Courage and creativity

For the preface to a book about recipes of the restaurant Noma, René Redzepi asked Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich to write some words on creativity. This a quote from this preface:

“Creativity is both the exploration of the unknown and the embrace of what you know. The courage to face your ignorance, armed with only elemental knowledge, can lead to true creativity. If you really dare to create something, that is the product of what you know and what you don’t know.” — Lars Ulrich

Lars places courage in the center of creativity. Creativity is a catch all term. On the largest scale, everyone is creative, everyone creates something sometime. Creativity cannot be defined and that is why it is interesting to define it. How you define creativity is an attempt to explain what you deem important, how you see the world, what you value. Lars values courage. If you add courage to creativity, you get something new. Just like René when he adds to ingredients together to create a new dish, Lars adds two concepts together to create a new concept. Courageous creativity. We create all the time. But not all those creations come from courage. Not all of those creations venture into the unknown. Not all those creations let the creators face their own ignorance.

Creativity without courage is valuable. We need to create all kinds of stuff all the time. Most of the time those creations are safe and require no courage. Usually they copy what already exists and they stay within the confines of the craft of the creator. Sometimes they add a little twist, a little variation on what already exists. Creativity without courage holds no surprises. You get what you expect. More of the same. It’s predictable.

That is not the creativity that Lars is talking about. The creativity that Lars talks about takes a risk. It ventures into the unknown and runs the risk of what? Of being disliked, ridiculed, being unsuccessful, not being accepted? If you venture into the unknown, you might get lost, lose yourself, lose your mind. You might be surprised. Things might get turned upside down. Your world might change. That is what Lars values. He puts René in a list of people like Picasso, Pollock, Jobs, people who changed their craft by taking a risk, by creating with courage. They are the crazy ones:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” — Steve Jobs

Some of the people who display courage become successful and push the human race forward. Some of them don’t. They get ridiculed, excommunicated, cancelled, ignored, marginalized. If you are successful, courage is great. Until you get successful, the road of courage is harsh. But the people who walk that road wouldn’t want it any other way. Part of courage is taking the pain that comes with it. If there was no pain, there was no courage. Pain can come in many sizes and shapes. This is what we fear. Pain. Rejection. Being lost. Failure. Feeling uncertain. The people who have courage are afraid of the pain but they do it anyway. They feel the need to change something and are willing to suffer the pain it takes to do so. Some risks are small, some are big. The big risks change things in a big way, the small ones in a small way.

Lars is grateful for the courage of René, for what his courage creates.