Year End: On interviews that helped me grow
Snails are born with shells. And eventually the part of the shell it was born with ends up in the center of the snail’s spiral. But to begin growing the spirals, the snail must eat a lot of calcium in order to solidify the core shell.
If I were to calculate my creative maturity in snail terms, I think my spiral growth is just beginning. I graduated from college this year and did a lot of work here at TCI that felt truly meaningful and important. I feel that my soft protoconch (first, earliest or original shell) has finally hardened and a lot of the formative creative calcium and nutrients came from many of the interviews that we published this year. Here are a few interviews that were the most comforting, motivational, or influential to me.
I find that I keep a certain crew of friends around that inspire me. It’s really about curating a life and going to certain things that will make you happy but also further your creativity.
You are your mind, really. I’m a product of mind over matter—becoming what I want to be in my mind.
Positivity and love and support up front is crucial. Making people feel confident, making people feel good. But then at the same time being extremely direct and extremely truthful with things that I think are not working.
this world is a school. I think you’re here to learn and to grow and to work off the debts of old karma that are still clinging to your consciousness and to experience the merits of the good stuff that you put out into the world. I also think that you’re actually fundamentally meant to have a really good time and to experience joy, so if you just keep your focus on that and keep going because you love the craft, then things will be OK. You do it because you love it, not because you’re trying to be famous. You can’t want to sack it all in because you don’t have your first TV show by the time you’re 24. It’s like, come on.
Take your time. Don’t rush through your projects, and don’t believe anyone who’s telling you to rush through them either. Just really take your time with your work. Follow what is weird and strange that you do privately and consider that there’s probably writing in there. The stuff that you don’t ever talk about that you do when you come home after spending a day out with a lot of people. Whatever interests you have that you aren’t sharing with anyone. I don’t mean share that necessarily, but there’s a story there. Listen better.
Hannah Street Elliott is the Associate Editor at The Creative Independent. She also handles all of TCI’s ꙅoↄiAl mɘbiA qoꙅTꙅ. She has done freelance work for 𝕽𝖊𝖉 𝕭𝖚𝖑𝖑 𝕸𝖚𝖘𝖎𝖈 𝕬𝖈𝖆𝖉𝖊𝖒𝖞 and manages/collaborates with artists 🄳🄸🅅🄴🄾 and J.Cole producer ᴇʟɪᴊᴀʜ ꜱᴄᴀʀʟᴇᴛᴛ. S𝕙𝕖 𝕚𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕦𝕞𝕓𝕖𝕣 𝟙 𝕗𝕒𝕟 J𝕒𝕡𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕤𝕖 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕤𝕙𝕠𝕨, T𝕖𝕣𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕖 H𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕖.