My 15-year-old daughter drew this on my office white board the other day, and it honestly blew me away. 

              No, really. Let me explain.

            Cats don't say "Moo." For most people, that's the end of that. Book closed. Let's move on. What's next on our "to do" list? But for someone who is constantly looking for ways to explain the creative process, this mooing cat is square one. Indulge me for a minute.

              If a cat said “Moo,” all sorts of possibilities would exist that simply couldn’t happen with a cat that simply said “Meow.”

            A cat that said “Moo” could sing in a “Moo-Wop” band.

            A cat that said “Moo” could be the punch line in a commercial for milk.

            A cat that said “Moo” could have a conversation with cows.

            A cat that said “Moo” could win any bet that started “I bet you $20 my cat can say ‘Moo.’”

            A cat that said “Moo” could be the main character in stories with storylines that a cat that simply said “Meow” simply couldn’t.

            And a cat that said “Moo” could do one more thing that a cat that said “Meow” couldn’t do in a thousand years.

            A cat that said “Moo” could lead to the discovery of the next wonder drug, the next architectural phenomenon, the next high-tech breakthrough, the next best picture of the year, the next start-up that every venture capitalist in the world wants to fund. A cat that said “Moo” could be the direct link to a solution to those pesky problems that keep cropping up in the Middle East.

            In fact, a cat that said “Moo” is the only thing that could lead to any of those things and a whole lot more.

            Because cats don’t say “Moo.” And because when you make a cat say something it would never say, you open the door to the only way any problem in the history of the world has ever been solved.

            Creativity.

            And that “mooing” cat isn’t just a metaphor, an allegory, an example of creativity. Isn't just an example that illustrates a point.

            That “mooing” cat is everything you need to know about being creative. Every. Thing.

            Because being creative is no more than putting two disparate things together.

            Want to solve the world’s problems? Want to solve one little problem? Want to do something, anything, better or cooler or funnier or bigger or with more impact, more style, or more substance than anyone else has ever done it before?

            Start by asking yourself “What if we connected this ‘thing’ with some ‘thing’ else that makes no sense at all?”

            Something totally ridiculous. Like cats that go "moo." Things that make no sense at all.

            To solve something serious, you need to be willing to look stupid. To bring any new solution to any table, you have to play around with the facts. Mix and match. Laugh and launch the most absurd things that come to mind.

            And here’s what will happen.

            Most of what you do will make no sense at all. Most of what you do will seem like a complete waste of time. Most of what you do will leave you thinking that you're no closer to solving your problem than you were before.

            (Nobody said creativity was easy. It’s not. It’s a lot of hard work.)

            But if you do your work, at some point, instead of you coming up with the idea, the idea will come up to you.

            Every time. No kidding. It’s not by any means easy. But it’s exactly that simple.

            So why is creativity so hard for most people? Because most people have been taught just the opposite for about a zillion years now. Because anyone who has ever gone to school has been taught that work is work and play is play and never the twain shall meet. Because when most people say something that makes no sense, no one pats them on the back and says “Nice job!”

            Because most people have a logical, left hemisphere (the side of the brain that unfortunately for creativity also controls language) that is constantly admonishing them for such behavior.

            Your left brain is constantly screaming “If it doesn’t make sense, don’t do it.” “If it’s not logical, it’s wrong.” “If it’s going to make you look silly, don’t risk it.”

            And here’s the problem with that.

        If it had to make sense, the idea would already exist. If you want to come up with something entirely new, you have to make entirely new connections. And if you want to make entirely new connections, you have to be willing to come up with a lot of dumb things before one very smart thing comes to the surface.

            If creativity has a “how to,” that’s it. 

When I was a young Catholic, I remember going to parochial school and seeing posters depicting heaven. As a five year-old, these images left me with the impression that heaven was a place of serenity. A place where people walked on clouds and, for a good time, prayed. Although I’m not sure what they prayed for, having already reached their final reward. 

The nuns told us that a lot time was spent worshiping God too.

Next to those images were posters depicting hell. These illustrations were mostly orange and black. Orange, to capture the unrelenting flames burning everything within reach. Black, to represent the horned, two-legged creatures who happened to be the only ones having fun in either of the posters.

I’m thinking this is where the term “devilishly good time” must have originated. Interestingly, however, the burning was continuous. No one actually progressed from third-degrees to ashes. They just burned 24/7.  

I never thought much deeper about this until I got older and it began to dawn on me that heaven, as it had been depicted in my childhood, would be hell if someone actually ended up in a place like that. Could sitting around on clouds be all that interesting after the newness wore off? And how much fun is praying on earth? Would continuing to show homage to God, even in heaven, be all that rewarding?

Of course, compared to the everlasting fires, heaven was the easy choice. So given either/or, heaven wins. And besides, that was just a visual representation. Surely, there was something else to do besides taking pictures of your family in front of the Pearly Gates. (“Hey St. Peter, do you mind if we get one with you in it?”)

Fast-forward a few decades. The subject of retirement comes up. In my 30s and 40s, I never gave retirement much thought. I was too busy trying to set the world on fire. (Not that kind of “fire.”) But in my 50s, the thought started to become real. And like my eventual realization that heaven didn’t sound much like heaven, I came to the same conclusion about retirement. It didn’t sound anything like heaven either.

I mean, I enjoy fishing and traveling and sailing and sitting in a rocking chair and all those other retirement clichés as much as anyone. As a diversion, those activities can’t be beat. As a daily routine, they become, well, routine.

Which brings me to the point of this meandering mind trip. Once life stops having a purpose, it stops. And I don’t want to stop.

You know?

Yesterday, I stumbled upon this artist in Austin, Texas, who "finds" poetry in newspaper clippings by isolating words that get his attention and blacking out all the rest. He calls it, appropriately enough, "Newspaper Blackout." Apparently, he's been doing this for several years now. Even has a book.

His name is Austin Kleon. 

I saw this documentary on "time" the other day.

As it turns out, everything that's already happened is still happening. All the wars and birthday parties and trips to the grocery store and fights with your dad and first kisses and the second time you jumped off that bridge. History. And happening right now. As for the stuff that hasn’t happened yet? That's happening right now too. Your death? Imminent. Your final words to your loved ones, should that be the way things play out, are being said right now.

At least that's what all those people who made much better grades than you or me did in high school say. They even have proof. Their conclusion: Time is an illusion. And while the explanation even makes their brains spin a bit, they stand by it with charts and experiments and E=mc2. Einstein knew it. They know it. Now we know it too.

Which means what? Don’t sweat what’s about to happen because it’s already happened? And all that stuff that happened in the past? What was that all about?

If everything is all one big moment and the moment is now, "now" must be this instant. Timeless time. Time before you click the button on the stopwatch and set things in motion. 

Which means the trick to accessing the before and after is by grasping the present and entering a dimension that monks call "nirvana."

Grasp that moment, this moment, and you become one with the universe.

Cool.

Yesterday my 15-year-old daughter was passing the time watching movie trailers. About ten minutes into it she shouted, "Hey dad, they're ripping you off again." I knew what she meant immediately.

Someone had taken the "Chili's Babyback Ribs" song and put it in a movie again.

Yeah, I'm the one who wrote that. I've never been proud of the fact. It's a pretty stupid piece of music. But I've also found it hard to be too pissed off about something that has showed up in so many places over the years: Austin Powers second movie, David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, Scrubs, The Office, Will & Grace, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. And coming soon in "A Thousand Words," starring Eddie Murphy singing you-know-what.

Here's why I'm so ambivalent.

Ad jingles were ubiquitous in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Most were catchy at best and annoying at worst. Some, like Coke's "I'd like to teach the world to sing," became iconic. But by the 90s, the ad jingle was something only hacks did. In fact, jingles were so uncool that Chiat/Day, the agency that did all of that amazing work for the Apple Macintosh, sent out Christmas cards with blanks before the words "bells", as in  "_______ bells! _______ bells!" When you opened the card up, it read "We don't do jingles."

So here I was in 1995 with a client that didn't get the memo. Chili's loved jingles. And when we did a campaign for them that came up short of expectations, they gave us two choices. Lose the account or give them a jingle-driven TV spot that took place in the restaurant with lots of beauty shots of the product to be featured that month: Babyback ribs.

As the Executive Creative Director of the agency where I worked at the time and as someone who was trying to take the creative output of that agency to bigger and better places, it was a slap in the face. I found myself too embarrassed to come back to my department and ask them to take a stab at delivering on this humiliating request.

So I decide to just do it myself and wrote the song in about five minutes. After running it by the president of our agency and the broadcast producer who would be in charge of helping me execute the music, I called up a friend and composer I knew in Dallas named Tom Faulkner and sang him the song. Tom, who was really good at what he did but always over-worried every aspect of how he would do it said, "Wait a minute. I'm going to record you. Sing it again." Fortunately, that recording has never surfaced.

Tom did a great job producing the song. He added the opening percussion of the cutlery tapping on the side of a water glass. He added his voice, somewhat reluctantly since he was already on several other jingles at the time. And he gave the song an ending, which I had neglected to do. In short, he took my words, my baritone "Barbecue Sauce," and my crude attempt at a melody and delivered the final piece exactly the way I hoped he would.

I still wasn't happy about having to do the song. But I was happy that if I had to do it, Tom had at least done a very good job producing it.

Long story short, the client bought the song. I don't think they ever said anything more laudatory than "Yeah, that's fine." Nobody thought the song would ever be more than transitory. The spot ran. The spot stopped running. The spot ran again about nine months later. The spot stopped running again. And somehow, by the end of the decade it was not only in a major motion picture, but Advertising Age named it the number one earworm of the 90s.

Go figure. 

I had left the agency by the time the song appeared in that Austin Powers movie. I didn't even know about it until a week before the movie came out. I called Tom. "Did you know about this?" I asked. It was at that point I got the long story of negotiations that ended with "I got a check for $4,000. I'll split it with you. Also, both of our names will be in the movie credits."

I never got another penny. In fact, years later I learned that Tom registered the song on BMI and put himself down as the sole writer. I asked him about that not long ago. Turns out his life has been pretty tough of late, and let's just say he doesn't remember things like he used to. No matter.

I'm hoping that I accomplish enough other good things before I die that the fact that I wrote the "Babyback Ribs" song never has reason to appear in my obituary.

Oh, and one more interesting tidbit. I've never had a Chili's babyback rib in my life.

I've been thinking a lot about thinking lately. Then I saw the headline to this post on a bumper sticker. And that got me to thinking some more.

It reminded me of something Yogi Berra once said. "You can't think and play baseball at the same time."

And I thought back to the years I played softball. And I thought about those games where I played like the star we all imagine we are. And I thought about the times I played so badly that it took me two days to get over it. 

When I played well, I was in the zone. That little voice in my head was nowhere to be heard. I was one with the action. I was one with the world. 

When I played awful, I was never alone. There was always that little voice telling me what or how to do something I clearly knew how to do but somehow found a way of not doing even remotely well when the time came to do it.

My nine-year-old daughter recently auditioned for her elementary school's annual musical. She knew the song she was going to sing, she had rehearsed and rehearsed, and she was terrified. I told her, "You can't sing and think at the same time. You just have to do it."

The audition was a huge success.

That little voice that's always talking to us, always telling us what to do, always correcting us is poison. Imagine if we depended on that voice to tell us when to take each breath. We'd pass out.

You want some big time wisdom? Here it is.

You can't live and think at the same time. At least not the life you want to live.

When I created my last post, I had no way of knowing that a few days later the subject of that post, Steve Jobs, would be dead. It left me truly stunned. John Lennon stunned. Space Shuttle disaster stunned.

But that was just the beginning. In the days that followed, I was just as taken aback at the tributes that followed Jobs's death. "An Edison for our time." "The last genius." Etc.

Not that the accolades weren't deserved or on the mark. As an Apple fan from the beginning, I believe that most of them were. But during his life, Steve Jobs was criticized for virtually everything he did at every juncture. Some of it deserved as well.

And I suppose if you analyze it all, it all makes some kind of sense. 

But the point of this post is that I think the reason he was so canonized after passing was because he did the one thing few people at his level ever do. He merged art with science. Not giving one more sway over the other. But demanding an equal partnership. Understanding that one with out the other isn't just less.

It's unacceptable.

In light of Steve Jobs's recent announcement that he was stepping down as CEO of Apple, a number of articles and blogs devoted to his thoughts and ideas have surfaced. Among them was a "Ten Best Quotes" article that caught my attention. 

And among his words of wisdom was this thought about creativity:

"Creativity is just connecting things."

He went on to elaborate how creative people have this knack for seeing two disparate items and attaching them to each other, thereby creating something new and different. He also talked about how creative people are able to do this because they have more experiences or they think more about the experiences they've had.

I haven't thought that much about the last part, but the "connecting things" thought is dead on.

With all the mystery surrounding creativity and the creative process, I've never seen it put more succinctly. The corollary being, "if you can connect two random things, you can be creative too."

Unfortunately, most people's response to that last statement is usually a statement like this: "I never would have thought of that in a million years."

The big reveal here is that creative people don't "think" of it either. In fact, it's precisely because they are not thinking about it that they are able to come up with it. Because had they thought about it, in the traditional sense, the logic trail would have led them somewhere else. Someplace everyone's already been before.

Think of it as a jigsaw puzzle. Creativity is like that, i.e. trying to connect different pieces, most of which simply don't fit, until you stumble upon two that do.

That's it. Trial. Error. Trial. Error. Trial. Error. Trial. Voila. 

And it's really no more mysterious than that.

In the history of the world, nothing good ever happened to a teenager after midnight.

That statement originated with a friend of mine a few years ago. It made me laugh. Then it made me wonder if there might be a few more things that might link to that thought. For example, in the history of the world,

–no one ever looked back and thought they looked good in whatever they wore to the prom.

–nobody ever thought that having that last drink at the office holiday party was a really good idea.

–no one has ever done as good a job raising their kids as they wanted to.

–no one has ever known with any certainty how good they are in bed.

–no one has ever admitted to wearing a bridesmaid's dress more than once.

–money has never been enough.

–nobody has ever looked back on their teenage years without thinking at least one time in at least one instance that they were really, really lucky.

–nobody ever housebroke a puppy too soon.

–nobody ever went to their deathbed wishing they'd spent more time at the office.

–no one has ever asked for additional copies of their driver's license picture.

–no one ever underestimated how long it would take them to get dressed.

Anyway, you get the idea. Kind of makes you wonder if there's a book there somewhere.