The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.

Art has no right answer. The best we can hope for is an interesting answer.

Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.

Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map—these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.

Creating ideas that spread and connecting the disconnected are the two pillars of our new society, and both of them require the posture of the artist.

When those in power use shame to bully the weak into compliance, they are stealing from us. They tell us that they will expose our secrets (not good enough, not hardworking enough, not from the right family, made a huge mistake once) and will use the truth to exile us from our tribe. This shame, the shame that lives deep within each of us, is used as a threat. And when those in power use it, they take away part of our humanity.

We’ve been trained to prefer being right to learning something, to prefer passing the test to making a difference, and most of all, to prefer fitting in with the right people, the people with economic power. Now it’s your turn to stand up and stand out.

Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another.

strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.

The industrialist (your boss, perhaps) demands that everything be proven, efficient, and risk free. The artist seeks none of these. The value of art is in your willingness to stare down the risk and to embrace the void of possible failure.

The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.

It’s what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.

Change is powerful, but change always comes with the possibility of failure as its partner. “This might not work” isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you must seek out.

College started as universitas magistrorum et scholarium—a community of masters and scholars. It was a refuge; it was a place you went to get lost in ideas, to discover and wander, and to plot a course as an academic. Today it’s a place you go to exchange a lifetime of debt for credit hours, a degree, and maybe a good job.

The craftsman and the artist say, “Here, I made this.” The workingman is asked to follow instructions.

Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you’re an artist.

Correct is fine. But it is better to be interesting.

out that expending emotional labor, working without a map, and driving in the dark involve confronting fear and living with the pain of vulnerability. The artist comes to a détente with these emotions and, instead of fighting with them, dances with them. The linchpin connects as a result of the indispensable nature of her contribution. The artist, on the other hand, connects because that’s what art is. The artist touches part of what it means to be truly human and does that work again and again.

Do What You Want; these are the 4 most frightening words brought to us by the Connection Revolution. If you want to sing, sing. If you want to lead, lead. If you want touch, connect, describe, disrupt, give, support, build, question—Do It. You will not be picked. But, if you want to pick yourself—go for it. The cost is that you own the results.

Commit to the frightening work of flying blind

Los líderes son vulnerables, no controladores, y nos llevan a un lugar nuevo, no a la seguridad barata, rápida y sumisa.