The Process of Syncretism
In his book, The History of Jazz, Ted Gioia writes about the process of “syncretism”—“the blending together of cultural elements that previously existed separately.” “This dynamic, so essential to the history of jazz,” Gioia writes, “remains powerful even in the present day.” This dynamic, I think, is at the center of most, if not all, creative output. Most, if not all, creative output is a blending together of elements that previously existed separately. That’s this week’s theme…
That’s Straight Up Gap Band
Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl blew Pharrell’s mind by revealing his drumming influences. “If you listen to Nevermind, the Nirvana record,” Grohl says, “I pulled so much stuff from the Gap Band and Cameo and Tony Thompson. All that [slaps his thighs and plays the beat of Smells Like Teen Spirit]—that’s old disco. That’s all it is.” Wow, Pharrell says as he leans back in his chair, that’s straight up Gap Band—how did I not hear that? “Nobody makes the connection,” Grohl says. “I told Tony Thompson that. He came to my house for a barbecue with somebody, and I was like, ‘man, I just want to thank you because I owe you so much, I’ve been ripping you off my whole life.’ He goes, ‘I know.’”
What If Willy Wonka Was A Video Game Designer?
Asked about how he came up with the idea for the book-turned-movie Ready Player One, Ernest Cline said, “Initially, I came up with, ‘What if Willy Wonka was a video game designer, and what if he held his golden ticket contest inside his greatest video game creation?’ That was the initial kernel of the idea.” To then figure out the riddles, puzzles, and clues that his eccentric video game designer would come up with to find his successor, “I thought about computer and video game designers that I knew and they’re all geeky guys and love all the stuff that I love: Monty Python, Dungeons & Dragons—the more successful the video game developer, often the bigger the geek.” Cline came to describe “the eccentric billionaire in my story [as] one-third Willy Wonka, one-third Howard Hughes, and one-third Richard Garriott, who invented all of the Ultima games.” He said, “All the science fiction movies and video games that I grew up playing, I wove those into the story.”
The Architect Who Saved Nike
In 1985, Nike’s shoe department was struggling. So it held a 24-hour shoe design competition. Designers across all departments had to participate. This included a corporate architect named Tinker Hatfield. Years earlier, in architecture school, Tinker learned about a controversial building in Paris, The Georges Pompidou Center. The Pompidou center is an inside-out building: the structural & mechanical systems are exposed. “That building,” Tinker said, “was describing what it was to the people of Paris.” So Tinker thought, “why not do that with a shoe? Why not cut a hole in the side and show what’s in the shoe?” That question led Tinker to design a shoe The Air Max 1. The Air Max 1 was a massive success and steered Nike’s design direction from then on. “To this day,” Tinker says, “Phil Knight says I saved Nike.” And to this day, Tinker says, if he hadn’t studied architecture, he couldn’t have become a sneaker designer. “As I often say,” Tinker said, “When you sit down to create something, what you create is a culmination of everything you’ve seen and done previous to that point.”
If You Collect More Dots, You Can Make A Better Matrix
Nolan Bushnell loves to go to trade shows. “A trade show is like an encapsulation of an industry,” he said, “there’s always something to learn.” In the early ‘70s, for instance, Bushnell went to a “manufacturing mechanisms” trade show. There, he noticed that almost everyone was using these tiny cylinder actuators called pneumatics. Essentially, these things convert energy into mechanical motion. He asked one of the engineers, how many actuations do you get with one of those things before you have to replace it? “Ah, they never break,” the engineer said. “I never replace them.” A few years later, in 1977, Bushnell opened the first Chuck. E. Cheese. There and at every location that opened after, there was a stage where an animatronic band performed nonstop. The animatronic band “used the pneumatics because they just work and work and work and work.” Bushnell has started more than 20 companies, he’s been included in “50 Innovators Who Have Changed The World” lists, he’s been called “the founding father of the video game industry” for creating Atari—he says his “innovations” are always just a blending together of elements that previously existed separately. He says, “People talk about ‘connecting the dots.’ Well, if you collect a whole bunch of dots, you can make a better matrix.”
Graze In The Field of Culture
In his essay The Ecstasy of Influence, Jonathan Lethem writes, “Art is sourced. Apprentices graze in the field of culture…For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.”