Healing by Stealing

N. A. Dawn
Sep 28, 2020
7 min read

Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist and other creativity-101 staples.

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”

(Amusingly, variations of this statement have been repeated so many times that we’re not sure who said it originally... Exemplary!)

Austin Kleon’s bestselling Steal Like an Artist (2012) extols the virtues of stretching wide your creative tentacles and absorbing all the goodies that nourish your artistic endeavours. Like eloping into the Himalayas away from the neoliberal hellscape to unleash your cosmic awakening, creativity is an act of profound and deliberate self-education. Making art means learning from your creative lineage, your environment and from that spooky inner compass that guides us from fascination to creation.

Now, let’s make like rioting peasants and grab us some loot!

Genius is Theft

Creativity is plunder. A process of infusing your life with the things for which you have passion and assembling them in authentic arrangements. In other words, communism!

So in the spirit of revolution, I’ve condensed Kleon’s advice into a single gush of wisdom as swift as a market crash:

1. To Steal or Not to Steal: Divide the world around you into things which are worth stealing and those which aren’t. Focus on the former; ignore the latter. (”Bernie Sanders? Steal. Jeff Bezos? Chuck.”)

2. Forget Pure Originality: Everything relies on the insights and labour of our predecessors.

(So perhaps private property is, you know, a load of bollocks? I mean, considering that all intellectual, moral, scientific and artistic progress has arisen through collective endeavour, not a single individual conjuring value all on their own- “THE HISTORY OF ALL HITHERTO EXISTING SOCIETIES IS THE HISTORY OF CLASS STRU-!” Quiet, Karl! I’m trying to blog!)

Ahem.

Suffice it to say: no one pulls their ideas out of thin air. Everything around us is the result of incremental innovations on those who came before us. Stealing is the default creative strategy; we might as well learn to wield it.

3. Mix and Match: We create novelty -l or the semblance of ‘originality’ - by taking existing ideas and experimenting with them in fresh combinations, or perceiving them from unusual perspectives.

For example: Cyberpunk = Crime Noir + Late-capitalist Techno-oligarchy. McDonald’s = Dreams of Accessible Food + Nightmares of Deforesting the Amazon.

See what I mean? Art!

4. Chuck the Extras: Hoarding will clutter your life like a social media advertising algorithm. Collect with intention, don’t simply gather indiscriminately. (Put down those pinstripe pants! You’ll never wear them!)

5. Build Your Own Dynasty: When you find an artwork that resonates with you, explore its influences: Which other artists had an impact on its style?

Keep this up and you’ll gradually build a family tree of inspirational mentors to whom you are their secret apprentice, I mean, uh, disciple? Student? Damn it, Mr President! Not only is your vocabulary the size of a fucking 5-year-old’s, but you’ve actually poisoned (among other things) certain words so gruesomely that I cannot use them anymore!

You’re like the human (I assume) incarnation of anti-literature: you actively destroy language. You’re like a black hole for sense! Or at least you would be if you weren’t the single whitest thing in the fucking univer-

6. Create by Learning. Educate yourself as much as possible. Immerse yourself in your field, explore the realm of your calling, and become an expert in what you love. Read all your favourite authors, listen to your favourite musicians - keep expanding and discovering, growing indefinitely like an empire of one, just colonising everyth-... Whoa, wait, what?

7. Store Your Steals. Keep a notebook at all times to record steal-worthy nuggets as you discover them - an idea, a setting, a character. Capture the organic creative process as it emerges, so you never miss a motivated moment.

Self-knowledge Through Art, Not Before It

1. Create Your Art: Create Yourself: Sometimes it feels like we first need to discover who we are before we can commit to an artistic project. How else will we know we’re making something authentic until we know who we truly are, right?

Unfortunately (or perhaps not), self-discovery is a lifelong journey. Moreover, it is only through creative endeavour that we uncover our authenticity. Every day of creativity is a day of learning about who we are.

2. Pretend Honestly: There’s a reason they tell you to “fake it til you make it”. We don’t become creative professionals until we create professionally; that is: with devotion, delight and daring, daily.

3. Copy Courageously: Our own style is but the synthesis of others. We combine techniques and perspectives from our mentors, contemporaries and forebears. It’s not just their specific styles that shape us, but their underlying thinking - the outlook and disposition behind their artistic presence.

4. Emulate, Don’t Imitate: Your goal is to create, not recreate. (You hear that, Apple!) Let others be a starting place, from which you innovate.

5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Good theft entails honouring those from whom you steal, rather than degrading them; studying them in depth rather than merely skimming; absorbing and combining the influences of many artists, not simply replicating one; crediting our inspirations, not plagiarising; transforming and reimagining, rather than imitating and ripping off.

Stretch Those Tentacles

Hey! Whaddaya know? It's Austin Kleon again! Seen here: being happy.

1. Love is the Way: Don’t let expertise or experience hold you back - follow your passion.

2. Artwork is Handwork. Try to use your hands wherever possible, since physical activity exercises more of ourselves than merely thinking, and helps to foster that deeper intimacy with the creative process.

3. Something on the Side: Incorporate side projects and hobbies that allow for total fun, rather than a mission to accomplish a preconceived objective; this liberates us to experiment and trust. (It’s also a nice reminder that your boss doesn’t own you.)

4. Creative Constellations: Combine your talents: your music, your illustration, dancing, writing and whatever else. Each is a realm in which we unlock our most visceral self-expression.

5. Sharing is Caring: Produce your finest art, and discuss it with peers. Beware not to give away your hard work, but feel free to exchange ideas about aspects of your work with others. Their feedback will reveal avenues you hadn’t considered. You’d be surprised at how willing people are to engage recriprocally with one another (given the years of propaganda about homo ecomonicus and associated Randian gobbledygook).

By teaching whatever you learn, you ensure that ideas circulate within a community more rapidly, increasing the rate of innovation and exploration. This ultimately enhances your creative arena, nourishing your imagination and technical prowess while bolstering others simultaneously.

Who knew that cooperation was so beneficial? It’s almost like the bourgeoisie have pumped our institutions with artificial cultures of sociopathic tendencies of competition to perpetuate their own domination of the many by the few. Almost.

6. Keep It Fresh: Novelty - new places, new music, new friends - begets creative energy. Let the rivers rush! (Or at least, trickle. With conviction. A little Marxist piddle, if you will.)

7. Habits and Habitat: Connect with people who get you and your work, both online and offline. Redecorate your living environment so that it enhances your inner peace and outer focus. Rainbow flags, maps of indigenous territories - that sort of thing.

The things you own, the spaces you inhabit, the people you know - let everything in your life energise your inner artist.

8. Other Fucking People: If you like someone, be nice. If you don’t like someone, be quiet. Channel your aspersions into productive art. Treating people like they don’t exist is more professionally conducive than making them your enemy by losing your shit where everyone can see you. That’ll only sicken your soul and trash your career. (Save the roasts for the 1%. Your tirades will be needed when they finally try to privatise breathable air.)

Be curious enough to explore, kind enough to lend a hand when you can, humble enough to ask questions of people with more expertise, experience and reputation than you, and stamina. Rome wasn’t built in a Tweet.

9. Spotlight and Starlight: Make good shit even if no one is watching to tell you it’s pretty. Insta-likes are not the currency of your value as an artist, just like net worth is usually higher around the least bearable people on the planet. Validate yourself by trusting the process, rather than parading your ego around and mortgaging your self-worth to the tastes of strangers.

That said, when you do receive sincere praise, record that. One day when you’re despairing, you’ll need that to keep momentum.

Master the Marathon, Don’t Sweat the Sprint

1. A Body of Work: Eat well, sleep properly, exercise daily. Having a Complete Works takes a lifetime, which you don’t get if you die young.

2. Creativity and Cash: Don’t let the market hold back your artistic flourishing. Having a day job means you can create with freedom, without having to fret about mounting debts and deepening poverty. Financial stress is not a source of inspiration, so try to keep a day job that leaves you the physical and mental space to create when you’re not on the clock.

(Whispers: * But if you’re down for a general strike, call me. * )

3. Utility Belt: Take walks. Keep track of your steals in playlists, on your bookshelf, in a file or folder or wherever. Use libraries, and Google. Keep ideas in a notebook, track your habits on a calendar to build confidence and focus, and monitor your progress in your projects in a logbook. That way you’re always on top of your creative process - where you’re at, what comes next, and what you’ve learned. But unlike Batman, you don’t have to be a broody oligarch about it.

4. Shed the Load: Possessions, habits, relationships and artists that don’t serve you anymore have no purpose in your life: drop ‘em. Pass them to those for whom they’ll do some good. Creativity means making something awesome. If it’s stuffed with random, extraneous excess, it’s not awesome. Minimise! Actualise! Democratise! (Wait, did I just write ‘democratise’? How’d that get in there?)

Stop, Thief!

Anything I missed? How do you go about hybridising inspirations and infusing them into your creative process? Feel free to let us know in the comments, or write to me at nicholasadawn.author@gmail.com.