TITLE: How Corporate 'Professionalism' Is Quietly Extinguishing Your Genius
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPbYrhxQKZ8

If it can't be laughed at, if it can't be criticized, then it's probably not extreme enough. >> You get caught up in structures. What you make it is whatever you want. And I was like, that's it. I'll just put that. And I was like, that's it. When it's extreme, when that expression is there, it's a moment. Frank Lloyd Wright >> I would do anything they'd ask me for except join them to make a harbor of refuge for the incompetent. Mr. Wright considered the institute a very conservative body. Because I believe less and less in professionalism as I see it practiced. I think it's a kind of refined gangsterism. So, as Henry Luce said in astonishment, what he said, are you an old amateur? And I said, yes, Mr. Luce, I am the oldest. Frank Lloyd Wright called himself the oldest amateur because what he knew from being called professional is restriction came with being professional. And when you restrict artistic expression, you zap all the creativity out of the process. And you get further and further from nature. >> Essentially, what's happened to architecture since the development of AutoCAD, especially, is that architecture has been largely de-skilled in a lot of ways. So, drawing, for example, is not commonly taught in schools. Everything becomes abstracted, essentially. The computer systems are so complex now that basically, you know, those five-over-ones. The reason they look like that is that they're essentially the built version of a spreadsheet. So, all of the materials, the aluminum panels, you can just plug and play. Whereas, like, if you wanted to add a curve to a building, then that takes like a huge amount of labor because you have to think about the flashing for like the rain. There's a possibility you could get sued if like something leaks. You know, then you have to add like additional construction drawings because it's more complex than just like slapping that stuff on there. And so, everyone's like, why are all these buildings the same? And the answer is it's because one, you have to minimize liability at all costs for the firm, which means like if you just play it by the rules and you just play it into these sort of systems, you're not going to get sued. Second of all, like it's the developer's bottom line. And third of all is that architecture itself is an abstraction. Back in the Middle Ages, when people were building the cathedral, they were hand-building and hand-cutting the stone. There weren't plans. These were developments of the Renaissance. >> You get so far from intended purpose and so far from creativity, it starts this cycle of refining, of optimization, and people are not even happy doing the thing they always dreamed of doing. What were you doing? Uh piano, basically. I was playing uh tenor sax. All this happened before I decided to be a singer, which I never did accomplish. I became a screamer. I just made a lot of noise. I found it was easier to scream and make a lot of noise and destroy a song than it was to try to look handsome and get up and sing a beautiful ballad. >> [laughter] >> Everybody was doing that, but nobody was going up there on the stage screaming, so I took what I knew about the sax and the piano, stuck it in my throat, and destroyed songs. Sometimes we don't push hard enough. Is it pretty enough? Is it perfect enough? Does it fit into what society is looking for? Too clean, too structured. It gets in the way of the expression. I'm wanting to dropping Interscope and a lot of things that have resulted from people saying, "It's a bad image. It's bad for young people." Tell us your comments on that. I said so many comments on this, but basically, it's a hypocritical view because what you're saying is it's okay for us to live in the dirt and the gutter and less than human um conditions, but it's not okay for us to tell people that we're living in these conditions. Everything was cool, you know, the gutter was okay. It was it was it was live it was um habitable until we started talking about exactly the what were the repercussions of living this type of lifestyle, what happens when you live in this kind of environment, what what type of person it changes you into. Now all of a sudden it's like you can't talk about that. >> Expression is communication. It's about having something to say. Things we deal with everyday that we kind of take for granted like memes. Why do some photos become memes and some don't? It's not because of how accurate or how perfect the picture is, it's because the picture clearly conveys something. You should express yourself even if you feel like you're not ready. You don't wait to become great. Expression is important. I had a bizarre viral moment singing D'Angelo and I got kind of thrust into the music world Hm. from this video. It was like I went to bed >> What song were you What song were you singing? Untitled. Yeah, of course. Sang Untitled. That was my favorite song at the time. I went to bed and the next morning my everything blown up. I was like, what? I woke up and Missy Elliott reposted it. Questlove had reposted it talking about, I was in London in 2000. That might be my son. Then it was >> [laughter] >> So he's talking about that, whatever. So then I was just thrust in, managers and labels and and then suddenly before I knew it I was in the studio. And before that point I never wanted to be a musician. I loved music how I'm now describing to you I love music, but for some reason it never connected in my head the concept of do it yourself. Hm. I would because I was I held it in such high regard. I was just a fan. I was like, I could never I remember my friend used to ask me, he was like, how how high do you think you place amongst the people that you love to listen to? I'm nowhere, man. There's a difference between taking a photograph of an object and taking a photograph about an object. When you take a photograph about something, you're using the subject to convey or communicate something much deeper. Expression is different from representation. >> [music] >> Uh all I want is freedom. Like I want freedom here. I don't want you to be here. I want you to be here. I don't want I want freedom. I want to take the material and then be able to do with it whatever the freedom that takes me. And being free as an actor is not something that I have felt necessarily throughout my career. If you ever raised money for a film, you'll know. If you have high artistic freedom, then usually that means it's a higher risk. That means it's usually a lower budget. Freedom ain't free. But what was like exciting to us is like we built this sandbox and it's like what else can it be, you know? Like can it be a horror movie? Can it be Can we follow this guy home and have have an entire episode about this peripheral character? Uh can we break format, you know? Um and like knowing what I know now, I'm just like like good for you for not knowing that you were not supposed to do any of that stuff. It it was really difficult for that reason cuz we were kind of taking the structure and you know, budget of TV and trying to make like indie movies every episode, you know? Um and we killed ourselves doing it, but it was so fun and it was so creative cuz it was just we were in the bubble of our immediate collaborators and we did it with very little oversight cuz it was such a low-budget show in the beginning. Really? Oh, so that was low-budget. Oh, yeah. Damn. >> Yeah. That's kind of a weird way to put this, but like the back in the day effects used to have this thing called the Louie deal where like, you know, they gave Louie C.K. like $400,000 to shoot every episode of TV and his mandate was that they don't give him any notes. Right. It doesn't matter if your expression is intentional or not. It's a signal. Everything you wear is a signal. These logos, these things that are inside your garments, a lot of times they're not functional. They communicate something to you subconsciously. Clothing is more than just decoration for the body or protection from the elements. Clothes have powers over your mind. Scientists have demonstrated this in experiments in which they divided people into two groups. Group A wore their normal street clothes, while Group B wore their normal clothes and lab coats. When those people went on to perform tests of mental agility, the group wearing lab coats made about half as many mistakes as the group not wearing lab coats. Stranger still, in a similar experiment in which both groups wore lab coats, but one was told they were wearing painter's smocks and the other told they were wearing doctor's coats, the doctor's clothes group performed much better in brain games than did the painter's clothes group. Scientists call this weird phenomenon in clothes cognition and they say it depends on both the symbolic meaning of the clothing and the psychological experience of wearing the clothes, constantly reminding you of what those clothes represent. Nature is the mirror, so I'll put what I'm talking about against nature. So, when you talk about signals and sending signals, that might sound like a marketing term, but it's a natural term. A peacock, we don't assume they're doing marketing because of their tail. The tail is a signal. When we hear thunder, that's a signal. Nature sends signals all the time. No different with humans. When we create, when we wear things, when we speak things, they're signals. It's the expression. I mean, I told this story. We had will.i.am on third verse. And I was in the studio with him and this had on a space helmet. It's just me and him together. He looked like Elroy from The Jetsons. And it's just me and him in the room. I'm like, "Dog, I said" he playing the music. I said, "Stop the music." I said, "Will, dog, we ain't about to You're not about to take off in a rocket. It's just us in the room, baby." That turned around and told me, he said, "When they meet me, they want to meet who I am. If I take off this space helmet, then I'm just like the dude that work at Ralph's." Don't look at limitations or structures as getting in the way of creativity. Sometimes structure and sometimes limitations help creativity. This is called the paradox of choice. I would like to say something about the auditioning. A lot of time what it takes to get elected in an office, if you think politics, what it takes to get elected has nothing to do with what it takes to govern. And I find that true about the auditioning process as well. You know, you're sitting in a room and you're all kind of you all kind of look alike and you're all going over your lines and you can hear the audition going on inside and you have these few pages of black lines on white paper and it says to you smile here and you do this there and you hear you start hearing the same thing over and over and over. Now, you think of the people on the other side there, the the the people in the that are running the casting sessions. Man, by the third, fourth, the 10th, the 20th, you know, they're hearing the same thing, same thing and then suddenly someone comes in and does something different. And it and it and it it it lands. Now, you can't be different for different sake, but you have to separate yourself from the the the normal read and of course it has to be truthful. I've talked about it in other videos. When you reduce your choices, you become more creative. >> [music] >> Erykah Badu doesn't have to sing, she doesn't have to talk, she can just walk in the room and the way she looks is a signal. What I really love about Erykah Badu is her humor, man. She's so eclectic. You know, I just love her freedom, you know, and I really think she's ahead of everybody. I don't think she's from this planet. She's always in a world by herself. You know what I mean? And I think she comes back to Earth to talk to us for a second and then she leaves. She's like this celestial goddess to me. You can almost predict her music, her philosophy, her energy. You know exactly what you're getting into. Erykah is a world builder. They're either over singing or they they they haven't found that comfort zone of like yo, I can do this all day, all night. And it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter. Hold on. Listen to what J Valentine said. >> They they haven't found that comfort zone of like yo, I can do this. That comfort zone of >> I had the opportunity to watch El Mean in concert. He's talking about comfort zone vocally. He's not a person who I don't think subscribes to that idea that you should stay in your comfort zone, whether it's vocally or not. He gets to the very edge of his capability and there's a zone and in that zone, that is the zone that only emotion can take you. >> [singing and music] [cheering] >> Send me the prayer I'm missing. >> [music] >> Am I amongst the living? >> [singing] [music] >> The payoff to that is that the audience gets emotional with you. That's their response. He picks his moments. It's controlled, but he goes to the edge. It transcends technical ability. It's a spiritual moment. It feels like a call for help. When people judge a book by its cover, it's called anchoring bias. A creative can use this as a weapon. A great artist can use people's preconceived notions against them. This guy understands the assignment. 3 million views and 6,000 comments. All the comments are about what he's wearing. By the way, he won the fight. This is an example about expression with intentionality. I've seen these kind of fights before. He's the only one I remember. When I started with this, I had the impression that by being successful, which unfortunately I've been, >> Yeah. uh you know, I will be able to do things that actually are different. But, more successful you become, more uh uh you know, more prisoner you become to the system because they don't they don't allow you to do things. Success didn't buy you in your career more freedom? No, on the contrary. You know, you hear a lot of stories about actors having other abilities. And it's always cool to hear about a director who uses an actor's ability, natural ability, or a learned skill in the film. There's moments in films that are not scripted. The situation is scripted, but what that person brings in front of the camera is something that came from them. Another actor who didn't have the same ability wouldn't be able to do. We should always be that way. No matter what we're doing, we should always bring our skills with us. Cuz see, a lot of actors here, they scared cuz Jim be going off book. And I said, "Oh that's right down my line." Yeah. You know, cuz that's what I do. You think just cuz I'm small, you can just push me around? Well, come on, my friend. Let's boogie. I'm going to give you a little lesson in low center of gravity. I remember they showed him, they said, "Look, Tony can do the nunchucks." >> [laughter] >> The nunchucks thing is everything. And he was just looking at it. He's like, he started coming up with ideas, you know, his mind be working, you know, and we started doing the scene. Man, everything was flowing. When it becomes natural in a controlled environment, the expression just opens up a door and you never know where it can take you. You have to provide room for that. If we're honest with ourselves, expression is communication. What other reason are you expressing yourself for? If you're creating things and you're creating them for other people to participate, then you have to send the signal. And you do that through expression. I can make you look, but I can't make you see. Seeing is a choice. If you want to support the channel, there's a donation link in the description, or you can become a member. This is Brian from The King's Hand. If you like the content, be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell. The Impartial Hand of the King. >> [music] >> Oof.