Imagination & Junk

Is it frivolous to do creative work when the world seems to be falling apart around you? Or can it be a palliative -- for both the creator and their audience? In the last episode of Season 1 we're looking at creativity in hard times, and peeling back the curtain on some decisions we're made about how to approach the hulking coronavirus-shaped elephant in the room. Also: Way too much talk about how to get an elephant out of a room. Season 2 comes your way in 2022.

A decade ago a group of Dutch researchers postulated that anger may under some conditions be an effective spur to creativity. We’re unpacking that eccentric idea this week, and comparing it with our own histories as creators. Do anger and other negative emotions unlock creativity? Also: How and when can arrogance be useful? Plus: Bad sitcoms, toxic bosses, Jetskis and a standup desk you definitely did not want to explore.

"Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable." -- Octavia Butler It's almost impossible to get creative work done without discipline, but not all of us are naturally disciplined creators. That's where habit and routine enter the scene -- they're ways we impose discipline on ourselves. And they're more important skills to develop then ever before in a world where the old structures propping up creative careers have fallen away. This week we're looking at ways habit and routine help keep us on track -- and at some ways in which they don't. Also: Mat recalls working a street pitch with Eddie Izzard, and Bill recalls a near-brush with greatness involving Bob Dylan and a fancy wedding venue. Plus: Hats!

Style is the beautiful face we put on what we do. It goes hand in hand with technique, but the way they inflect each other is a complicated dance -- technique without style can be dull, but style without technique is something worse; it shreds the all-important trust that has to exist between a creative person and her audience. In this episode we talk about what style is, that critical distinction between style and technique, and how style helps a creative person stake her claim on a place in the lineage of people who do what she does. Also: Mat goes all in on professional wrestling as metaphor, and Bill talks about writing the weirdest thing to ever appear in a national newsmagazine. Plus: Bananarama!

There's a misconception that creativity means coming up with ideas. But ideas are one thing, results are another, and the distance between them can only be traversed by work. How do creative people sort ideas, develop them and emerge on the other end? That's where process and technique enter the picture. Also: Mat makes the first of several references to professional wrestling, and Bill explains why if you're a comedy writer, the name "Nakamura" gives you night sweats. For more information, visit the web site.

There are a million possible ways to start a new creative project, but they can all be reduced to one: Just start. In the premiere episode of Imagination & Junk you’ll meet your hosts: Bill Barol, a longtime professional writer in just about every medium, and Mat Ricardo, a variety performer who’s toured the world for decades, playing every kind of venue from street corners to theaters and festivals. Locked down by COVID in their respective home countries (the US for Bill, the UK for Mat) they begin a transatlantic correspondence that attempts to get at some basic questions about the kind of work they do: What is creativity? Where does it come from? Why is it worth thinking about? And how much does it boil down to a magic trick?