Dare to feed the right wolf - James Victore

0:11My dad was a lifelong military, but he was an amateur chef and amateur photographer. He built the house we lived in. I could tell crazy stories about my father. He's no longer around, but when I was finishing FEC, I asked my mom, I said, Hey, if you asked dad if he was creative, would he say he was? she was like oh no no no no no he wasn't no he wouldn't say that I said if you asked dad could he figure anything out she'd say oh yeah he could figure anything out so the idea of creativity scares people the idea of artists scares people they're charged words they're like those are special things for special people or for my dad it would have been like oh were you calling me gay right and he had that but if you can figure things out that's a level of creativity So we're all weird.

1:00We're all creative. Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. It's about becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinich. I'm a designer, author and eternally curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens when you dare to create?

1:48today i'm talking with james victor an artist author and activist who teaches people how to illuminate their individual gifts in order to achieve personal greatness in our conversation to celebrate the release of his latest book hey weirdo we explore his evolution from pleasing clients to finding clients who appreciate his authentic voice learning that creativity's job is to disrupt. James now coaches frustrated creative adults to express what's truly in their heart rather than succumbing to creative constipation. In this conversation, key themes include the difference between being weird versus seeming weird, the importance of self-love in creative expression, and why perfectionism is simply a tool for self-sabotage.

2:34James also emphasizes that creativity requires a business acumen because a starving artist is just an artist who doesn't know they're in business. It's my pleasure to welcome James Victoria.

2:53Hey, James, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I am groovy, Radham. It's great to be here. I appreciate you asking me. Thank you. I think you're like a man who doesn't need an introduction, yet there might be a couple of people listening to this and say, who is James Victoria? I am what you call a recovering graphic designer, meaning I started my career years ago as a commercial graphic designer. And I realized I'm a pretty good one, meaning I can get my work into museums around the world. I've had two shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But then when you hit your 30s and your 40s and you become an adult designer, you realize that I'm a racehorse.

3:31If you want to win races, hire me. But what most clients want to do is put an apple cart behind this racehorse. And I'm like, nah. So I'm, I realized I'm a pretty good graphic designer, but I'm much, I'm a much better teacher. And I taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York for almost 18 years. And now I teach and coach and mentor frustrated, creative adults and help them do the work that's in their hearts. I remember your story about MoMA and I think it was a client story. You were arguing about some detail in a project and you were like, dude, you're arguing about blue color or the font and I'm in a moment what is the point of here of this conversation my first poster I created because I had to because I had to make comment I realized that freedom of the press belongs to those who own a press I didn't own a press but I was a graphic designer and I knew printers and a situation came where it was the 500th anniversary of the celebration of the quote-unquote discovery of America.

4:33And I went to school. I learned about Sacagawea, and I learned about the pilgrims, and I learned all the bullshit and the Thanksgiving story, the whitewashed version. But I also read some books and some history, and I learned about the continued genocide in this country of the Native Americans from Plymouth Rock to today. and I wanted to make a comment. There was a big parade being planned and parties in New York City and they usually go down, they go down Fifth Avenue and they stop at Columbus Circle. So I created a poster. We printed 5 ,000 of them and I got them put up professionally and professionally means you talk to your printer and you say, hey, how do I get these up on the street?

5:21You know, like movie posters and stuff. He said, they said, oh, there's a whole bunch. There's two different Greek companies and what you do is you pay them. And I know the guy's name, you pay them. And then when we're done printing these, we take boxes and we bring them to Lincoln Center at night and we leave them at the back door. And they'll come and they'll pick them up and the next morning they just, they'll show up all over the city of New York. So it was like legal, illegal posturing. So my poster was up next to Calvin Klein advertising posters and movie posters and it was fantastic. and the day before the parade like I'd seen them up all over New York and the day before the parade the studio I was working out of the time was I was just working at a friend's studio and it was the the 11th floor of Carnegie Hall which was like a hop and a skip away from Columbus Circle so I took my lunch and I went and sat in Columbus Circle and was just like across the street watching you know looking at my posters and having a sandwich right and um I watched the police pull up and they get out of the car and they open up the trunk and they pull out what looks to be like a, you know, a mop, you know, with those hairy mops, but it didn't have the hairy parts on it.

6:35It was just metal on the end. And it was a scraper. And they scraped my posters off the wall. They didn't touch the movie posters on the left of mine or the advertising posters on the right. They just scraped mine down. And I didn't have the balls to ask them why. Hey, what are you doing to my poster. I paid to have that shit put up there. So yeah, I love making the work that's in my heart and I have to make work that, that entertains, educates, delights, or pisses people off. I need and like that strong emotion. Otherwise I could just not have an opinion and do commercial work and get paid and, you know, and have a house and have a summer house and have all the bullshit and lead a completely boring life, and my graphic design will have meant nothing.

7:29How old were you when you did those posters? I was just 30. Wow. I was maybe 29 or 30. With your sandwich sat there, watching all of this happening, especially with the police showing up, did you feel a bit scared? Or were you like, let's see what happens? You know, I was at a safe distance. I sign all my posters, so, you know, my signature's been on it. And people have said, have you ever gotten arrested? And I'm like, you know what? I think I haven't tried hard enough. I need to congratulate you on your new book because in a way I was going to say, let's say hello to James and say, hey, weirdo.

8:07No, don't. Because I fucking hate that word. There's a whole story behind that. You know, I mean, that's where the book comes from, right? It's like I've realized, listen, my book previous to this was called Feck Perfection. And I didn't realize I was a perfectionist until I was writing that book. And that book cured me. I am so much better at letting things go now, especially in my work. And I didn't really realize how much of a weirdo I was and how much I was hiding from that part of me until I put together, hey, weirdo. But I'm not comfortable with that word. I want to be normal. I want to fit in.

8:43I want to be liked just like everybody else. but yeah i think i'm a tad weird i will defend you on the fact that you don't want to be called not weirdo but you're one of a kind you're the odd one out in a very good way just like everybody else is the odd one out like we are you know on the journey of actually self-acceptance like where we've started in this you know in this world trying to find our feet it's the last thing you want to be in school like being a weirdo like being called a weirdo because that's gonna fuck you up in terms of you know your social presence social sort of acceptance but i think the older we grow the more eccentric we go and we go you know what this is me take it or leave it what i've learned recently is not what it is is how people see it it's not who you are it's how people see you so it could be perfectly fine and just strange to your surroundings or you can be just a little bit odd and totally weird to your surroundings so what's your journey into creativity like how do we go from from the beginnings to now to write in this book.

9:41I was born to do this job. I was just born to do this job. And what I've done is, you know, the short story is that I've done a very good job of listening to that. I've done a fairly good job of listening to that. I've strayed a number of times. So in Hey Weirdo, I tell my story, the long version. And in the book, there are eight really strong, compelling interviews with high-end professionals. And all of my interviews with them started with, you know, what made you weird as a kid? And in the book, there were some early copies that I sent around to some friends and they all said the same thing.

10:20They said, James, there's one thing missing. I was like, what? They said, what made you weird as a kid? I'm like, oh shit, I didn't tell my story. So I tell the story and it goes like this. When I was a kid, I have a memory and it's stuck with me my entire life. And the memory is of a pool of melted crayons on a hot cement porch, right? So it's this beautiful melange of color. And I've had that memory my entire life. And the funny thing is, besides for the Cooper Black stuff, most of my work strives to recreate that constantly. recently so it's been this subconscious drive in my work for years and last couple of years I had to check that vision I didn't make sure I think I just conjured that I made that shit up because it's a pretty good story but I checked with my mom so I asked my mom and I said hey do you remember a pool of melted crayons on a hot porch and she said oh yeah I remember and I could tell that she did not remember it as being something beautiful, this expressionism of color.

11:34She remembered it as, why did you do that? We don't own this house. Who's going to clean that up? So the thing that moved me as a kid for its beauty also has embedded in it her anger and that's something that I shoot for still. So I've held on to that. I was the weird kid. I was lucky that I was the third of three children. I was the only boy, so I was left alone. I was full of play and joy and fun and love as a kid. I failed after high school. I failed a lot. I tried university, didn't stick. I tried getting a job, didn't work. So I moved to New York at 19 years old to become an artist, to become a designer.

12:20And I went to the School of Visual Arts. It was another school that didn't stick, that didn't work. So I just started working immediately. I was 21. I just started working and I've been working ever since basically. But when I started working, I started doing the work that I thought I was getting paid for. I was basically making graphic design look like graphic design, making book jackets look like book jackets. And it's what people still do. It's I call it making the obvious obviouser, right? Stuff that's completely not interesting. So I kind of strayed from my path. I became, you know, commercial doing work that just didn't move me.

12:58And then I woke up one day and I'm like, fuck this. I've got my own sense of humor, my own way of seeing things, my own sense of color and proportion, right? And typography. And I started putting it in my work and my clients hated it. My clients fucking hated it. So I had to do, you know, the only smart thing and go out and try to find my clients, the clients who would work with me. because I think that's a big flaw that most designers do is they think, okay, I'm a graphic designer. I have to figure out how to be nice to everybody and make everybody happy and make the client happy all the time.

13:31I'm like, fuck that because the person that you have to make happy is you or else you're going to have a miserable fucking career of placating everybody else. And then you're going to wake up at 30 or 40 and you're going to come to me and say, hey, James, why am I so frustrated? I'm like, well, you're because you're creatively constipated because you've never expressed yourself. Do you know that, Radim, do you know the opposite of depression? Expression is expression. We become depressed. We literally become depressed because we are creatively constipated because we've got the job, but the job won't let us actually do what's in our hearts.

14:10So we're frustrated creatively because we can't express ourselves. We can't be that weird kid. We can't go back and do those things. We can't have that amount of play and fun and joy we did when we were kids. I loved making a mess when I was a kid. I loved working with my hands. When I started as a graphic designer, I was lucky enough that computers were just starting. I started because I wanted to use my hands and make things. Little did I know that I would grow up to be an adult who basically, as a career, most of my time is spent managing some fucking websites. Fucking shoot me. It does make perfect sense of like how you've come literally to full arc of yourself, being frustrated, things were not sticking.

14:57And now you're helping those ones that, you know, again, are in a situation where things are not sticking. So I think it's a perfect circle that you accomplish. That is pretty much my path. And now what I tried to do is I tried to express myself in the most truest form. I try to play the way that five-year-old kid who made a mess with crayons did. And I know how hard it is to be a designer, to be an artist, to be creative and have that inside of you. And I want to share that with other people. I went out for a walk with my dog and I bumped into some people in the neighborhood who I hadn't talked to before.

15:32And my dog was cute. So people wanted to talk to me. So they said, oh, James, what do you do for a living? I said, oh, well, I'm an artist and a writer. They said, and they immediately, they did that fucking thing. They did that thing, which is so beautiful and so amazing. And they said, ah, when I was a kid, one of them said, when I was a kid, I used to take paper and I would draw out a pattern and then I would cut it with scissors and I would staple it or tape it together. And I would make, and I'd say, oh my God, that's so awesome. What do you do now? And they said, this woman said, oh, I run a parking garage.

16:06and I'm like oh my heart our creativity we don't see it as viable we don't see it as something valuable we don't see it as something life affirming life fucking changing it's something we have to pass through it's like it comes out of the fucking bible right you read this passage which one is it I forget what it's called we read this passage at weddings here in the states traditionally and it has this line that says when I was a child I played like a child when I was a And now I am a man and I have to put aside my childish things. You, putting away your childish things. Let me just grow up and become a fucking mindless drone and a normal person and follow what everybody else is doing until I die a frustrated death.

16:49Too early frustrated death. Here we are, you and I, living like creative life. And neither of us have had some special education. is more like how much do you want to be actually following those paper patterns and doing the things that made you really happy because at what point do people give up on their thing or at what point do they get sort of seduced by the societal easiness creativity is never going to be easy being an artist is never going to be easy it's never going to pay as well as running a parking garage or being in finance but at what point do you hold people accountable saying hey well actually it's lovely that you want to do this or you wanted to do this but in some way you made that choice of not pursuing your creativity.

17:30Because if the creativity was taught out of us or we were taught out of creativity in school, there would be no artists. I think the creativity getting taught out of us, it happens in a number of ways. One is that creativity and being weird, particularly, needs a safe space. And that needs to be either yourself, you need to be the vessel. Like I was pretty much, I was pretty fucking protective of my play and my creativity. I wasn't going to give it away. Like I was pretty unshakable, but most people aren't. And they need drama club or they need that art club or they need the cool and groovy kids.

18:07They need that safe space, right? Because a lot of us, like when I was a kid, I didn't grow up near artists. I didn't know you could do that for a living. That was something talented people did or creative people did. You know, when I was a kid, I was called creative and it wasn't a compliment. It meant I was loud. It meant I was noisy. It meant I talked too much. It meant I talked out of turn, right? And I taught university for, you know, 18 years or more. And I didn't even want creative people in my class because they disrupt. Because that's creativity's job. And when you're teaching a class, especially when you're teaching kids, right, you need them to listen.

18:48You need to sit down and listen, follow what's on the board. You know, you want order, you want discipline. and creativity doesn't fucking do that. So we need that safe space because society is constantly wanting us to conform. Even when I was in New York and I was like becoming a cool and groovy designer and trying to figure out my ass or my elbow and I wanted to do social, cultural, and political posters and I wanted to do my work, I was around other designers who were completely satisfied doing a high level of mediocre work. a high level of well-paid shitty work and they're like man james i just i wish i could just do what you do i'm like well you can it's gotta quit your shitty job oh no how am i gonna how am i gonna do that you know there's a certain amount of brainwashing that happens you know or you know oh i would love to quit my wife my job but you know my wife she likes the paycheck you know we just like we settle into this bullshit these lies that we tell ourselves i mean the person you just described was never gonna be creative right no yeah true well they don't have the fire it's like bob dylan said you got to serve somebody it may be the devil or it may be the lord but you got to serve somebody right you got to choose and at every moment in your life like even now even talking to you i got there's moments in the back of my mind it's going are you gonna say that really you're going to say that out loud, right?

20:17In every moment in our lives, we are either shrinking out of fear or growing out of love. I love what I do. I want people riled up. I want people excited about what they do. I want them to see, oh my God, I can do that. Cool. I can be happy and even probably well-paid. Awesome. I mean, that money is a big reason why people do or don't become artists, right? You know, because they're like, well, you know, that starving artist, a starving artist is just a fucking artist that doesn't know they're in business. Learn to fucking be in business. Learn to be in business. It's like you're going to you're going to be in business.

20:57That means you're going to wake up in the morning and you work for a while until lunch. Then you have lunch and then you go back to work and you get a little bit more done. Right. Be in business and you got to keep the books and you got to watch money and you got to do this and this. It's the same fucking thing, except it's for you. I think one of the ingredients that I think we need as creatives or creative people to make it happen is obsession. It's only you who can give yourself permission to be creative. It's only you who can go and go out and make it. Like, it's only you who will actually get those doors open.

21:26You know, what you mentioned about a person who doesn't want to be in business, you need to know what invoice is in any other profession, regardless. listen so it's just I think that's an excuse because I think we fall into sometimes this sort of romantic idea of hey I'm a creative person therefore the world should open up for me and you know all I have to do is to show up a piece of artwork that I've created but we live in ever-changing times where you need to be so much more than just a creative because I believe creativity is first and foremost verbal it's your voice like you can actually fire up someone we've just given them idea of what we actually can do obviously now we can paint pictures with a thousand words as a prompt but you can also paint them but for millions of years we can actually paint stories and not vivid imaginary storytelling with just words and this is i think the expression that you talk about like how do you get someone fired up and how do you get someone excited because when you express yourself everything else starts falling into place for me the fun part is introducing people to the idea of being bold being audacious you know people come to me and they're like well you know i would make t-shirts and i made a shop but they're not selling i'm like so what how often do you talk about it how often do you show it in what ways are you talking about it where are you talking about it you know like you gotta you know your excitement breeds excitement you can't just put up a shop and go okay where's the money right we you know, again, it comes down to even in this conversation, I need to talk about marketing.

22:56And marketing is having something to say and saying it again and again and again. You know, I have an opinion. I express it again and again and again. That's my marketing.

23:11James Victore:We'll be back after a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee Co., the first creative speciality coffee company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact on a creative industry and beyond. Lux Coffee Co. offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices. And you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins, coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel at luxcoffee.co.uk. You can use the code podcast to get 15 % off your first order.

24:01That's pretty interesting. I frequent some forums, some places when you say like, hey, just this is what I'm doing. Somebody comes up like a moderator and says, hey, thanks for posting this. Love the hassle. You know, I'm like, fuck you. Honestly, what do you mean love the hassle? are we just hanging out as a sort of hungry creatives and oh i'm really no life i'm poor and this is life history i was like no what do i get when i open my instagram ads ads ads ads what do i get like everyone's promoting something in the world of business but somehow it's kind of viewed as oh if you're promoting yourself as an artist or creative it's like oh this is a bit dirty you know are you sure you're not you know of course it's look this is just we don't have a business that's other people's shit though you know i hate that word hustle you know i love i I like the word love, but hustle is frantic.

24:50It's frantic. It's craving. It's not even a hustle. Like, obviously, as you said, marketing is saying something, that thing over and over again, because you never know who you might meet. You never know who you might actually change someone's life by what you do, because it's mostly less about a product and more about a connection with another person. Hey, this is what I'm doing. How do we connect? This is the reason why we're having this conversation, because this is how we connected through what we do. why do you think that there's always this sort of shyness and present and greatest what is it that stops people doing the thing and then becoming frustrated so they need your help that's a great question because you know when i was a kid i was shy i have since learned there is no genetic marker for shyness i wasn't just born shy i was told shy i was shy when i was a kid and my father used to constantly do that he says oh this is because i was the boy and the baby he's like oh this is jimmy he's my shy one i'm like am i am i shy it was okay i guess i have to be shy right it's taken me a long time to kind of get over that but here right i have two i have an eight-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son they teach me the most innate and most primal creative drive.

26:05And I try to teach everybody this thing. It's so good. And it's so strong. And it's so easy for us to do when we're kids, because I've got two of them and they're like barnacles. They love me. I'm a single dad with two kids. So they're like on me all the time. They love me. But it's just like I'm doing the dishes or I'm trying to do this or I'm trying to get work done. And it's constant. And I want to shut it down. But I'm a good parent. And I'm like, okay, guys, listen, I'm doing this. I want to come see what you're doing. Hang on. But it goes like this. And this is something adults need to fucking learn how to do.

26:39We need to relearn. We did know it when we were kids. When we were weird, we knew it all. We knew how to do this. And it goes like this. Daddy, look at me. Look what I did. That, that call to be seen and heard and loved is so important. And we need to do that all the time. We need to be seen and heard and loved, or if not loved, appreciated. And that means paid. So we have to learn how to say, hey, look at me. Look at what I did. I cannot be shy about my work. I have been shy about my work for too long. Me, fucking James Victoria, too shy about my work for too long and I'm not going to do it anymore.

27:20So I'm asking, I was in a tizzy yesterday. I was put into a tailspin yesterday because I'm in this thing of asking, you know, way up over my pay grade. And I asked for something yesterday that I didn't, that I didn't get. The answer was a quick no. And it sent me in. I'm like, wait a minute. No, that's not the answer. Right. But I have to get good at, you know, saying, Hey, look at me, look what I can do. Look what I've done. Look what I can do, you know, for you then i have to not ruminate and go into depression when the answer is no the way you talk about yourself is like james victoria of now versus james victoria from the past so there's almost like two jimmies the shy one and jimmy now when was the breaking point like when did this thing change was that particular moment particular sort of realization was it gradual it was gradual i was dissatisfied as a strictly commercial designer for a long time.

28:18My role as a teacher at the School of Visual Arts taught me so much. My book, Effect Perfection, came from everything I learned when I was teaching at SVA because I realized I had kids at the time and I had, you know, and then I had my students and I never, I realized the link between teaching and raising kids. And I I realized that so much of what my students were learning in other classes was they were learning the rules. And I'm like, guys, fuck that. There's no fucking. They would come up to me after class and they'd go, you know, Mr. Victoria, why do you say the opposite of all of our other teachers?

29:01And I'm like, listen, here's your other teachers. Here's me. Find your place. Find your place in the middle. I think they're wrong. I think they're teaching you how to enjoy gray carpets and fluorescent cubicle or gray cubicles, you know, padded cubicles and fluorescent lighting. I don't want you to like that. I don't want you to learn to enjoy the taste of shit. You know, I want to hop you up with on creativity and make you so addicted to that that you'll never let go. You mentioned earlier that when you write in that book, you realize you were perfectionist until then. but your work isn't something especially if your style isn't exactly something that will strike you as a perfectionism you're like it's not like a pixel perfect beautiful grid light you can be an abstract painter with smears of paint where you could draw you could paint with your buttocks on the thing you're still going to stand back and go oh i want to get to the point what is your definition of perfectionism what lies behind them sabotage it's a way it's a it's a tool we use to stop ourselves.

30:03That's it. It's a tool we use to stop ourselves. And it comes from like, we were, maybe as kids, we were competitive and, or we have grew up in a competitive family and we, you know, we always had to do better. We always had to prove ourselves. So we became perfectionists. I was running a, I was running one of my, one of my live workshops that I do occasionally. I have one coming up in the fall. I'm very excited about, but I had a guy, he was a CEO and he'd worked his way up from, he literally joined this marketing agency, mopping floors, and he became the CEO. Like he was pretty amazing. And he's at this camp.

30:34I realized in conversations that he was a double major in college in chemistry and biology, double major. And he runs marathons. And we went, I was looking for a walk and we're walking around the property. And I forget what it was. Let's say his name was Ken, I think. I don't remember his name. Tim, actually. And we were walking around the property and I said, Tim, tell me something. Yeah. I said, what are you trying to prove? who are you trying to prove it to? And he just broke down in tears. He just busted down. He didn't know. He didn't, no one had ever seen or told him that he was enough and he didn't have to constantly fucking prove himself by running marathons and double major and being excelling all the time, right?