Get Your Meat from the Butcher and Your Flowers from the Florist.

One day, a man asked the florist for a steak. 

The florist gave him flowers and said, ‘these are a type of steak, eat these.’

The man ate the flowers. They made me sick. They made him tired.

Wake up. That isn’t meat. It’s a flower. Stop eating flowers. 

Go back to the butcher. 

Get your meat from the butcher. Get your flowers from the florist.

Creativity 1

Hi, I’d like to talk,

I don’t think creativity can be a goal. 

I really don’t think children can be made more creative (because they’re already 100% creative).

And I don’t take creativity to be a compliment.

Why shouldn’t  people want to be more creative? Isn’t creativity… good? Isn’t it good to be good? Why shouldn’t  we be trying to make our children more creative? And why isn’t it a compliment to tell someone they’re creative? I’ll admit, it does sound weird when you put it all together, but that’s why I’m here. This essay is the first in a three-part series. Let’s go.

Creativity isn’t a Goal

Some things can only be achieved as the side effects of other pursuits. Happiness is a good example. Trying to feel happy probably won’t make you feel happy. You need to accomplish a task and exhale. Then you might feel happiness as a side effect. 

Creativity is a little like happiness, but easier to verify. Creativity creates things. And those things prove that creativity occurred. Creativity’s creations are also receipts. I’m being creative right now and I have this essay to prove it. Happiness doesn’t produce essays, it’s how I hope I feel when I’m done.

Creativity bleeds, happiness agrees. 

There is a three-word answer to how do I become more creative?  But in order to understand the answer, it’s important to understand why it’s such a poor question.

I think creativity hired a great publicist. Creativity has a much better reputation than it deserves. Everyone wants to be on the creative team. But the truth is, most of the time you won’t have to use creativity to get what you want. Here’s a chart.

It’s usually so much easier and more efficient not  to use creativity to get what you want. Want to get better at pool? The best way is to not  be creative. Read the best book on how to do it and apply discipline. Want to build your first bridge? Please, do not be creative; copy classical architecture. Starting a new skill is a great example of when creativity will not serve those who use it. 

Creativity is generally associated with the arts because, for example, there are plenty of books to read, but if you want to write one of your own, you’ll have to be at least a little creative. You can go to a museum to look at any number of masterpieces, but if you want to paint your own, you’ll have to be creative. I think this is why creativity is generally associated with art, although if you think about it, creativity should be equally distributed everywhere. Everything, after all, has been created.

I’m here to say this: 

Creativity is not king, desire is. Desire tells creativity what to do, not the other way around. But most people think creativity wears the crown. The truth is, without desire, creativity would not exist.

When desire needs something, creativity is his last resort. Desire would much rather summon reliable servants like discipline, routine, or buying things with cash. Desire finds creativity to be incredibly unreliable. If something is creative, it means it’s nothing like anything that has existed before. That’s probably a bad thing. And on the off chance that creativity produces something great, desire usually prefers the familiar, however mediocre, to the innovative.

Desire Efficient Things

Someone on Earth is best at nailing nails with a hammer. That person doesn’t know they’re the best and they don’t care. They just love to build. The skill with the hammer is a happy side effect of their desire to build.

Someone on Earth is the most creative person. I don’t think they know it either and I don’t think they care, because that person’s desire is solely focused on something only they can see. I don’t know if that is a blessing or a curse.

Reading a book or essay on creativity is the last way to find it. 

How do I become more creative? What’s the three-word answer? Pursue something else.

So, what do you desire?

Why do I really  not like it when people try to make children more creative? And why do I not take “creative” to be a compliment? Those are parts two and three, coming soon.

A Short Palm Sunday Story

In 2011 I was commissioned by a church to write a story about Palm Sunday for them to read at their service. I thought I’d share it with everyone here.

A Short Palm Sunday Story- by Tyler Schwartz

In retrospect, I don’t know why anyone was around at all. Pilate was entering town from the west, a very big deal: trumpets, war horses, everyone had their outfit or uniform picked out for weeks. Everyone went to Pilate’s arrival to see and to be seen. If you weren’t there, something was wrong with you. Something had to keep you from going to Pilate’s procession.

Of course, I wasn’t one of those inferior people, I had the proud honor of a public title, and at that moment, I was looking at my suit of armor laid out in the shape of a man. I couldn’t wait to slowly put it on, and feel the cold weight of her on my shoulders.

My hand dropped like a dead leaf and my fingers grazed the heavy steel. I imagined what people would think when they saw me in it, I closed my eyes and savored the thought.

It was at this very private moment, when I heard it, a sloppy chant.

It couldn’t be Pilate’s arrival. The chanting wasn’t synchronized, and Pilate was coming from the westside, and I lived on the east. I craned my neck out my door and saw a mob of people waving leaves.

Mildly curious, I ran back to my room, looked at my armor, took a deep breath, and quickly put it on. Next thing you knew, I was running down the street. I wish you could’ve heard the sound of my armor running, like the rhythm of a war drum.

I arrived at the mob and tried to wedge myself in to see what was inspiring such unrehearsed chanting. But, I couldn’t make any progress. The crowd was like one giant organism, shoulders grafted with shoulders, arms slowly waving tree branches. Suddenly, I felt cumbersome in my armor.

Then the shouts and chants confluenced into, “Hosanna, Hosanna.”

My curiosity was now so inflamed that I started looking for creative ways to see what was going on! Maybe Pilate was making a secret entrance.

Next to me stood a naked tree. Its branches had been stripped by the crowd. I tried to climb it, but my armor prevented me from reaching my hands above my shoulders.

“Hosanna, Hosanna.”

I wanted so badly to see what was going on! But, I wanted to see it in my armor, without it I would be just like everyone else here. Perhaps if I removed my armor, for just a moment to climb the tree, Pilate would see my ambition and look on me with favor.

I quickly took off my armor, ceremoniously stacked it near the base of the tree, then got to climbing. Before long, I reached the tree’s pinnacle.

I was looking for a warhorse, a symbol to inspire fear, honor, and respect.

Then I just started laughing! Pointing and laughing. At the middle of this spectacle, the inspiration drawing all these nobodies was a man on a donkey. You could only tell it was a donkey by its ears, it looked more like a large house cat. The donkey was so small, the feet of the pathetic man riding it dragged in the dust, caking his feet in a shameful red clay.

Between my laughing and the chanting, there was no way for me to hear the tree branch supporting me slowly crack, and give way, sending me suddenly plummeting towards the ground.

Ironically, I landed on my armor, and my whole back broke like a promise.

Red flowers of pain blossomed over my whole body.

I’m not sure if I was humiliated by my paralysis, or if I was paralyzed by my humiliation.

Now there were 2 feet and 4 hooves standing over me. That stupid excuse for a donkey and his dusty rider.

The rider, who they called Hosanna, bent over me and looked in my eyes.

His eyes were stubborn.

Stubborn like spring.

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The worst baseball player ever

The Worst Baseball Player EVER is a friendly generational critique and a call to action for children and millennials to focus on self-improvement instead of demanding that the world cater to their insecurities.

The Unmagic World of Chigamin

The Unmagic World of Chigamin is a subversive take of a young-adult fantasy novel, where a young boy travels to a less magical world than the one he lives in, Chigamin. This is a fun novel I wrote in college that has enormous potential, but I’ve never found the proper outlet for it. If you’d like to talk to me about it, please email me at tyler@tylervsnyc.com

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