The end of Creativity

...or at least the end of my informally formal education. Hopefully I’ll now have the chance to apply it to something. Preferably it would be something that pays, but if that’s not possible, at least something universally annoying and with difficult to remove stains. Like a 6-armed mutant baby with teething pains wielding permanent markers wailing about in a priceless tapestry store.

The beginning of the end came as an exposition of various students’ masterpieces, or lack thereof. And while the students stood by their oeuvres, smiles painted on and eyes wide in anticipation, the illuminati of the creative world wandered about pretending not to notice. Or so the students hoped. In actuality, they were not pretending and were just taking the long way to the outdoor patio in search of free booze. Since none was available when they got there, the next best thing was to just hang out and socialize with each other, with the added benefit of avoiding the students altogether.

What stood out about these creative creatures - these pillars of our society; these up-and-comers who will drastically change the world as we know it; these radicals living on the fringe of it all - was how unique they were. Those that had tattoos, all had the same unique Celtic bands on their arms. Even their footware! Such an array of flip-flops, unique in their similarity has na’er been seen!

Sorry about that. Some fall into the throws of passion…I fall into the throws of sarcasm! But in a world where the point is to be unique and creative, they were all doing it in the same way. And as for creative insights, any views they had were vague, ambiguous blurbs. I assume this was out of fear that what they thought might fall on the wrong side of some manufactured “hip” curve – that true measure of creativity - they were all trying to follow.

Now in dreary industries, such as IT, outsiders may mock the unimaginative collection of khakis and dress shirts on display during festivities. But this is the expected working attire of the industry, not the individuals. It was so disappointing to see these creatives - who work in an industry that is supposed to encourage personal expression at every corner – all striving to look the same.

The second part of the end came in a city abroad. I was lucky among my colleagues to be nominated for an award; the illusive “golden quill”. Those nominated for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd were invited to a shnazzy soiree. Beforehand, we had an opportunity to see who else was nominated in each division. In mine, only 2 were nominated. Was that because the rest of the submissions in the category didn’t cut it and to maintain their credibility they would only award a 1st and 2nd place, or because there were only 2 submissions? Either way, my chances suddenly got better!

They have a saying around our parts that when someone is not too smart "He's so slow, that in a race with one other person, he'll still come in third". And that's what I managed to pull off!
 
 Being creative people giving out creative awards for people doing creative stuff, you can only imagine that they rank the competition in a creative way! It seems they didn't award 1st, 2nd, 3rd in every division; sometimes they had several 2nd and no 1st, and sometimes no prizes at all. Have you ever seen a race where nobody finishes 1st, but the first guy actually finishes 2nd? No? Well obviously you’re not creative enough to run these awards!

There were industry types around the 2nd place winner – the top place in my category - the whole night...and they probably would have been there even if she wasn't drop-dead gorgeous and sitting next to her equally gorgeous sister.
 
As with the first step in the end of Creativity, there was no free booze (A new creative health kick?) so the party dispersed quite quickly. But some people did get pickled and "in vino veritas". So while there was great official hype about the great quality of the submissions, a drunken judge of one of the design categories told me that this year was so utterly shit she was convinced people were submitting crap as a joke to see how far they would get.

How can you not believe someone without tattoos and wearing sensible shoes?

As for the delay submitting this blog…even creativity needs a vacation.