From Van Break-In to Creative Breakthrough

How a Van Break-In and a Speech to Creatives Defined My Week

Good morning guys,

It’s been a wild week: van broken into, smashed with jobs and a speech to creatives.

Sometimes, life tangles itself up, and our challenge is to navigate through the muddle.

I faced it yesterday.

The night before, faced with so much on, I found myself doing exactly what my father advised me never to do: writing a speech the night before giving it!

I was already tired before arriving at my office in Mahalla after work.

It was one of those situations where there was no choice but to act.

One of my disciplines of self - and my creative life - is to show up when I have committed to something.

It is often imperfect.

But suffering the act of imperfection is what improves us.

The audience I was to give the speech to was a room of creatives.

They were being flown in from all over Europe to play at Berlin’s celebrated “Babylon Eurpoa” event, which is one of my yearly photography gigs (in fact, I’m writing this newsletter while the batteries load before I dash out to shoot it!)

Now, here’s the thing:

Creatives will not be bullshitted.

I knew there would be a very high-level performer in the room. Though I believed full-heartedly that I would have something to offer them, the question was, could I get to it on time?

The problem was compounded by the fact that I had to wake up and go to work for a full day beforehand—a film and photography job for Music Express, one of Germany’s premiere music publications.

And so?

The pressure was on!

I faced three challenges:

1. Time

2. Tiredness

3. Resistance

I had to show up for myself.

So, I set the target of doing 4 hours of “Deep Work” between 8 p.m. and 12 p.m.

And dug in.

Halfway through, I realised that though it was a useful exercise to try to draft the essay in full, I had to adapt to the circumstances.

In the evenings, I am not at my most lucid, and I was making only stuttering headway.

I had two choices:

Either attach to the perfect approach I wished for and not get it done.

Or react to the circumstances and have faith I’d make faster progress.

Sometimes, you have to let go of how you would like the world to be in favour of how it is.

To do so, I had to abandon safety first.

And to back myself.

So, I abandoned the script.

Instead, I started learning something new: Keynote.

I knew I couldn’t wing the speech, and wanted to present a strong thesis.

That meant I had to commit to a structure which

a) Set a premise

b) Provided story and evidence

c) Tied together my findings in conclusions which would impact the artists.

And so I dug in.

Over the next 5 hours, I learned keynote and created 100 slides, drawing from

• my own life

• empirical data

• quotes, examples and stories from my creative mentors

Never in my life have I been more grateful for my daily habit of writing.

The challenge with any speech is that you are pulling the abstract into an understandable form.

"The artist is the one who brings back the vision from the place of dreams and shares it with the world."

Ben Okri

I was asked to give the speech because the head of Babylon Europa, Björn Döring, follows my work and knows I am obsessed with the creative process.

And while writing the speech, I realised:

All the work you do invisibly is an investment into what you do practically.

The hours spent attempting to decode the mystery enabled me to activate that knowledge when asked to deliver it in a communicable form.

I drove home, parked the van, and my head hit the pillow at 4 am.

At 7 am, I went to collect the van to load my gear for the film job.

But when I arrived, I found it broken into, trashed and robbed!

It was utterly dispiriting, and the worst start to what I knew would be an incredibly challenging day.

Even before arriving, I was exhausted and nervous.

I took a moment.

One of those moments you see Goliath across the ring from you and don’t feel up to the challenge.

Couldn’t you have at least given me a pebble to fling?

But then something useful happened.

I got angry.

No, these arseholes will not sabotage my day.

No, I will not call the police and cancel the job.

Yes, I will tidy it up and gaffer tape the window.

Yes, I will go into my day, and no matter how stripped at the core I feel, give the dam best I can.

And so I went to the job.

Later, I got UfaFabrik to give the speech.

And I opened it with the story I’ve just recounted.

Because this is life.

And this is the creative arts.

It will never be as we want it to be.

It will never offer the easier circumstances you pine for.

It will only ever deepen the challenge you face.

By doing so, you will have to find what is at your core.

And what the nature of your character is.

The paradox is that’s how you find your character.

The world is full of darkness and despair.

But you have a choice with what you do with the spirit of negation.

I gave a speech far better than I could have if the thieves hadn’t broken into the van.

Why?

Because there is nothing more energising than the process of converting negation into affirmation.

Split the atom, see what happens…

Your attitude defines your reality.

As Frankl wrote, that is “the last of the human freedoms”.

It was a hard day.

I did feel angry.
I was irritable.
I was nervous.
And I certainly wasn’t at my best.

But despite those vagaries I turned up to my life.

And I gave the best of myself.

When my head hit the pillow last night, I was exhausted beyond my own exhaustion.

But I awoke today energised and ready to go again.

Because that’s the thing -

If you keep showing up, the will to affirm, despite the darkness, starts shaping your life.

So whatever circumstances this reaches you today, remember that if there is still blood beating through your heart, you are still in this game.

Despite the dark, we affirm.

Despite the thieves, we give back.

Despite our exhaustion, we show up.

With love,

Jim