How do you show up as 20% more defiantly you?

Doubling down on your own special sauce in the Happy Meal hellscape

How do you double down on what really makes you, you?

I’ve been kicking that question around since Neon & I started watching the Country Music documentary from Ken Burns. 1) It’s a great education on US history through the lens of an evolving musical culture and, 2) though I’ve been playing bluegrass/Americana/folk/country most of my life, I’ve learned so much more about how individual musicians in this lineage crafted their unique act and shifted the whole scene while doing it.

It struck me that the narrative sort of played out like this for a number of folks:

You’re born in a shack without electricity where you’ve been playing traditional music with your mom/sisters/uncles/on the porch/at funerals/in church so one day you decide to show up unannounced at a radio station to play your version of You Are My Sunshine hoping this exposure is your ticket out of poverty. You’ve been imitating whatever popular sound was happening on the village radio, but one day you’re like— I gotta stand out! I gotta be me! So you double down on your unique thing— you get yourself the loudest bedazzled Nudie suit you can afford and it’s decked out in like rhinestone UFOs and you shell out to have your name inlaid in abalone a foot long down the fretboard of your guitar. HERE I AM, WORLD! 100% ME-TOWN!! AND I’M READY TO BOOOOOOOOOGIE!

Nudie suit revival by Fort Lonesome for Diplo

While most of these heroes end up fucked up on amphetamines and alcohol and blazing out of existence before middle age is a tragedy I’ll save for another musing… But I’ve really enjoyed thinking about what it means to be ALL IN on whatever your unique thing is…

I was like, Hmmm….what’s on my bedazzled suit? What’s my abalone inlay? Where am I hollering, “This is ALL ME, the 100% Lisette Show, y’all!!!”?

It’s interesting to think about, right?

I crack myself up.

But really, though—

I’m having this conversation with a lot of my creative friends. In a world where your artistic aesthetic and sound and voice and vibe is ripped off and regurgitated instantly by a new app/algorithm every day, like…Jesus…what do you do??

When it’s easy to make work that looks and sounds like anybody else by pressing a few buttons, how do you double down on making work that’s defiantly you?

One of my answers to this - which I will preach until I die in some technofacistgulag - is that: in a world where everything is productized, our process is all we have left.

I think a lot of people are tired of being served the same Happy Meal and that’s why folks absolutely lap up sketchbook tours & peeks inside famous artists’ journals. In readymade culture, the path we leave behind us on the road to “results” is infinitely more compelling than the “content” we’re fed.

And another way I’m doubling down on being defiantly me is to make as many opportunities for myself as possible where all my weird kinks can co-exist.

I’ve been thinking, like— Ok. I’m an animator obsessed with loops who has a devoted sketchbook practice who likes to improvise poetry, for example. I’m not riding any of those skills to the bank anyway so, free from the expectations of the art market (lol what’s that?? #CONTENT), what could it mean for me to mash this shit together even more? How much fun would it be to try to layer my digital and practical processes and show what I do in a way that’s even 20% more me?

Anyway, so all of that heady preamble is the thinking that lead me to this new kind of animated sketchbooking I’ve been playing with lately….

the animate universe
layers of perception
to witness & be witnessed
from within & with all

layers of perception
permeability
from within & with all
page after page

permeability
awe pierced with wonder
page after page
in motion

awe pierced with wonder
to witness & be witnessed
in motion
the animate universe

And here’s my process:

Digital collage, skeuomorphic design elements, doodles in motion, and improvising around my prompt concept “the animate universe”…

You can see how I approach pantoum crafting here, too— Neon realized while watching this that I fill in my repeating lines as I go and work back to infill open spaces. This is such an ingrained and daily practice for me it hadn’t occurred to me that you might do it differently! (He proceeds through linearly, only writing a repeating line once he comes to it. We had a neat conversation about how different the practice is depending on which method you use. Folks who have pantoum-written with me, I’m curious to know what your approach is!)

OK! So your prompt today is:

What can you do to be even 20% more defiantly you in your practice this week?

Or…What’s bedazzled on your Nudie suit?

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xo,