. Then as we grow and learn, we create more, ideally producing more than we consume. Creation gives, consumption takes. Swinging too far to either end of the spectrum, isn’t healthy or sustainable.
Creating is difficult. It requires energy, focus, determination and a little inspiration too. It’s also scary, because whatever we create will face criticism, feedback and maybe outright rejection. There’s nothing inherently wrong with consumption. It’s essential to our very existence. But unless that consumption is utilised to create, we risk being dependent on everything around us for our inputs. For our ideas, our nutrition and our wellbeing.
What’s the antidote? While not a panacea, being intentional about what we consume and why can go a long way. Looking at this table below, healthy consumption is likely to lead to healthier creation, instead of detracting from it.
We previously discussed the growth of tools for creators. But these need to be made use of for the promise the creative renaissance to come to fruition. How do you create, and what impact has that had on the way you see life?
Full contact composer
“Full contact composer” – that’s how Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL describes himself. He first came to my attention with the bombastic score of Mad Max:Fury Road, and he seems to be on a multi-year streak of incredible movie scores.
In this video, he talks through his process of creating the Flash’s theme music from the revamped Snyder Cut of The Justice League. It’s quite incredible to see that despite not being classically trained, and starting out as a trance music producer, he’s evolved into being one of the most versatile and cutting edge composers out there.