This week’s artistic explorer is Shekhar Deshpande.
Want a concrete example of why it’s good for your teams to get creative? Simply put, it leads to better creative output.
Shekhar is an enthusiastic and committed creative hobbyist, dedicating his spare time to singing, song writing, playing guitar and blogging.
But even in his day job as Head of Strategy at Meta, Shekhar emphasises to his teams, the importance of allowing time for creative pursuits.
He’s seen time and again that it makes his teams better at giving actionable feedback to creatives by nurturing a better understanding of the creative process.
And if you want to bring the benefits of creativity to your workplace, DM me to find out more about our Art After Dark workshops.
Learn more about Louise's Art After Dark workshops
Shekhar is an enthusiast and committed creative hobbyist, dedicating his spare time to singing, song writing, playing guitar and blogging.
His epiphany in music came when, after decades of listening to and performing covers, and with much encouragement from his wife, Monica, he started writing his own songs in both Hindi and English.
As you’ll hear, even in his day job as a marketing professional, working as Head of Strategy on global accounts at Meta he emphasises to his teams, the importance of allowing time for creative pursuits.
Creation 1: Early Songs, written by Shekhar
This is Shekhar's favourite Hindi song which he wrote when Rohan was 7 months old. It’s about the travails of a parent trying to put their baby to sleep!
"In Your Dreams"
One of Shekhar's earlier songs when he was still experimenting with song writing.
Creation 2:
The Bungee Jump
One of Shekhar's favourite songs. Monica (his wife) and Shekhar did the jump in South Africa in 2002. He wrote the song in 2012, and finally recorded it in 2022.
Creation 3: Shekhar's Blog
The Silver Pensieve, "Three things my Dad Said"
Transcript
[00:00:00] whatever your form of creation is, do it because the biggest difference is that it will give you a lot of joy, but as a side effect, it will make your work conversations better you have to accept the fact that it's initially going to be bad.
Unless you have them you won't really get to the good ones get it out, get it out. better out than in I could have written a blog, I could have written a post, but I never did it. I don't want that.
Louise: hello, and I'm delighted to welcome you to another episode of my podcast, art After Dark, where we explore the transformative impact of the arts on mind, body, and soul. I'm your host, Louise Emily, an artist on a mission to shed light on the power. Of human creativity.
this week's Artistic Explorer is Chakar Deshpande. Chakar is an enthusiastic, committed, creative hobbyist, dedicating his spare time to singing, songwriting, playing guitar, and blogging. His epiphany in music came when after decades of listening to and performing covers, and with much encouragement from his wife Monica, he started writing his own [00:01:00] songs in both Hindi and English.
As you'll hear, even in his day job as a marketing professional, working as head of strategy on global accounts at Meta, he emphasizes to his teams the importance of allowing time for creative pursuits. As you can see, darkness has fallen. It's time to welcome Shekhar to the forest. Welcome Shekhar.
. Hello. . It's lovely to see you. I'm really looking forward to our journey. What bag are you bringing with you in the forest today?
Typically, I'm a walker. I love to walk. The bag has to be a backpack. A pretty simple, elegant backpack and probably a couple of inside pockets, but largely for being able to store stuff like water bottles and shopping and bananas and stuff like that.
So it has to be a backpack mainly because my hands are then free. Ah, good for exploring and doing other stuff. Brilliant. And what are you going to bring as your snack and your drink into the forest today? I absolutely love having my coffee and tea, but if you're walking into a forest, the [00:02:00] trouble is I also like them really hot.
So I would stick to water. I actually love a cola from India called Thumbs Up. That's my favorite cola. As a treat, as a real indulgence, I would always have the cola. Long term, there's nothing like water . So I would just bring still water. Brilliant, still water.
And what are you going to have to eat alongside your water? I love savoury, crunchy Indian snacks of all shapes and kinds. And very few of them are actually walk friendly. But one of the snacks that I love is, roasted and salted peanuts.
That also have, their skin on them. ,I can have them any day, and they're quite filling as well.
Oh yeah, they're definitely a good snack for the forest. I think that'll keep you going. Speaking of which, it's time to light the path through the forest with your first creation. So can you share that with us, Shikha? The first creation was the songs that I've shared with you, a Hindi one, used to be in a band, we only sang covers, in Mumbai in our early twenties, and then we all went our own ways.[00:03:00]
And , we were catching up in London at this point so we were just having a jam, at their place. And somebody said, , how long are we going to keep singing other people's songs?
We should be singing our own songs. Two months, three months later, I find myself having written my own song, my very first song, and oddly enough, the others had also started writing their own songs, having never done it, , before. So in our mid to late 30s We've been listening to music and singing and playing for a couple of decades, if not more. Never thought that we had the potential to write our own stuff.
Never thought of ourselves like that. I certainly did not think of myself as someone who can write songs. I always thought that that's not the talent I have. But it just clicked and then one day we started doing it.
[00:04:00] So
what was the kind of magic blend that led to you actually, and not just you, but your other band members doing it?
One of the things that definitely works in your favor is that by your late thirties, you have now listened to a lot of rock, a lot of, , Hindi music, Hindi movies, and a lot of English music as well.
By that, I mean the language, not the country. And at some point, it's almost the machine that is your brain. Has developed the capability to pop out something based on all that acquisition and listening in the background. And I guess it needed that kind of a little subconscious trigger to, , to get going.
And of course, the first things you do are not very good. Yeah. They're not very good. Then you get better. But at least you have realized that that muscle exists in your body or in your brain and then you're doing more on it better and so on and so [00:05:00] forth. So sometimes it's not.
Very dramatic, but it definitely helps that we had absorbed a lot of music and I had absorbed a lot of music.
Yeah. And your skill obviously, as a musician and a singer had got better by practicing other songs, I've heard from other artists that they do practice like. Sam Fender is one of my favorite singer songwriters. , he started off, , Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Buckley.
And just even his voice is similar to Jeff Buckley because his brother bought him, a CD and he never thought that that voice would be something that he could do. So I think he was mimicking to begin with, and then , it launched him into making songs in his own voice.
And also I'm interested in digging into, you said, first of all, the songs that you wrote weren't very good. How did you start off that first step and then what kept you going, even though you were making things that you didn't think was good?
The problem with being a keen listener for 30 odd years is that you have a very good idea of what great is. You don't [00:06:00] just have a good idea of what good is, but you know what great is. And unless what you pop out yourself feels great. You just feel the opposite. You feel that it's terrible.
But at some point you have to accept that just because I'm a fan of the Beatles and Springsteen and Billy Joel or Sting doesn't mean that if the first song I write, it'll measure up to. Unfortunately, unfortunately, this is how it is. So you just have to accept it. And the first song I wrote, the sort of the verse and the chorus felt like two completely different songs.
And then you realize you just played for friends anyway. And then you do get a response, you have to accept both the positive and the negative. People are saying there is some really good melody in there, some good words in there. And it was not completely shit. So maybe there's something in it.
And luckily, I think the second song I wrote was a really good one. So that gave [00:07:00] me a bit more confidence. It was a proper moan about English weather on a day where I was meant to play a cricket match, but the game had called off because it was too wet and it was raining.
So I just sat there and wrote a bit of a moan in Hindi about English weather. And I thought that would be fun, you know, a Hindi song about English weather. Yeah. And so that was good. That was good. Then I thought, okay, there's something in it. We should keep going. There's two things that stand out for me.
One is, , the thought around expectations. So you said at the start of that, that you obviously had the greats, but your expectations, you were managing them quite well, by the sounds of it, you were going into it going, it's probably not going to be great, but at least I'm doing it. And so you're not necessarily as disappointed as if you were going, it's going to end up being a Springsteen song, so , that stands out. And then the other thing is that you had an impromptu moment of creation, , because I hear from people quite a lot , I just don't have the time to do it, but [00:08:00] it sounds like you were grabbing those slivers of time and making the most of them, which I think is .
Really good because it's an efficient way of doing it, you've got it in the back of your mind thinking, you're primed and ready to create if there's a moment for you. Yeah. I mean, I think different people will have different, ways in which a song comes into their head.
I'm a hobbyist, but I do admit that I do write songs that are, that are not terrible. How does that happen? Literally, sometimes you just wake up with a tune in your head. And then with the benefit of having, smart phones, you just, pour it into the voice recorder.
And then you can come back to it at some point, or for me, I would always get just a line with words. And sometimes you just follow those words and then try and turn it into a tune. I don't really deliberately say, okay, here's our coffee and a guitar four o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday.
Now we shall write songs for the next 30 minutes. That seems like a lot of pressure. Yeah, it doesn't work like that. It [00:09:00] just pops in your head and you think, Oh, it's interesting. I should, I should do this. And then you record it. I would write a song over three, four months. Yeah.
And I would have a tune. Let's say I have the chorus, but not the verse. And then I would think about the verse. The words particularly, I would take months to write and then when it's finished, I'll call my producer and say, okay, Paul, give me a date.
Then I'll go into the studio and record it.
My bigger exploration tends to be with words because I've always felt that words are what really makes a song immortal.
And there's a difference between attraction and love. A melody is what attracts you to a song, but true love that lasts for decades is always in the words.
[00:10:00] You really do carve out time for this hobby. It's a hobby, but it's something that you're really committed to and that, you must get a lot out of.
So, what is it that... Singing, songwriting, and then actually not just leaving it that you
get from that hobby?
I mean, what is it that you get from self expression even whatever little gift you had. , you try to push it towards its potential, that's an end in itself. everyone has a gift and , it's not something as grand as leaving it behind for the world, or I wouldn't say that, but it just, you had a gift and you use it.
That's good itself. And sometimes you can say, Hey, I've written 35 odd sums at the moment, and it's not bad. It's not bad. Having come from a place where I was convinced that I can probably sing a bit, play the guitar a bit, but I can never write a song. So, yeah, keep doing it. It just gives you a kind of joy and fulfillment that nothing [00:11:00] else.
Yeah, that's, that's what it is. And what do your work colleagues think of it or friends and family? Have you inspired anybody to do that themselves? Because I don't hear that commonly, or I don't hear it commonly enough that people feel that they have an inner creative talent.
I hear quite the opposite. I hear lots of people saying I can't do this or I can't do that. So it's really interesting to see what response you get when people see you doing this. , it's very different. I suppose in, the Indian culture, it came up a lot. If someone is good at art or someone is good at music in the Indian context, people would mention that in introducing you to clients or to other colleagues. Hey, this guy is also a singer, guitarist or whatever. In the, culture here where I've worked quite a lot in Europe and in the US, it doesn't really come up. I mean, people know that you are a musician. I might have played the odd song for them, but it's not part of work life at all.
And a lot of my friends, , are already [00:12:00] musicians themselves. So it's just what we all do. . We do end up every time a group of friends is together. The guitar will come out, we will sing, we will jam, and so that is just a regular part of life.
It's wonderful, but it's not that special, if you know what I mean. Have you ever tried in the workplace to sort of encourage people to do more creative expression? And if you? How has that been received? Yeah, I do quite a lot of mentoring, teaching, training, etc. And anytime you are briefing anyone to do anything.
So I come from an ad agency. I don't work in advertising now, or not in a creative agency. We have to work with creative people quite a lot. And you are asking creative people to do something that will have an impact on the world. and I always encouraged my team and my colleagues to do something creative yourself.
Because every time that you talk to a creative person, you will understand their [00:13:00] perspective. You will only tell them things that are going to make their work better. Yes. ignore everything that is just going to make you feel better and is not very helpful to them because I can see as a songwriter. That the questions that my wife, Monica, asks me about, Oh, why have you written this was so what is the common theme or she asked me things that are actually making my output a lot better.
And then it made a huge difference to the way I write creative briefs or any kind of brief where I will only think about the person who's reading this document and is supposed to do this work. How is it making the. job better. just cut out all information that doesn't help. And , that's why I've encouraged everyone in my team, past and present, whatever your form of creation is, do it because the biggest difference is that it will give you a lot of joy, but as a side effect, it will make your work conversations better when you're [00:14:00] briefing people.
Yeah, that makes total sense. Cause you worked for a company called JWT and I believe They were pioneering. They invented the planning department, the strategy department and they are slash were the world's oldest ad agency.
Yeah. So absolutely. Legendary place, no doubt. Exactly. So that's really interesting that you brought that creativity and that point of view. And, some might call it a bit of a data obsessed world, whereas creativity itself can be very subjective. So how would you, reconcile those two things as a strategist working with creatives.
Two things that particularly work when you have a very diverse set of people trying to do something is one of them is what is the end goal? You know, what are we all trying to achieve? What is the point that everyone agrees with? No one disagrees with. And how do we all collectively do work that serves that purpose?
Every time you think in that direction, you will get the creatives agreeing, you will get [00:15:00] strategists agreeing, and everyone else agreeing. And , the other lens to put on it is, , who is our audience? Who are we doing this for? What is it that we want them to feel or to think when they see this output? These are both ways in which you can get everyone to agree and be on the same page and then work towards it. Yeah. Same thing works in creative output as well.
What are we trying to say in this song? And then everything serves or works towards it. How would you view the role of emotion ?
Is it something you talk about or think about? It's all about emotion, isn't it? How do we want people to feel is , much more important than how do we want people to think. because the feeling always comes first. It's all about emotion and even in a work meeting, if you want your client, to feel excited, troubled, scared.
Reassured. It's always helpful to understand what is the predominant emotion it will be driving [00:16:00] in the recipient of that work? Now, whether that's a presentation or a song or whatever it is. That's helpful. That's always helpful. Brilliant. Thank you for sharing all of that.
I think we're ready now to move on to your creation two. Yes, we were talking about, doing something over months and this is something that I probably did over 20 plus years where. Monica and I were on a holiday in South Africa, one of the best holidays we ever had, and we were driving the garden route to the bottom of Africa basically.
And we came across this bungee jump in a place called Sit. And we just initially went in to have a look, when we ended up doing it is the world's highest bungee jump. Oh my goodness. And we, we did that in 2002. And of course , it is, And event that you will keep talking about for the rest of your life.
Yeah. There's nothing quite like it. So if you listen to the song, you'll see what I mean, but the audio version of what's happening to you as a being, when [00:17:00] you're down there, when the elastic rope is just swinging, came to my head and, I just recorded it in a phone.
And I think decently quickly, the rest of it evolved. So I had a tune, which had a bit of a bass in the beginning, and then went into a massive crescendo and then came back. So it's a mix of being very quiet, being reflective, and then just jump, you just jump. So it's a mix of those two.
And that was, a fun exercise. So I had a song that I could play to friends fairly quickly. but I never recorded it, I just forgot about it. I went on to record other songs, but not this one.
In 2022, 21 22 we are looking at old tapes and old CDs and doing a sprinkling in the house. And one of the CDs I found was this video of the Bungee Jump in 2002. I said, Monica, let's look at it. You know, we, we, and let's show it to Rohan, our son. Mommy and Daddy doing a bungee jump in Africa.
So then 20 years later, I went into the [00:18:00] studio, I worked with Paul and recorded the song. And then I put it out in the world.
Even 20, 21 years later, there, isn't it? latent song that was building it sounds like you perform your songs to your friends. Behind closed doors. Do you ever go and perform it on the stage I've not really performed on stage.
a very, very long time. . Is it something that you would like to do or is it I would love to do it. I would. You would love to do it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I would love to do it. Where would your, , dream stage be? Would it be in [00:19:00] India or would it be in London, can you paint a picture of your dream scenario?
The dream scenario would be , amongst a community of friends. So for instance, if I went back to my business school in India, every year we have this annual business school festival, and there are hundreds and hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. And they always.
I have everyone coming up on stage and singing, you know, there will be some current students and be some alumni and so be some very old alumni like me, and we would, we've gone and done that so at our 20th year reunion, some of us had gone back to campus and. We had done that, thing of singing on stage.
I had not sung my own songs then. I had just done some covers that the kids would like, yeah, that sort of scenario is a good one. On Kingley Street, there was this place called Ain't Nothing but the Blues Bar. Yeah.
2006, 2007, we had gone there where you can perform three songs of your own, you know, everyone gets a turn. Oh, that's good [00:20:00] to know. That's a lovely, lovely place and a really nice informal culture where everyone in the crowd is going to sing at some stage. So you're in a very friendly community, in a community of experts, they know what good is and what bad is.
So that's another scenario which I love. That's a really lovely forum where you are among people who know music and that that is a good place to sing as well on stage. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a really good place actually. If you do perform, then I hope that I get an invite. You certainly will. Brilliant.
Is there something about The way that you write songs or that you use music to connect with others.
Is that important part of it? It's a lovely consequence. Definitely. I guess I came up with these two scenarios versus singing in the Royal Albert Hall because I've kind of done it before.
I definitely like being in the company of other musicians and when you sing with them, that's, a really lovely experience because they [00:21:00] will pick out things that were good, that let's say a non musician may not be able to, but would I love singing 5, 000 people?
Oh, hell yeah. Bring it on. It'll be amazing. Yeah. So there's that whole excitement of a crowd the energy maybe. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Oh, fantastic
Can you describe the school of communication arts, what it does and how you got involved?
The school of communication arts is a creative school. And the whole idea is to try and spend a year learning how to do creative work better. And how to actually excel and do it properly.
I got introduced to it , by a common friend, I've spent over a decade with them, being one of the mentors there. Every time it is great to see the super eager, energetic, enthusiastic, creative minds who are , in there to absorb.
But the idea is that they would spend a year and Get out into the industry and start their [00:22:00] creative careers that's the idea of the school. Yeah, so it's specifically about creative careers in the advertising world I would say in the advertising slash marketing world. What does this school bring that you think might be lacking, in the advertising creative industry?
, do you think it nurtures and the important role that it plays?
In most countries, education is not necessarily very vocational and it's certainly not as pointy as to make you ready for a creative career. So you would do a bachelor's degree in arts or history you almost stumble upon a creative job, , that you like.
But there are hardly any places that prepare you for it specifically. And this is one of the few places that does. so you really work on it knowing that that's going to be your career. Rather than let's say do a degree in history where the idea is to perhaps learn how to learn or just to be more educated as a human being, but this is more vocational and that's the [00:23:00] gap in our industry and advertising in particular, hardly anyone comes via a formal degree in advertising.
They all come via other means. So bridges that gap between, learning the arts or cultural activities and pursuits that university and actually translating that into a more tangible, practical application in a work environment, which can be quite a shock if you don't have that bridge. That's
I find that they get a lot of creative mentors and teachers and they don't have that many strategists who go and talk to them and what role strategy itself can play even if they don't work with the strategists themselves. What is the role that strategy is going to play in making a creative output better?
And the two things that we talked about, which is what is the end goal? What, how is this going to work? What are you expecting it to do? What do you want people to feel when they see your work? I found that Creative minds[00:24:00] need to be quite diverse and then to look at a blank page. They can go anywhere.
at the same time being pointed towards one thing, what am I trying to achieve with this is what helps them a lot. And always loved going to young people and messing with their minds, you know, it's amazing because these, these guys really listen.
What better can you do than be of help to someone who comes back maybe 10 years later and say, Oh, I remember that thing you said, you know, it's made my work better. There's no greater reward than that. Absolutely.
, I'm really interested to know who are your specific creative heroes and influences? Oh, wow. That's a great question.
People like Tolkien, and J. K. Rowling, the things that they are able to imagine is pretty phenomenal
You say, well, how did you think of that? How? Did you think of that? And that is something that inspires me quite a lot. on the music side, I love Western music or [00:25:00] rock and pop music , with all my heart, but Hindi music just runs in my blood.
I love both the genres equally, but I always will have a bias towards Hindi because that's how I grew up. That's what I heard it creates a sense in me that perhaps it is just a notch deeper than what Western music does in me.
There's a lady called Lata Mangeshkar who passed away just last year. and there's, an artist called Kishore Kumar, there's an artist called S. D. Burman, who is a music director. These are all people , whose golden period was in the 60s and 70s, and their competence and caliber is just divine.
It's superhuman. We are so lucky to have had them on this planet. as far as the Western world is concerned, I feel somewhat like that about Paul Simon. again, going back to the words he writes, the tunes that he has written, every single time they give you goosebumps.
There's just nothing quite [00:26:00] like it. I feel the same way about Beatles. I'm a huge Beatles fan of the writing of Lennon McCartney.
And I just feel that the kind of stuff they wrote, the trails that they blazed, the rare band whose last album is their best album, that is so rare. Yeah. There's just absolutely nothing like them. I love, , a lot of people born in 1949, which is the odd thing.
There was Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel. And Mark Knopfler, all born in 1949. Yeah, strange, isn't it? Yeah, this is very strange. So I'm a big fan of their music. Again, going back to the ideas that they're trying to communicate, are just wonderful. The problem is that they tend to be quite mainstream.
So people just listen to, Oh, this uptown girl is a bit of a pop song. And then they don't go further than that. Songs like good night, my angel, or even we didn't start the fire or Leningrad, extremely thoughtful and [00:27:00] beautifully written.
And the same goes for Sting, Springsteen as well, Sting, particularly ex English teacher, who writes the word like rhetorical in a song, right? Yeah. The words he uses, the ideas communicated are pretty phenomenal. I would say that these are probably the ones that I admire
it's interesting because with Springsteen, he's very much stayed with his roots, hasn't he? When you look at his songs and the inspiration, so there's a similarity when you were talking about the Hindi music and how it runs in your blood. What I take from that is, it is important to remember and be proud of who you are and your background, because I think that does come out in your self expression.
Yes. Absolutely. I hadn't thought of that. But yeah, that's very true. Yeah. Definitely. Before we move on to your third creation, if, there was a reason why you had to stop creating, he had to stop doing singing and songwriting. what would you lose from your life if you couldn't express , yourself in that way?
If you know you can do it, and then you have to stop doing it, that would be very sad? That is a big void in your life, and[00:28:00] you would feel some part of you hasn't , been able to express itself.
That would be very sad. and I know I'm not exactly prolific, especially after our son was born, as these things... But if I thought I can't come back to it, that'd be very sad.
I don't know. I don't what I'll do. There's an underlying sense of sadness for sure. Well, I hope you keep creating and we look forward to listening to them as they progress. Who knows where it will go?
. Right. Well, I think we're ready to move on to your third and final creation. Can you share that with us, please? Well, the third, the third thing is there's been many, many occasions where Monica said, you should write a blog.
You should really write this down. You should start doing it. And I just, nah, it's not for me. It's not for me. It's tedious and then one day on a walk, she was telling me that you get these apps where you can just. Record the thoughts into an audio and it'll convert it to text for you. Oh, that's useful. Otta is the app I have. It's Otto. Like the [00:29:00] animal. Otto. Like the So she said, you can use that, so what's the excuse for not doing it?
She's great. I love her. She's very encouraging and supportive. Everyone needs a Monica in their life. Exactly, exactly. Well, thank God I have one. I thought, yes, I've got the app, and I'm gonna do it, but I must be in the background. The same thing applies that you read so many interesting blogs. You read books and you think, I'm not a writer, I can't hold up to those standards, but then it was last year, 2022, I had to give in and I started writing a blog and again, it doesn't need hundreds of responses. You just need people who you respect to say, Hey, this is good.
You know, you should do more. This is good. I wrote a post last week, sitting in the airport. I was there quite early and I was just writing about a couple of nice incidents in New York. And before boarding was announced, I had published it . That's brilliant [00:30:00] it's another example of when you just carve out time for creativity, which I think is just such an important encouragement.
If people can't have a moniker, then at least they have the ability to carve out time and recognize that those moments of waiting, they can actually be creating. There are many more moments like these that I do not use than the ones that I do use, just to be clear. Good, it makes me feel better.
, but once in a while you do and it's, it's nice. And what's your blog called? It's called Silver Pensive. Yeah. Obviously, as you rightly pointed out, it is very much a Harry Potter, uh, book. Without necessarily paying them the royalty. Yeah, I noticed that when I said to you, you were a Harry Potter fan, I definitely detect one.
Yeah, definitely a huge, huge Harry Potter fan. It was just the idea of somewhere where you file away your thoughts, where you come back to it. It was great. It was great.
And I don't feel the same pressure on music, [00:31:00] well pressure may not be the right word, but I don't feel the same obligation to write to a very high standard I just write what I write and I leave it at that. How do you decide what to write in your blog?
Is it just things that you're interested in how do you get to the final subjects? I think that is the biggest question. If subjects came to me more easily, I would write more posts. So , one day I just thought about, three things that my dad had said that I still remember. I just wrote something about that.
Or on a more professional side, I thought, I hate this new business pitching where we do all of the work for free. And then we just hand it to a client.
So the topic is the hardest thing, for me, been useful to think of very small things. So last week was two really lovely incidents. Just joking with somebody while checking in at a hotel or while buying an iPhone for my mother in law.
And just the casual conversation ends up in the salesperson giving me a much better deal. Yes, I read that. Those [00:32:00] small sort of things are, easier to write than the big things. Yeah. Whenever such a small thing happens, then you feel you can write a quick story about it.
Yeah. Would you say that the blog's more for you as a way of expressing or is it for others? 100 percent 100 percent I would just say, yeah, it's for me and in my community on LinkedIn or Facebook or anyone who has the time again to go back to the earlier point of if you had a thought, at least you expressed it.
It's there. It's been left somewhere rather than just forgotten.
I had a teacher in my year seven, year eight, I still remember his face ,
what the saddest sentence in the world is? And he says, the saddest sentence in the world is, I could have done it. And that has really stayed with me. That has really stayed with me. I bore poor son with it so many times as well.
But genuinely, I could have done it, is the saddest sentence in the world. At least I [00:33:00] say I could have written a blog, I could have written a post, but I never did it. I don't want that. Yeah, I really relate to that. I think it's the thing that makes me go into the studio if I don't feel like it.
I know a lot of people who are creative that do almost have to play these mind games with themselves to say. But this could be the day or again, like you say, what if I haven't, and I miss it and it's not there, you sort of have to be in that openness to receive the thunder of lightning, or at least just get going and it will suddenly appear or start to emerge.
So I think that's a really good way of thinking of it.
I'm really intrigued about your day job. Now you work for Meta, obviously from a social media. Perspective. How do you think given that a lot of your hobbies there's something that you do with your mind, your body, your hands, your writing, your singing, you're playing the guitar.
What do you think the positives and negatives are of the impact of social media, on creativity? Because some [00:34:00] people might say that they provide platforms , to encourage it. And I can certainly see things in other parts of the country , or world that I would never have seen. But then there's obviously, potentially drawbacks. I'm really interested in your perspective.
I guess, full disclosure, you may call me biased, but this is genuinely my opinion at this point, that. Thanks to social media, you get exposed to different minds and different, worlds that I would never have known existed.
So, the positive aspect of it is that if you think of social media like an Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn even, When you put it out there, you will reach many more people that you didn't, think would, hear it. So I was talking about Lata Mangeshkar, , this incredible singer who passed away last year.
when she passed, I wrote, one post a day on Facebook about 92 of my favorite songs of hers. Yeah. And those 92 days were very emotional for me because I absolutely worship her. But [00:35:00] incredibly, although this is my community on Facebook, I have a large community of, 1200, friends, people got in touch with me who I had not heard from before.
And they said, Oh, I love this song of Lata's as well. I didn't know that it was from this movie or this angle of the rhythm on the song. I hadn't realized that. So I was able to get in touch with people who had not heard from for decades. And equally, , I guess they were able to think about, , a piece of music that they have always liked, but not seen it from X angle or Y angle.
And there's no other way it could have happened without social media. So that connection with , that tribe of people who have that particular, , niche interest or, , particular interest is, is really powerful. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is so beautiful. It is so beautiful and powerful.
Thank you. What are the negative effects? I guess the negative effects are more to do with people than the media itself. I've always said that there are negative people in the world. And whether you encounter [00:36:00] them on a train or on Facebook, it will all be the same. So it's not the train's fault that you're encountering negative people on the tube.
It's not the tube's fault. So, what is the negative effect? I guess people can steal your work very easily. The other effect, I think, is that a lot of people just say negative things and that could impact you. And I guess you have to be clear enough to say, who are you going to pay attention to?
Yeah. People who really like your work or the few people, the minority that has. Something snarky to say about it. Yeah. And I can see that, especially among some people who might be more sensitive to it. Yeah, just being Brave enough, I suppose, to put yourself on social media , in the form of your artistic expression can be quite a big thing for people. I know some people who do create and actually would love to share it, but they haven't quite got the courage.
It might be because it's a hobby. , and they won't even put themselves out there under a pseudonym, or some people do put them [00:37:00] under a pseudonym and then they'll switch to being like, oh, this is definitely me now, once they get confident. So I kind of think, especially when I started, publishing my art on social media, it was quite a big thing for me to, from the first post actually say, Okay, I'm going to share this now.
So for me, it helped me in that sense I wasn't looking for validation, but with every post, I was telling myself that I'm doing this now because it's in the public domain. It was your blog, wasn't it? Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So I think that's interesting , the first step can often be the hardest and you have lots of different ways of expressing , your inner voice, , through your writing and through , your singing. And I think just being able to have the confidence to do that first step is a really good thing to end on really.
. Yeah. I think we've come to the end of our journey through the forest. So I'd like to thank you for accompanying me and I'd like to say congratulations. You're now an art after dark Illuminati. Amazing. Thank you for asking me. So there are two duties that you have before [00:38:00] Illuminati.
So the first one is to share. What kind of way people can get into your creative expression that's easy and low cost? And then the second one is if you could recommend someone who'd be willing , to share their stories with me in the forest. I guess, if you look at songwriting as well as blogging, both of them are free.
Everyone has a phone and you can just. sing a song into the phone and just record it and you can have a paper and a pen and write it, you know, it's completely free, but I think, you have to accept the fact that it's initially going to be bad.
And then the first bits are going to be bad. Unless you have them you won't really get to the good ones. So you just have to get over that. Yes, for two years I've been running bad stuff and then the third year it will come, it'll come, the price you pay is, I think you have to have some kind of persistence or a bit of a thick skin on just doing it and not worrying
I think the way to do it. Logging or songwriting, really. [00:39:00] Yeah, definitely. Just say to yourself, it's going to be bad. You've set the expectation, you set the bar, it's going to be bad. I think that's a great piece of advice. Get it out, get it out. Actually, going back to Harry Potter, this is a line I've used quite a lot from Hagrid in the second book when Ron is spitting out slugs.
Hagrid says better out than in and it's a brilliant line, absolutely brilliant line. I think that is my second most favorite line after, it is not our abilities that make us who we are. It is our choices, which is what Dumbledore says to Harry. And those are just incredible, incredible words.
Yeah, it is great, better out than in. That's a really powerful message actually. There's a lot of mental health issues and bottling up and people not talking, you know, being able to express that. Is really helpful.
100 percent to your second question, there's a guy called Wade Sane. He is, one of my closest friends and I've written a song with him as well.
He is probably the most creative brain, I've known. When you talk to him, he will say [00:40:00] something you're not expecting. He will have an angle on something that you're not expecting.
And just the way his brain works, it deserves to be, really, really understood. And I don't know whether it can ever be understood. He's a super, super creative person. He's written a book he writes his own blogs. To get under the skin of , how does that brain work would be amazing.
, I'm a hundred percent sure you'll enjoy it. I'm very happy to make the intros. Oh, thank you so much. I can't wait to talk to him. Who knows what will come up on the podcast by the sound of it. Yeah, absolutely. He will say something you do not expect and perhaps he didn't know he was going to say.
Brilliant. Oh, that sounds fantastic. Well, thank you so much. It's been a really enlightening conversation and I've really enjoyed it. Brilliant.
Louise: I really hope that you've enjoyed our conversation in the forest today. Remember to tag me on socials@artafterdark.co. If you've been inspired to create or to share any thoughts on this episode I'd absolutely love to hear from you and to see what you've been up to.
You can find [00:41:00] all images and details of the creations we discuss in the show notes on my website, louise emily.com.