Art, energy and originality

This morning, I was looking for a quote by Stuart Wilde, in his slightly-renegade book, “The Trick to Money is Having Some.”

Here’s a section that I particularly like, about making money:

(He calls the mundane/average world, “tick-tock,” since people live by the clock in that world, and it can be metronome dull.)

In tick-tock people see the marketplace with all its structures and price formats and they feel constrained by that. They see the elements of competition and they feel their financial future is uncertain, which in many cases it is. But that is because, though tick-tock has products and services, for the most it has little energy.Every hamburger joint is exactly like all the rest, as are all gas stations, laundromats, airlines or whatever.In a market where things are imbued with no real energy, all they can sell you is the hardcore product which is often dissatisfying for you feel intuitively that it has no life. It is usually flat and boring and churned out by the millions.

Once you can infuse your life’s energy with enthusiasm, creativity, and originality, the things you offer the world take on a different tone. Now you are no longer competing with tick-tock and you can charge what you like.

(Later, he qualifies that by explaining that you don’t take unfair advantage of people, of course. You just don’t undervalue what you do, because it’s the energy that you can instill in it that’s valuable.)

As artists, I think that it’s important for us to remember that we’re not competing with J.C. Penney or even Bloomie’s… not unless you’re licensing your art, that is.

Find what brings energy and creativity bubbling up inside you. Do a lot more of that.

Infuse your art & your teaching with that energy. That is what makes you–and what you sell–unique. That’s what people want.

If all they want is to stay warm, they can buy a plain wool blanket at the Army surplus store. That’s practical, but it has no unique energy.

What people need in their lives is not the plain wool blanket. They want the lovely (or wild) quilt that makes them smile every time they look at their bed. That is the quilt that they’ll show to friends, and get compliments about. It’s also the quilt that they’ll draw up to their chins at night, and fall asleep smiling, because it makes them feel good.

Okay, we’re not all fabric artists. But… you get that point, right?

Keep that in mind: We infuse ENERGY in what we make as artists. That’s where the value is.