Why Creativity Is a Human Need | With Amie McNee

21:46Amie McNee:And not in an overly controlled way, just in a, I'm the creator of my own art and my own life. And that regulates my nervous system. And it gives me not a sense that I can control everything, but that I have agency over something. And it allows me to take very deep breaths. I mean, there are so many ways, Matt, like I could really wank on about this, to be honest, about how it really soothes me and calms my nervous system. But I think agency and power and authority is really a big one. Are you someone, do you think, that wants to have an impact on the world? Oh, yes. I don't know if you're familiar with the Enneagram, Matt.

22:28Amie McNee:It's a personality tester. but it's one of the only ones that really has a good grip on me because my type, which is a four, its big core want is to have an impact and to be seen and understood and to leave the world with something. And upon reading this stupid personality test, I was so affronted that someone could understand me so clearly. And they've never met me. They didn't know me. It was deeply upsetting, but it is a big part of me. And it's something I have to watch. I have to be careful of it. It's a beautiful part of me, but it's also something I have to be careful of because I think, you know, constantly wanting to be seen and understood and to be impacting people can be exhausting.

23:09Amie McNee:And it can metastasize a bit into something that is not so healthy. But yes, I have a deep desire to have impact. I think most of us do in some way or another. But unfortunately, as an Enneagram 4, I've got it pretty bad. Have you ever done the Myers-Briggs one? I have, yeah. I'm trying to remember who I am. I'm an INFJ. I think. Do you know what you are? Same, same, yeah. Oh, snap. Yeah, same. Yeah, I actually did it recently, funnily enough, because another podcast guest of mine, Ginny Blom, recommended it. I was like, I've never done it. I'll just give it a go. So I've been reading about the INFJ, and I kind of had a feeling you'd say that from having sort of delved into your world a little bit over the last week or so.

23:53But it's interesting, isn't it, that the urge to bring people along with you but also I think it's about connection on a deeper level somehow do you feel that the word

24:02Amie McNee:connection I feel like that's my word like I want and I have a deep need to connect and I think it's an interesting word for this era that we're going through when there is like almost an overabundance of connection but a lack of profound real connection and I think I'm longing for it and I want my art to connect with people I want people to feel seen I want you to see me I want there to be a real vulnerability, I think, in the way that my art and my work connects. I want to pivot to the attention economy, right? Because another of your messages that I liked, which I really struck a chord, is if you're always entertained, you'll never create, prioritise boredom.

24:43Because some people might say that's quite a contrary point of view. Like, why do we want to be bored? We want to be industrious. We want to progress. What's the

24:53Amie McNee:valley of boredom this is one of those love notes i write that is very specifically for myself some of them are very like amy needs some on her own bedroom wall and this one is a huge one as someone who is so very into the creative process i want to be making if i'm not making i want to be consuming so that then i can alchemize that information into more creation i've got a real thing for it in case you haven't noticed matt i like to make things and um something that has been missing from my life is any sort of silence whatsoever, any sort of moment where I am just experiencing life without input or without output.

25:30Amie McNee:And I think all of us are experiencing this because our world is very noisy and we have phones that are there and designed to have us addicted to them. We want input all the time and our brains are just not used to the quiet anymore. And so I've been trying to integrate practices of boredom, of just letting my brain have time where there is nothing in and there is nothing out. And sometimes it is exquisitely painful and sometimes it is almost pleasurable, but I want it and I need it and I can feel my body exhaling when I have it. After a while, sometimes it gets very squirmy, but eventually the body exhales.

26:12Amie McNee:and I think that for so many of us a lot of our most profound and world-changing brilliant ideas are hiding in the boredom and there just hasn't been any room for them to get through because we have been so busy consuming I confess I really struggle with this I'd love your advice on this I really struggle with it because I don't know like I think this has changed quite a lot for me in recent years but even if I'm just trying to relax and then have a bath or something like that now, I will stick a podcast on and I'll listen to something while I'm in the bath, right? I'm not properly switching off there, to be honest.

26:46And the phone, of course, is within reach, so you can always pick it up and check something. How the hell do you do it?

26:52Amie McNee:So I have a few protocols. One is I have a sauna nearby and it doesn't allow anything in there. They just don't let you take your phone. They don't let you have earphones. And so that's really, really good. So multiple times a week, I've got at least 20 minutes. It's just, I mean, it's bizarre how hard it is, but 20 minutes of me not having any input or output. I find the sauna slightly easier than just raw-dogging my life in my house because I think the heat is quite a lot of stimulation. Like, I'll focus on that heat and it allows me to almost have something to hold on to. But I've been doing a thing where I'll just put a timer on for 20 minutes and lie on the floor of my lounge room just to see if I can do it.

27:28Amie McNee:And it's hard. My brain shifts gears eventually. and having the timer there and challenging myself to it helps me as someone who's just annoyingly goal-driven. Also, I sometimes feel like I really can't do it and when I really feel like I can't do something, challenging myself to accomplish it can really get me over the line. There's also some cool research coming out about boredom. You know, that can get me excited or at least wanting to have a little play with boredom. The idea that our brains are doing like bizarre our work and filtering through information unconsciously when we have no stimulation really interests me.

28:09Amie McNee:Whether it's true or not, I don't care. That interests me. What can my brain produce or create if I allow it to have some downtime? But I'm not going to lie to you, Matt, I'm probably not the person to get advice from. I really struggle with this too. And that love note that I wrote was very specifically for me to listen because I know I need more boredom in my life creators need more boredom and i think if we want to reach our most brilliant potential as artists we've got to give our beautiful brains a bit more space well i'm glad to hear you struggle with it as well i thought that's quite interesting answer you gave there because you sort of talked about making boredom into a kind of achievement in itself i know and that is naughty and as i'm saying it i'm like amy don't but you know however i can hijack my little productivity obsessed brain you know it's very difficult we live in a culture of production of you know self-optimization and so much of our neural pathways are like just directed towards okay well how can I be the best creator make the most money make the most things and if boredom you know doesn't promise any of that it can be very tricky for us to find time for that in our day it sucks though yeah amy do you have a partner and a family and stuff or i have a partner he's also a writer we write books together.

29:26Amie McNee:It's just us two at the moment. Yeah. So, I mean, the reason I ask you that is because part of being a creative, part of making art is you need the people around you to give you the permission somehow or to give you the space for it. Do you think, is that fair to say? We require community if we are going to create and we require relationships that support our creation if we're going to create. And my partnership with James has been maybe the most brilliant thing that's happened on my journey as an artist and getting to collaborate with him giving each other permission to create and growing creatively as a couple has been one of the coolest experiences of my life and I'm very very grateful to have a relationship that is not just supports my creativity but is so integrated into it it's really nice what so if we were to ask James what would he say about that creative side of you do you think so I'm I'm so annoying.

30:23Amie McNee:I'm just, I'm so driven. And he is a, he's a plodder. He would have so, he would have such a good answer for you, Matt, about that boredom thing. And I'm never going to ask him to listen to this podcast because he's not going to be happy with how I spoke about it. That man is like a professional chiller. He has such a different tempo to me and it's so beautiful and it balances me so well. And similarly, like I, because I have such a fiery creative energy, it pulls him along too and so it's a constant push and pull because we have such different energies and way of approaching life but we both want to write and we both want to spend a life thinking about ideas and so we do so together in very different ways.

31:03That's really nice. Have you had any other relationships that have diminished your creativity rather than nourished it?

31:10Amie McNee:Of course yeah I think when you commit to your creativity you shine really, really brightly. And it often is incredibly triggering to those around you. And you are often a source of great pain for those who are ignoring their creative calling, and that can make for very difficult relationships. When you openly devote yourself to creativity, and someone is in private desperately trying to repress it, it's just a very hard mix. and I've had many friendships and relationships that have just fallen apart because I'm too much for them at that moment of their life. Well you mentioned friendships there another one of your love notes is you deserve friends who want to talk about your art.

31:59Amie McNee:Yeah we do again because this is such a sidelined part of our lives like art is just not something you bring up with friends really or at least it's not a normal topic of conversation. And because I think, again, it can be a very triggering conversation. Like if I'm trying to write a novel, people don't really know how to speak to you about that, especially not in the beginning stages, especially if you haven't been picked by a publisher or you're not being externally validated. People don't know how to talk about the arts, especially when you're playing or experimenting with something. And a A lot of people just don't have communal support or friendship support when it comes to their creative projects because people don't know how to talk about it.

32:40Amie McNee:Or people find it so upsetting or triggering or weird or embarrassing that you're taking art seriously that they just choose to ignore it altogether. But we deserve friends and family who want to talk about our art. And I want to encourage a culture where we are able to and have the tools to speak about creativity a lot more openly. Well on that subject then let me ask you about your writing because I write as well and I'm curious about your process for doing that how do you work it into your week or your existence? So I always prioritize fiction I write both fiction and non-fiction but fiction has to come first because a lot of my non-fiction is about the creative process and I am not qualified to write about the creative process unless I'm creating and making.

33:32Amie McNee:And so fiction is my number one priority and port of call. My best self is my morning self. So when I wake up, I journal, and then I write fiction. And my protocol is you have to write 300 to 500 words a day if I'm in a first draft stage, which I am at the moment. Very, very small word counts, which means that I get to win a lot. Good idea. Yeah. Do you have a protocol? That's so interesting. Do you have a routine that you regularly do? Well, I think that I'm not going to say most, but I'm going to say a lot of people who write, I think, do find that mourning period particularly fertile. There's something about the kind of fresh ground of a mourning brain that, you know, I think allows you the freedom to be able to do it.

34:21I like that idea of giving yourself a kind of achievable word count. I don't do that. But what I do certainly do is just try and get stuff down because I feel like I need to progress. If I'm not progressing, then I find it very difficult.

34:33Amie McNee:So hard. I've seen another really beautiful one. I call mine my bare minimum. I've just got to hit my bare minimum. But I've seen something going around the other day that was talking about just one change per day. So it's like one act on the pages of your manuscript for novelists. You can change a punctuation mark, you can add a word, but it's just like one progressive act so that it feels like it's continually building. Again, that's our little addiction to progress. That feeling of stagnation can be really hard for creatives. I also find it nauseating. Yeah. Let me ask you about your home in this context, because how does your home support or hinder this creative process of yours?

35:15Amie McNee:I have been thinking a lot about space and creativity lately. I currently split my time between two homes, one in the UK and one in Australia. And I have learnt what I need in a home to be creatively abundant. And I've learnt slowly over time, I'm now created spaces that really allow me to create. The biggest one is, is that basically no one's allowed in my home. So the space has to be comfortable, yes. and like that's really nice like it's got to feel cozy but mostly this is my space and no one can come into my space and I in the past when I've lived in homes with lots of other people or I've lived in homes with lots of comings and goings I've really really struggled and as I have gotten better with my boundaries and more confident as a person I am really enjoying my home as a sacred place for me and James.

36:05James is allowed, just, but for both of us to be here and to have this

36:11Amie McNee:as a very safe and protected place for me to write. That's interesting. So do friends not come around at all? Look, given some circumstances and I need it planned in, yes, friends can come over, but you're not coming over during the daytime. You're not coming over during the daytime. That's Amy time. And I am much, much stricter about it now. And it's very controversial. and I think my creative devotion is really socially unacceptable. I've had a particularly intense devotional era recently and it's meant me being a bit of a bad hang honestly like I am saying no a lot and people are like this isn't really acceptable but I don't feel like I've got to be like a super mega famous author in order for me to have a few creative quirks when I'm writing a book and I want to be able to say right now like this is what I require in order to do the work that I really want to do?

37:03Amie McNee:It's not forever, but can you just give me a bit of the space that I need? And just for me personally, I really need social space as I write and make things. Well, yeah, that's really interesting. So would you say that creativity generally needs privacy more than it does community then? How do you build in the community part? I think it always needs both, but from person to person, you're going to see people who, James much more needs community. Like he goes out to write a lot of the time. He wants to be in public spaces to create and he wants to be in, you know, writers groups and he wants feedback.

37:37Amie McNee:I don't want a piece of feedback from fucking anyone. And this is just how I am. But, you know, every creative is going to be really different, but we're all going to need community. Like I, even as my incredibly antisocial, very introverted self, I need creative community. I need people who see me and see me in the process and who love me through it and who are proud of me. And I need privacy. And we're all going to need both of those aspects. I truly think that. It's just that we're going to have different percents of how much we need of each. Yeah. Someone listening, I think, may question what you've just said there, which is they may be thinking, she doesn't sound much like an introvert to me.

38:16I mean, what you're saying sounds introverted in the sense that, you know, you like your own space and, you know, you don't particularly want people dropping around with a cup of sugar. Yeah.

38:24Amie McNee:Please don't. Yeah. How do you explain that? It slightly comes back to the INFJ thing again, actually, as a personality type. But how do you explain the fact that you are an introvert, that you don't really come across like that? I'm not shy. I'm introverted. I'm incredibly sure of who I am. I enjoy communicating very much. I feel courageous and brave in the way I want to communicate my ideas I have a very small social battery and I don't know how to explain it I've only got time for an hour you know and then I gotta have a lot of alone time it's how I've always always been recently I saw a home video of me at like four years old the whole family's chilling in the kitchen.

39:13Amie McNee:My dad tries to find me just sitting on my bed by myself, just chilling out. And like, that is so who I am. And it felt very validating because I think people struggle with how introverted I am. And I'm like, that four-year-old was already like this. It's not some sort of maladaptive technique. This is part of who I am. And I'm learning over time to honor it because I require a lot of alone time. And I can be on when I'm with people. And I love people and I love community, but I just need a lot of time to be with myself as well. Understood. So you're at home in Sydney at the moment, is that right?

39:49Amie McNee:It is. On this call. Just tell me a bit about your home because how sensitive are you to environment and to space and to light and materials and things like that because those are things that I'm quite obsessed with but I'm just curious on that. I'm very sensitive to it. I'm extremely sensitive to light. I've got to only have lamps obviously, no big light very sensitive to smell like I need good smells in order to feel safe actually I have a really sensitive nose I want my space to feel like myself in order for me to feel at home in it and I've had obviously the great blessing of being able to create two homes and they're very different from each other but they both feel like different aspects of me and they both look at both mine and James is quite high sensory needs.

40:35Amie McNee:James is autistic, so he needs a lot of low light and like materially as well, like the couch texture and everything. Like I'm careful about our homes and because I spend so much time in them, I'm intentional about how they're going to take care of us and take care of the art we make within them. You mentioned the smell thing there. I think that's actually quite an underappreciated part of environment, right? We don't talk about it that much. So can you just put some colour around that? What do you find difficult and what do you find settling in terms of smell? It's so interesting. This is something I'm only just starting to think about, Matt, even though I've always known I'm so smell sensitive.

41:13Amie McNee:But I've been really looking at what upsets me, what disturbs me. Just now I've noticed that next door is obviously cooking something. It smells nice, but it's not my smell. And I'm like, why is it in my own house? But silly things like I love the smell of my laundry detergent. It's really specific. Like I really love that one. And so I bring that from country to country. And it means that wherever I am, I can have a good sniff of whatever jacket I'm wearing and feel like, okay, I feel safe. It's a real safety thing. And I have, you know, incenses that make me feel safe. A lot of perfumes are too strong for me, but like I've just got my safe smells, bizarrely.

41:48Amie McNee:And I make sure that they're in my house. Even things like coffee, that makes me feel very safe. And certain food smells make me feel safe. And certain food smells don't so yeah this is a bizarre part of me that to be honest I'm probably only really just looking about deeply right now Matt but it is a really big part of my life wow I find that so interesting I've actually not sure I've spoken to anyone about that in that specific way before and that really makes a lot of sense I think it's so instructive that you take the laundry detergent with you wherever you go and it gives you a sense of safety that sort of says it all I think actually yeah it does doesn't it it's fascinating I literally and I know like I'm I'm always smelling my own clothes because I'm like okay who am I where am I like what what is this man this is like maybe too much information I don't think it is but it does it does make me feel very safe but now I see you on screen doing that I can think of some people I know that also do that I think it's obviously a thing and also I don't know if you know people like this but there are other people that I know who always wear sunglasses.

42:51Amie McNee:Yeah, the light sensitivity. Because they find, yeah, they find light a lot to deal with. So we're all different. That's so interesting. So on the subject of the home then, how might we sort of construct our homes around creativity a bit more? Just thinking, you know, how would you set up a home to encourage playfulness and creation if you have the ability to having a place that is allowed to be messy and allowed to have your creative equipment out whatever that is so if you're a painter being able to leave your paints out being able to leave you know the guitar out having the art out the materials you need to create out even if you're baking like just not being not having to pack everything away after every creative session is a really powerful tool.

43:42Amie McNee:And not all of us have it because a lot of us have got kids. We're using the kitchen table to eat and to create. But if you can even just have a tiny little table where stuff is allowed to be out so that the resistance is just a little bit less between you and a creative session, I think that's incredibly powerful. And it pulls away a lot of the resistance, a lot of the blocks that often happen between you and sitting down and making something. And so I have all my art. I paint a bit as well. All that shit is out. It's downstairs. It is on the kitchen table, if I'm honest, and I eat around it.

44:15Amie McNee:And it is a little bit overstimulating sometimes. But there's no barrier I have to cross. I just walk into the kitchen and maybe I pick up the paints and just paint for like literally a minute. There's something nice about moving in and out of a creative space rather than having to set up and pack down. And that's a blessing I really don't, you know, I don't take it for granted, having had to pack up and pack down a lot in my life. I really like that. I think that's great advice. Putting it front and centre environmentally encourages you to actually pick it up and do it. I was thinking about, you know, in supermarkets, the way they put certain things at eye level, don't they?

44:52So that you're much more likely to buy them. It's, you know, we can't help it.

44:55Amie McNee:No, we can't. I see that with my kids as well. You know, if you were to pull something out of the games cupboard and leave it on a table, they would probably play it. They're going to play it. Exactly. I feel like we're like, it's not manipulation, but it's just, you know, it's an encouragement. It's there. You know, why not just like have a little dilly-dally with it? My wife, Faye, has been thinking about this a lot because she is a hugely creative person like you, but all of her creation takes place outside of the home so she has a studio in London and she goes there to create and to be with the people that she works with and it's work in inverted commas but she's sort of realizing that that doesn't completely fulfill her because it then gets branded as work rather than as play so she's thinking about how to bring it back into her home environment as a sort of more solo pursuit so that it's a bit more art for art's sake I think I love that I do think professional creatives it's such an amazing in it for me anyway I love being a pro-creative it's an incredible thing that I get to write and have that be my way of making a living but I also need a lot of activities and creative projects that are not there to provide money for me that are much more on a playful side of things.

46:19Amie McNee:Me and my dad actually, two weeks ago, did an art show in Melbourne. I've never really sold a piece of art in my life and it's not there to make money. And so this has been the most amazing practice of just playing and experimenting and getting all these pieces ready for this show with my dad, who's also been doing the same thing. And it had no pressure on it in terms of doesn't need to feed me. but there was still this excitement of like there's a date and we've got it I got to take it seriously but it was still in so many ways play and I think that's a really important part for the pro artist to have something that just doesn't have that pressure yeah exactly where do you stand on rituals Amy I'm pro ritual Matt I'm pro ritual I had a feeling go on tell me tell me about your rituals I think it's a beautiful I mean I'm a big fan of words and I think ritual is a wonderful way to frame and to sanctify, you know, what could also be called habits.

47:16Amie McNee:And for me, I, you know, I have rituals with coffee in the morning. I have rituals with journaling. I have rituals with my 300 to 500 words a day. And because I'm not someone, well, first of all, nobody can tell me what to do, not even myself, which is unfortunate. It means that like having very structured days doesn't work because as soon as I've structured a day, I will immediately rebel for some reason. But having rituals that are integrated into my weeks, they feel less rigid, they feel less disciplinarian, and they keep me on track, and they keep me connected to myself. And at the same time, they don't feel pressured or forced to me.

47:55It's good to hear. I find them so grounding. I mean, maybe I might use the word routine rather than ritual because they're perhaps a bit less dramatic somehow but um these sort of everyday rhythms that we have at home the way we move through the space at certain things we do at certain times yeah it is i've written about it in my upcoming book but i i think if you are someone who feels the world at quite a multi-sensory level that i just feel they're very grounding they're anchors yeah i completely agree and the word that came as you

48:28Amie McNee:were describing that was, again, they give me a really big feeling of safety. Like I'm going to be okay because after this, I'm going to have a cup of tea and I'm going to go do a Sudoku. And I do that every day. And that's going to make me feel incredibly safe. It's going to be a ritual that reminds my body that I'm about to go to bed. I don't know, like my, I feel like a lot of my safety is structured around rituals that occur regularly throughout my life. So if you're an introvert that relies on routines and rituals how do you make sure that you don't become completely at the mercy of those and you actually don't get out into the world enough oh matt this has been a really big thing for me and i have to be really careful because i'm like always on the freaking edge of being the biggest hermit and like really isolating myself and i know it would be really easy to become extremely isolated and something that i have to remind myself constantly is that to be an artist is not just to create, it's also to live life.

49:28Amie McNee:And so, so much of my life is the creative process, but I've got to have material. Like if I'm just stuck in my beautiful house smelling the same fucking laundry detergent every day, like it's a very safe and beautiful life. And I love that, you know, I'm reading a lot. I'm, I am getting a lot of input because I'm so hungry for ideas and art and I experience a lot, but it's all inside my home. And so it does take coaxing out of my house and I do need to be really careful with it. And it's something that's pretty much always on my mind. There's that song called A Break From The Old Routine. Do you know that one?

50:04Amie McNee:No, I don't. Should I listen? By Weed Through. Yeah, just crank that up really loud. Okay, great. And that'll get you out of the house. I have going to the sauna and going to the gym each day really helps me. I walk there. I go see the world, say hello to some strangers. It's very important for me. proud of you thank you last couple of questions for you you've talked about the idea that everyone should leave a creative legacy which I love but why do you feel that legacy is interesting and I don't think I'm at the end of my thought process on it I'm curious as to why we all have this like deep desire to have legacy but it is like a really instinctive human response to like not want to leave when we leave, to like want to leave something behind.

50:51Amie McNee:And again, like as a very, very typical Enneagram 4, like I want to have this impact. And I like this. I like this about humans that we've got this beautiful desire to not just die, but then to leave our little world with something of us. I think it's incredibly sweet and incredibly pure. And art is just one of the most delicious, nourishing and romantic things to leave this world with. And it is one of the greatest legacies I think we can leave. Stories, creations, you know, an idea. Like, I can't think of anything else I would want to leave this earth with than a book about witches in the 16th century, or, you know, We Need Your Art, my latest non-fiction.

51:35Amie McNee:Like, these to me seem like beautiful little pieces of legacy that I want to leave behind as artists. And I think human beings in general, we should leave art behind when we leave. That's lovely. You're still very young, so this is hard to answer. But projecting ahead, what would you like your ultimate legacy to be when you do finally check out, do you think? I've got that thing where I've, like people ask me about my five-year plan and I'm like, oof, I've got about six months on me, baby.

52:06Yeah, fair.

52:07Amie McNee:So I don't know that I've got an answer for that, but I know I'm going to leave art. I've already left a lot of art behind so that if I do, you know, meet an untimely death, I've, you know, I've already been brave enough to leave books behind already. And I'm so proud of myself for doing that. Occasionally, I might think about the longevity of my creative career. And I, when I think about that, all that comes to mind is I just want to keep making stuff. I just want to keep telling stories. I want to keep discovering who I am through the creative of act and putting that into art and so I just hope really that I just keep making stuff really can I challenge you on it because oh please because there are slightly conflicting forces at play aren't there because what's going through my head as you're talking is I'm thinking is our output something that is for our own needs we're fulfilling our own creative needs but do we also need the external validation that comes from legacy in inverted commons do you know what I mean?

53:04Amie McNee:Oh yeah, no, I love this. Art is so funny because if nobody sees it ever, it's still entirely worth doing because it is such an incredible transformative process just for the self. Art is worth doing no matter if no one ever sees it or if it makes no money or you never share on social media, like the creative process is always worth doing. And so it doesn't need to be legacy in that sense, I guess. I think if we want to leave something behind though, if we are thinking about legacy in general to leave behind I don't know a piece of pottery that you made with your friends in a pottery class is such a beautiful thing to leave and perhaps it you know it gets lost or is found at the bottom of the river thames by someone a thousand years later like it doesn't need to make huge impact I think it's just something about leaving art behind that I'm really enchanted by but there is always going to be this tension of like art for art's sake and external validation.

54:00Amie McNee:And for me, I sit in this maybe annoyingly nuanced space, which is art is always going to be worth making, even if nobody sees it. And also, I really, really understand wanting external validation, because I think as human beings, we have a deep need to connect and to be seen and to make impact. And so if you are a creative that wants to be seen, to connect and make impact with your art, I really understand that. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I want you to be able to make that happen for yourself. Yeah I agree with that. Final question if someone listening is feels a bit out of touch with their creative side because so many of us do perhaps we stop making things perhaps we've stopped being in touch with that childlike self of ours what would you encourage them to do to think about where they start?

54:52Amie McNee:there's a lot of different ways that you can re-enter the creative process in we need your art my book i have a thing called the two-week reset which is again about like doing tiny amounts of art every day and or not even every day but just like make it so easy that you absolutely cannot fail make it embarrassingly easy so that you absolutely cannot fail but i think another way of entering it is to let yourself play and not take it very seriously at all for so many of us we're having to take things so seriously all the time. You know, like our work is so serious. Our family life is so serious.

55:27Amie McNee:Having a part of our lives that is just pure play is incredibly precious. And so maybe I would invite them to do one of my favorite prompts, which is, I want you to spend 10 minutes less, maybe let's do five minutes of just making something incredibly, incredibly shit. Whether that is writing a shitty poem or drawing the worst picture of a dog that you've ever drawn or singing as badly as you can in the shower. Put the timer on, spend five minutes and just make something that you would never show anyone ever because it is so abominable. And just allowing that, like what that opens up because we are never told to do anything poorly, let alone make art.

56:08Amie McNee:And just seeing where that takes you. I've done this prompt with thousands of creatives. It is astounding what happens. There will be tears. There will be so much resistance. And then there is so much magic. you will sit there and think, I'm going to make the best shit art anyone's ever seen. And I'm going to tell you, stop, just make something actually crap and see what comes of that. Because I think it's an incredibly powerful and healing practice. What does come from it? Why is that worth doing? What do you sort of push through when you do that? It's really different for different people. And I see a really different amount of reactions.

56:43Amie McNee:but probably the biggest one is just having a huge amount of fun like a strange amount of fun and laughing and I think it's some sort of putting the ego to the side and like just genuinely marveling at what can come out of that weird brain of yours especially when I do it in groups I see a huge amount of laughter and a huge amount of fun and I think it's because we're just not told to do anything not seriously a lot anymore and I want that I want that element of play back in our lives because fuck like what's the point of this we can't take everything that seriously like we need some release yeah totally you've put me in mind of a few years ago Faye and I went over to Portland Oregon to Nike headquarters and Nike were doing an amazing thing where they were bringing creatives in to their HQ to talk to their creative team so they put on a whole I think it was a couple of days or maybe even a week of speakers workshops just to inspire their team you know and they obviously they can afford to do this stuff they fly people amazing people in from all over the world and Faye gave a talk but she also did a creative workshop with their creative team bear in mind these are some of the leading creatives anyway I mean they're making shoes that we're all wearing yeah right now okay and she was like okay everyone put their phone on their laptop away you have to turn it all off and then she got out some very rudimentary craft stuff and I'm talking like card sticky tape I love this scissors glue and she's like we've got three hours I'm going to split you all into groups and for three hours you're just going to make stuff you're going to get paint on your nose you're going to glue your fingers together and I've got to tell you Amy based on what you've said today I couldn't agree more because to watch that firsthand it was really profound because it was profound some of them found it very emotional yeah like you said these are not kids that just don't know what they're doing right this is what they do they create stuff but they spend most of their day on a computer as so many of us do so to actually get back into their hands again, they found a really, you know, quite a moving experience.

59:00I just want to share that because I think it's quite a nice embodiment of what you've talked about.

59:04Amie McNee:I love that. I love that. Three hours to play. Oh, it's revolutionary. I think this kind of practice is completely life-changing. It will make you face a lot of the very hard things within yourselves, a lot of the stories and a lot of the wounds, but fuck, it will transform you. love it that's a very good place to stop amy what a pleasure i i really love your point of view keep doing what you do i think it's fantastic i appreciate you so much

59:34thanks so much to amy and thanks to all of you for listening along as always if you like what you heard from amy today and want to find out a little bit more about her i do recommend that you go onto her Instagram account. As discussed, there's some really fantastic stuff on there. I really love the love notes that she makes, which she posts up, which are these little placards with handwritten or hand-painted notes on them. And they're really clever, I think. They're clever and they're galvanizing, and I think they're much needed. So have a look and see what you think of those. As always, if you can find a second to leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever else you're listening.

1:00:16That would be very much appreciated. You can find Homing on YouTube and on Instagram. And of course, you can also join as a member on Patreon, where you'll get access to all of our house tours. The handle for all of those is at homingwithmat. This episode was produced by Podshop with music by Simien Walker. Thanks all and talk to you very soon. Bye for now.