Creative Dispatch 1: The Spark — Perfectionism, an Imaginary Assistant, and Doing the Obvious Thing bölümünün tam dökümü

WEBVTT 00:00:00.479 --> 00:00:04.000 I'm Alejandra Russi, and this is The Russi Hive. 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:08.640 Conversations with people who treat their work and life as a creative practice. 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:16.719 As we enter the late summer haze, I'm wrapping Season One with a trilogy of shorter solo episodes about the podcast itself. 00:00:16.719 --> 00:00:21.199 The spark, the launch, and the living creature finding its next form. 00:00:21.199 --> 00:00:22.879 First up: The Spark. 00:00:22.879 --> 00:00:32.159 The research labyrinth, perfectionism as avoidance, an imaginary assistant in the liberating trick of doing the obvious thing before a thesis exists. 00:00:32.159 --> 00:00:36.000 This podcast is presented by Ricco /Maresca. 00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:48.320 Have you ever had an idea for something you wanted to create and carried it around for years before moving one finger in the direction of making it happen? 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:50.000 I am one of those people. 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.240 I am a horrible perfectionist. 00:00:52.240 --> 00:00:55.200 I make endless notes and lists. 00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:58.560 Brainstorm is the middle name I was never given. 00:00:58.560 --> 00:01:03.520 Before I start anything, I will have mapped the hell out of it. 00:01:03.520 --> 00:01:26.079 And before that, I will have lost my mind in the labyrinth of my notes app, my "notes to self" emails, my voice memos, my camera roll albums, my digital diary, my word lists, the physical notebooks where I will rip out an entire page because I don't like the way my handwriting looks. 00:01:26.079 --> 00:01:39.359 I log ideas, plans, timelines, schedules in documents and pages on the computer, in the cloud, online workspaces. 00:01:39.359 --> 00:01:40.480 You get the idea. 00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:49.359 If this train of thought is giving you a special kind of anxious vertigo that you've never experienced before, I'm really sorry. 00:01:49.359 --> 00:01:55.200 We all have our own highly personal ways of not getting shit done. 00:01:55.200 --> 00:02:07.519 Mine is color-coded, well researched, and overly organized in a way that makes it remarkably and almost completely inaccessible to me. 00:02:07.519 --> 00:02:27.520 Sometimes when I think about the process of creating and launching The Russi Hive, I realize that the key was learning to ignore the part of my brain that believed I needed to have it all figured out , and continuing to ignore it by simply doing the next most obvious and urgent thing. 00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:32.639 But in order to do that, I had to invent an imaginary assistant. 00:02:32.639 --> 00:02:37.439 Or more precisely, a B version of myself. 00:02:37.439 --> 00:02:42.960 So let me tell you about Ale B, the version of me you never see. 00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:58.800 Because the person in front of the camera is always Ale A, the insufferable A-type who jumps in to claim all the glory when it's actually Ale B who has done all the thankless grunt work. 00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:14.000 Whenever Ale A experiences artistic paralysis, existential dread, or on a good day, productive procrastination, Ale B steps right in. 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:19.039 And when I say she steps in, I mean I actually summon her. 00:03:19.039 --> 00:03:28.639 I'm like: "Okay, Ale B, let's get to work: Research this person. Dump everything into thematic containers. 00:03:28.639 --> 00:03:33.680 By the end of the day, you need to have the interview arc." The phrasing isn't perfect? 00:03:33.680 --> 00:03:34.479 No problem. 00:03:34.479 --> 00:03:36.719 The questions still need polishing? 00:03:36.719 --> 00:03:37.680 No problem. 00:03:37.680 --> 00:03:43.919 You thought of 12 external connections and references that now need more research? 00:03:43.919 --> 00:03:45.199 No problem. 00:03:45.199 --> 00:04:00.879 Ale B will do all of that tomorrow, step by step, cool as a cucumber, because she doesn't care about creativity, originality, illumination, the full picture, or the credit. 00:04:00.879 --> 00:04:06.560 She lives to put a damn check mark beside the next thing on the to-do list. 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:09.039 That is her life's purpose. 00:04:09.039 --> 00:04:10.639 That is her fulfillment. 00:04:10.639 --> 00:04:22.000 But putting all my little gimmicks aside, I often wonder why it was this project that somehow made it through the inhospitable atmosphere of my mind alive. 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:31.199 Honestly, the complete answer probably contains more confessional layers that I am prepared to peel back right now. 00:04:31.199 --> 00:04:39.519 But the question makes me think of something Laetitia Barbier, my wonderful guest, said to me off camera. 00:04:39.519 --> 00:04:44.399 And that is that she saw in me a desire to be seen. 00:04:44.399 --> 00:04:48.319 In other words, I'm a little closeted diva. 00:04:48.319 --> 00:05:01.120 And yes, I could give you the more respectable answer, a variation on what I said in the spoken trailer that I published right before the podcast launched: that I am fascinated by the inner mechanics of creativity. 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:11.360 How ideas are born, how people bring private visions into the world, what happens to those visions every step of the way, and all of that is true. 00:05:11.360 --> 00:05:20.879 But maybe creating a show about how other people make their inner worlds visible was also a way of allowing it for myself. 00:05:20.879 --> 00:05:32.399 I will say though that visibility comes with responsibility, and you have to show people that you are the captain of the ship if you want them to go on a voyage with you. 00:05:32.399 --> 00:05:38.240 So at the very beginning, I announced departure dates before I could change my mind. 00:05:38.240 --> 00:05:53.920 Once I had enough of the technical side figured out, the cameras, the audio, the beginnings of a post-production workflow, I refused to stop to formulate some grand thesis for the podcast.