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Will Your Art Outlive You? (A Lesson from Gothic Cathedrals) · The Daily Writer

• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everybody to the Born to Create Podcast.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Kent Sanders, and I'm your host.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an author, musician, and teacher.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: But most importantly, I'm a husband and a dad.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here on the show we talk about practices, habits, and strategies that help us live out our creative calling.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode 46, and today we're going to be talking about the question Will your art outlive you?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: A lesson from Gothic Cathedrals.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can find the post and the links that accompany this episode at Kent Sanders.net slash cathedrals.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: When I went to teach at St.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Louis Christian College in 2004, and I'm still there, one of the courses I was assigned was Introduction to the Arts.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is a basic survey course covering visual art, architecture, music, theater, and film, all from a Christian philosophical viewpoint.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: The area that I knew the least about was architecture.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd always been fascinated by architecture, but never really studied it in depth.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: But over the years, as I have learned more and more about architecture, it's really become one of my favorite subjects.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm especially drawn to Gothic cathedrals.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: These medieval works of art represent one of the pinnacles of human ingenuity and creativity.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The designers, laborers, and craftsmen worked for decades and in some cases centuries, to complete these massive projects.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: My personal favorite is Chartres Cathedral in France.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Built from 1194 to 1260, it's one of the oldest Gothic cathedrals.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Chartres is famous for several iconic features, including its beautiful stained glass windows, a medieval labyrinth, and a purported relic of the Virgin Mary's tunic.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Consider the mindset of the artists and craftsmen who built Gothic cathedrals.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: They worked to build something they knew would outlive them, not only by decades, but by centuries.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty stark contrast to today's creative world, where we don't normally think in centuries or decades or even years.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: We tend to think in weeks and days, hours and moments.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Today most of our creative work is designed for quick consumption.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: We share social media posts that we hope people like in the 30 minutes after the update.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: We write blog posts that we hope go viral in the days after they're published.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that our book or album gets traction in the weeks and months after it's released.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that our podcast or video gets downloaded thousands or, you know, if our dreams come true, millions of times.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying those things are bad.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I engage in most of those mediums and I love all those things.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: But is there a way to balance the need for relevance and timeliness with a more long-term perspective on our creative work?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or to put it another way, will your art outlive you?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is the question I've been turning over in my mind lately, and I've come to three conclusions, or better yet, these are really three imperatives that we must consider if we're going to create art that outlives us.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, take the long view of your art.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to get frustrated when something we create isn't an immediate hit.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there and I'm still there most of the time, it feels like.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But what truly counts is not any individual work, but a body of work that's created over a lifetime.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Think about artists such as Steven Spielberg, The Beatles, or Stephen King.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: If any of those had stopped after just one hit, would we still remember them?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, perhaps we would, but they would have just been a one-hit wonder.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, each of those artists and many, many others over the decades, have kept going even through failures, and today they're all known as creative giants.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about one blog post, one book, one painting, or one album or one movie.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's really the collective impact that your work makes over the years and over the decades.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what that means is that we can fully embrace failure as a learning point and we can decide to improve the next time that we launch something.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're looking at our creative output more as a body of work over the length of our lifetime, instead of, you know, this one thing has to be a big hit, it lets us to be a little more free and to embrace failure because we're going to learn from that failure and do better the next time.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, make something physical.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I know some creatives who work in purely digital formats would disagree with me, and that's totally okay.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I would simply pose a question: how will someone a hundred years from now experience your art?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, blogs, podcasts, digital music and photos, online courses, all those things are great, but will your great grandchildren be able to interact with those?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Will they even know that those things existed?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: No one can predict what the technology of the future will be like.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I believe it's important to create something physical that can be passed down to future generations.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: One of my most treasured possessions is an old, tattered notebook that my grandmother Louise Sanders used to write her poetry in.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: She died when I was three years old in 1977, but when I look through the notebook and her poems, many of which are quite good poems, it's almost like she's there with me.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that I can't get from just reading her poetry on a computer screen or even looking at PDFs of those pages.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of writing, which you all know that I'm very passionate about, in terms of writing, I think every author should make it a goal to create a print book.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not only is it a little more prestigious than just having an ebook or an audiobook, a print book is something that you can pass down to your kids and grandkids.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever type of creative work that you do, I would strongly encourage you to consider what kinds of physical artifacts you can leave behind for future generations.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, focus on being a producer, not a consumer.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is an area where honestly I struggle quite a bit.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I subscribe to too many email lists, I buy too many books, and I attend too many online webinars.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, a slight correction on that last part.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't always attend the webinars.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I really never attend the webinars live, but I sign up for too many of them and then I download the replay video, but I never end up watching them.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you do the same thing.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most helpful things that I've read recently is a short article by Sereney Rao, and the article is entitled, Why I Write a Thousand Words Every Day.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he refers to writing a thousand words every day as kind of a keystone habit that unlocks many other good things.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Another recent article that was super helpful to me is by Mark McGuinness, and the article is entitled, Forget the Career Ladder, Start Creating Assets.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are links to both of those articles in the show notes, which you can access.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I would encourage you to really read those because when you take those articles together, they really will help push you to stop consuming so much and start creating more.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sure, it's important to stay up to date on trends in your field.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got to interact with books, courses, blogs, podcasts, all that kind of stuff.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're constantly consuming but never producing, what's really the point?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that the key to long-term success and the key to leaving something behind for future generations is producing quality work.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: But we can't do that if we're constantly consuming and never creating.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of ways to begin producing more.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can use systems to stay motivated and productive.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can keep pressing on even when you want to give up.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow simple principles for being more creative.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can declutter your workspace.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can use strange methods to get your creative work done.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: You can track your time.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can get unstuck and start creating again.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: You can set and reach your creative goals.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can stop drifting and start focusing.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Those are several ways that you can begin producing more.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, all those things I just mentioned in that list, there are links to all those blog posts in the show notes.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So those are just a few ways that you can start producing and perhaps stop consuming so much.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really kind of a sermon to myself because I, again, I tend to really struggle with this.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: The main point in all this is that you have to take action in order to move your creative dreams out of your head and into reality.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I get it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to focus on the long term because there are so many distractions in the here and now.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: But for the sake of our legacies and especially for the sake of future generations, we must begin taking a longer view of our lives and of our creative work.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you're interested in learning more about Chartre Cathedral or Gothic Cathedrals in general, I'd recommend the following resources.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: One is a book called Universe of Stone by Philip Ball.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Another is a book called Cathedral, the story of its construction by David McCaulay.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Another book is called Chartre Cathedral by Malcolm Miller, and there's links to a couple of videos that I have in the show notes as well.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: What are some other suggestions for taking a long-term view of your art and creating work that lasts?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear your thoughts.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can join the conversation and find the post and the links that accompany this episode at KentSanders.net slash cathedrals.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: When you visit my site, you'll find all kinds of great resources to inspire your creativity.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also love to share a gift with you when you subscribe to my newsletter.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can check it out and learn more about my books, writing, and services at KentSanders.net.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely appreciate your feedback.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: When you leave a rating and review of the podcast on iTunes, it helps other people discover the show and it also helps me to serve you more effectively.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: To leave a rating or review for the show, you can do so at KentSanders.net slash iTunes.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening on a mobile device, just click the link in the show notes.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that you were born to create and designed to make a difference.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: What will you do with the time you have left?