Interview with:Jeff Cole [jeffcole]
CREATIVITY
 | How and why did you begin to be creative? My first conscious memory of being creative was in kindergarten - a long time ago. I wrote a story called "The Eagle That Had Acrophobia." My teacher called me up to the desk and made my prove I knew what acrophobia was.
I started writing poetry when I was seven or eight. I have all of my notebooks from then until now. I still write poetry |
| Your mind is your work tool. How do you take care of it? I meditate every morning for about half an hour. I also go for long bike rides in which I only think about the ride, which gives my mind a chance to rest. |
| How do you avoid repeating yourself, or falling into formula? How do you stay fresh? By being careful and keeping track of what I have already done. That's why I save everything I create. |
| Do you have a ritual like retiring to a lonely place from time to time to cleanse your mind? I go for long early morning walks with my dog. |
| What cultural sources do you draw from the most? There isn't enough room in this space for me to answer that. Let's see - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, the Impressionist painters, Monty Python, the Smothers Brothers, Beethoven, Gunter Grass, Maimonides, Rashi, The Tao, Buddha, Mr. Mulvey, my sixth grade English teacher, Lawrence Sterne, and so on and so on. |
| When you accept a job, how much value do you place on each of the following? Money, creative liberty, visibility, and to work with the best. Creative liberty is tops, followed by working with the best, then visibility and then money. I do want to get paid. Hard to butter my bread with fame. |
| "To give birth to ideas." Is this only an expression, or are there really parallels between giving birth and creativity? Absolutely. Both involve creation. |
| Does spirituality contribute to your creativity? Yes |
| It is possible to fall in love with a bad idea simply because it is yours. How do you avoid this? No. By knowing when it is a bad idea. |
| Must someone be the leader or boss in order for a creative team to function well? Yes, someone has to make the final decision and settle conflicts. |
| Declaration: With what person or business would you like to work? Trek Bicycles and Brian Solis. |
| What criteria do you use when selecting someone to be a part of your creative team? the ability to use conflict creatively. |
| What is the best advertisement you've seen recently? I have not seen a good advertisement lately - if by good you mean one that actually sells a product. |
| Do you work well under pressure? Yes |
| What city in the world currently attracts you due to its creative environment? Galway, Ireland, Boston and where I live now, Milwaukee. Actually, the external environment is not important. Hunter Thompson wrote in his kitchen. It is the internal environment that counts. |
| How is an idea sold? Marketing is 50 percent of the creative process. What good is an idea if no one ever sees it? |
| Ideas can come simultaneously to different people in different places with no connection to one another. How do you explain this phenomenon? There are over six billion people on Earth. I would be shocked if the same idea did not occur more than once. |
| You are as good as your last idea. Wouldn't you like to have a more secure type of work? No. |
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Jeff Cole
Milwaukee, USA
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