everywhere you you were you our next
speaker served on president obama's arts
policy committee she has been profiled
invo and is currently the Du Bois fellow
at Harvard University in researching and
writing her latest book the rise
creativity the gift of failure and the
search for mastery she discovered that
privacy and a safe place to work are
vital to the creation of great art
please join me in welcoming to the stage
Sarah Walker
good afternoon good afternoon all right
I I'm thrilled to be here I told my my
god daughter who is around five years
old I was coming to this conference and
she thought I said a conference on
pirates and creativity and she she sent
me this beautiful drawing and I thought
oh sooner and later in life she'll learn
more about privacy it's crucial role in
innovation and that is what I'm here to
speak about today and I'd like to begin
by telling you a brief story about a
century ago downtown and New York City
Washington Square a painter was at work
on an invention that would change our
world he was NYU's first professor of
painting he spent 26 years with the
ambition to rival a Michelangelo Raphael
a Titian but there in that studio he
considered destroying every canvas on
which he'd ever laid his brush he
encountered every imaginable type of
critique he couldn't support his family
sent them to live in new haven where the
cost of living was lower and he remained
in New York but ultimately felt as he
put it jilted by his art this painter
was Samuel Morse and he converted the
stretcher bars of one of his failed
canvases into the model of the Telegraph
this Telegraph now sits on loan from the
Smithsonian in the oval office at the
white house because it's difficult to
imagine it now but at the time this
lightning line as it was called was seen
as an unprecedented discovery and as
many journalists put it the greatest
achievement of the human mind news that
used to take two weeks to travel as the
news of the signing of the Declaration
independence
now was instantaneous morse though spent
years tinkering with this Telegraph
model without wanting anyone to see it
he only showed it to a few trusted
relatives and a few stalwart students
and only uncloaked it when he thought
someone might beat him to the punch and
have their model of the Telegraph went
out I mentioned the story because Morse
is describing a timeless feature of
creativity that I'd like to speak about
more today I wrote about this internal
landscape of creative individuals as I
penned this book entitled the rise
creativity the gift of failure in the
search for mastery this is an earlier
version when the subtitle was different
and I realized that there are many
different stories that often display how
uncommon the foundation is of someone's
iconic rise I'll tell you a few examples
I learned for example that Duke
Ellington said about his legendary music
I merely take the energy it takes to
pout and I write some blues I learn that
Paul Taylor the dancer and choreographer
had his early now iconic style soap and
that the reviewer left the newsprint
completely blank right it was so minimal
as the reviewers said well if Lewis
horst what Paul Taylor won't dance I
won't write at he left it simply this
way many stories Thomas Edison told his
assistant incredulous of the inventors
repeated attempts to invent the
incandescent light bulb I have not
failed i've just found 10,000 ways that
won't work and learned about all these
different private experiences that
rarely come to light the 1930s RKO
screen test sted at one point can't sing
can't act balding can dance a little and
this was in reference to Fred Astaire
I learned that Martin Luther King
received in seminary sees in a
transcript of A's and B's and can you
guess what class in public speaking not
once but twice C plus then see when it
was worse and this private story has
rarely come to light we hear about more
of these private stories at commencement
time when speakers who have reached a
pinnacle of success finally feel
comfortable revealing the true arc and
journey that brought them to that stage
so it's then that for example JK Rowling
when she went to Harvard in 2008 spoke
about what she called the fringe
benefits of failure she spoke about how
rock bottom for her became the solid
foundation on which she built her rise
and Oprah Winfrey went to Harvard again
and spoke about the importance of
failure as I had some distance from
writing this book I realized that all of
these individuals despite their
different journeys displayed a central
crucial trait they were all able to see
something before it happened like Samuel
Morse they were able to see that this
crude contraption could become the start
of the communications revolution and
what that required was a safe haven a
private domain to protect themselves
from iconoclastic premature critique now
it sounds very simple this idea but I
think at this moment there is urgency to
speak about it as a former curator at
MoMA and the Tate Modern and faculty
member at Yale School Board I'm often
asked by young artists of all kinds how
do I get my work discovered how can I
get seen there's such a trend for people
to get their work out there on various
platforms Instagram YouTube you name it
and what it means is that we are losing
I believe our sense and
sting to understand a timeless feature
of the creative process showing your
work too early can help you find an
audience but being too conscious of your
audience can unhinge you from your own
creative self in other words creativity
has a growth pattern to it as in life it
starts with an embryonic stage artists
of all kinds understand this
instinctively in a recent interview that
Chris Rock gave to vulture magazine he
lamented the fact that smartphones and
comedy clubs have meant that well-known
comedians have few chances to practice
new material in other words the
rehearsal space has become too public
too early Duran Duran keyboardist Nick
Rhodes spoke about this in much the same
way thinking back nostalgically on the
1980s when bands could develop
organically in front of an audience
without fear of their near win work
making it to the public stage
prematurely I learned this the hard way
myself when I was writing a chapter of
the rise I showed my editor a section on
then lesser-known figure who had come to
know in Silicon Valley his name is
Travis cowl neck and he was starting a
taxi company of sorts he went on to
become the CEO of uber and by revealing
this chapter too early in an embryonic
stage I lost six months of work and is
really paralyzed by the premature
critique wild Chavez kalmyks revelations
are still in the rise I think of that
salient moment as sort of detonation for
me and understanding this idea
thankfully alongside writing the rise i
had read every interview i could find in
the paris review the legendary journal
that has interviewed every artist
30 you know create a person that you
could imagine I made this insane chart
of the key features that each individual
discussed was crucial for their process
from my Angela to Ray Bradbury and
private domains ranked high on this
chart in this list my Angela for example
would mention that no matter what city
she was in even if she had a home there
and she wanted to create she would rent
a hotel room all she needed was that
hotel room a good dictionary and a
bottle of sherry she would get there at
five in the morning without fail and
would work until noon and then would
re-enter the world pretend to be normal
as she put it raid Bradbury's process
was much the same susan sontag has this
process in which she refuses lunch dates
even with close friends in order to
maintain the privacy required for
creativity perhaps the most famous
example comes from the image of Albert
Einstein's office here in 1955 on the
last day of his life at the Institute of
Advanced Study at Princeton Einstein
described his office here and prior ones
as the quote worldly cloister where he
hatched his most beautiful ideas but
that term worldly cloister hints at the
paradox of creativity it reminds us of
this putting something out into the
world requires a temporary removal from
it I started to realize that these
private domains have nothing to do with
actual space they're about cultivating a
space within ourselves a space where we
can shield ourselves from our own
overgrown inner critics our bodies
remind us of this even when we forget
just consider what happens in the mind
when jazz means you
musicians improvise Allen Braun and my
friend and colleague Charles limb at
Johns Hopkins have a study about this
they invited musicians to improvise a
piece of music and then also to play a
piece of memorized music while hooked up
in an fMRI imaging scanner what they
found is that during improvisation areas
of the musicians brain involved with
self expression lit up and those
involved with self-judgment were
suppressed that is to say when musicians
are improvising the brain is offering
them a private space that is protected
from their own inner critic in fact the
closest the brain comes to this state is
in the REM state of dreaming when we
have no one to fear and our ideas are
completely our own why is it so
important well when the mind barricades
itself from critique we have the
permission to put out into the world are
iconic classic ideas there are many
different domains that have benefited
from creating a structure for employees
or colleagues to reap the benefits of
this sort of innovation think about this
in the context of science labs and then
the entertainment industry and Hollywood
recently the nobel prize was won by two
men andre gide and diamond konstantinova
slav in the UK who known for a practice
in their laboratory of what they call
friday night experiments times where
they permit themselves in this sort of
safety of this safe haven to ask
questions that experts wouldn't dare
from it they were allowed to retain some
curiosity of the child free from the
shame that this bracketed time allowed
for and during this period they asked
themselves curious about two dimensional
objects
send carbon and graphite being used to
discover it whether or not something as
simple as scotch tape and the graphite
hanging out and ordinary pencil could be
the key to discovering it they took out
of a waste bin scotch tape and graphite
hanging out there from a related
experiment put it under the microscope
and found that they had the thinnest
recorded attempt on record over the
16-month period they fancied up this
technique had their findings rejected by
the preeminent journal nature which is
such a frequent occurrence for
innovation it should be an unintended
compliment Andre guy loves recounting
this story he did so when he won the
Nobel Prize and gave his speech and in
the interview he said you know about my
work he said sometimes I say I don't
research I only search what's required
for that the difficult journey that that
allows for is being able to summon the
courage to be iconoclastic and the play
that let's us remain supple and nimble
enough to go on that journey under
guymon konstantin novoselov are known in
effect for being deliberate amateurs
right committable men playful men
deliberate amateurs and the way to allow
this to be possible in their laboratory
is by having a structured time a private
space in order to harness the gains from
that mode of thought many other
organizations have analogous examples
Google's twenty percent time in effect
as a friday night experiment time and
there many others but the most vivid
example for me comes from Hollywood we
may never have seen these films Juno
some dog millionaire and Lars and the
real girl if not for the private domain
created by the blacklist this is not the
Communist blacklist or the HBO
that show the blacklist but a document
the very artful setup that a man named
Franklin Leonard created when he was
working at Leonardo DiCaprio's
production company he wanted to find
excellent screenplays unusual documents
and found it difficult because every
year the Writers Guild of America states
that there are 50,000 new screenplays
and if you did nothing but read
screenplays all year long you could get
through about a thousand so he decided
to harness the minds and power of his
friends to identify new properties so he
wrote anonymously to 85 colleagues
please tell me the screenplays that you
secretly love but that you don't think
will be in theaters in the next year and
that you think might not have a chance
of really getting made nearly all did as
they were asked and Franklin tabulated
the answers in a document via Excel
sorted by the amount of votes or
mentions that each screenplay received
and then it was 2005 he went on vacation
and turned off his phone as he could
then came back and saw that this
document had gone viral in Hollywood
development surely stopped that day as
people saw that films that were seen as
failed documents had been recast as ones
to watch films like things we lost in
the fire Juno Lars and the real girl
films that were nominated for academy
awards that year from this annual
document which has become now a Netflix
like rolling list we also received the
King's Speech David Seidler told me he
was 74 meant when he wrote this that it
was his last will and testament but he
didn't dare shop it around Hollywood his
son told him that no one would want to
watch a film about a man stuttering the
entire
time so he didn't even try instead it
was going to be a humble television
production until it landed on what's
called the brit list this has become so
impactful for Hollywood there's a
British version it then landed on the
blacklist the following year Harvey
Weinstein's saw it and you know what
happened next it was made for 15 million
it grows 500 million it was nominated
for 12 Academy Awards of which at 14
including Best Original Screenplay Woody
Allen bested the record for the oldest
person to win in that category which set
up this joking rivalry between David
Seidler and Woody Allen David told me I
said to woody last one to win an Oscar
over a hundred is a rotten egg he said
but why is this list so impactful well
what it really did was create a way for
iconic classic decisions to come to
light in Hollywood Hollywood is like
many industries in which the Asch
experiment is constantly going on the
Asch experiment was executed in the
1950s by Solomon Asch and he effectively
found that there's something even worse
than peer pressure at work when people
are faced with an innovative idea in a
group context he asked subjects simple
question in isolation they all gave the
right answer to the question which line
on the left is equivalent to the line on
the right ninety-five percent of the
time you'll all tell me line two but
when he asked subjects to still give the
correct answer but had paid off a set of
other subjects to her giving the wrong
answer the correct response rate dropped
to twenty-five percent it's almost
unconscionable unimaginable people
replicated this experiment for years and
did so in the same year that the block
list came out Nero economist Gregory
burns replicated it and again put
subjects in an fMRI scanner to see what
is in fact going on when we give up on
our own correct view and effect
what he found is that this isn't simply
about peer pressure the body pays a
price when we're going against a group
opinion and are perceiving it ourselves
in that moment of being a dissenter he
found that the amygdala is activated in
these moments the fear or lighter flight
sensation that happens to us in certain
circumstances happens in that moment but
most importantly when he asked subjects
that they knew they were giving up on
the obvious correct answer they did not
how many times have you been in a
meeting and perhaps suppressed the
innovative idea that in fact would have
helped you your organization your
company the Asch experiment doesn't work
in Hollywood as it has to adjudicate
between properties which film will make
it based on a past metric of success and
without knowing it these executives
oftentimes we're not advocating for
unusual films like Lars and the real
girl and if you know the plot for that
movie you know why it might be difficult
to say to your colleagues I really
believe in this film in some ways it
shouldn't be so surprising that we need
these private domains for the creation
of art because after all creative works
that move us and evitable create a
private domain in us Thomas Jefferson
said it said it best he stood in front
of a painting and wrote to his friend
about it it fixed me like a statue a
quarter of an hour or half an hour I do
not know which for i lost all ideas of
time even the consciousness of my own
existence a private distaste develops an
ass where we can summon the bravery to
see the world differently to go against
popular opinion dr. Douglas talked about
this during the Civil War as did the
legendary constitutional lawyer Charles
black who remembered being in Austin
Texas one day 1931 and saw this trumpet
player Louis Armstrong who so impressed
him with his genius although he'd never
heard of him before that he knew
segregation must be wrong he knew in
that moment that he was going to walk
towards justice as he did becoming one
of the first lawyers for Brown versus
Board of Education at Columbia and Yale
where he went on faculty he held an
annual Armstrong listening night to
honor that inner space that shifted in
him and that ultimately shifted our
world so I would say that while we are
in a place of encouraging transparency
regarding creativity it's not unusual or
wrong headed to look at the importance
of privacy as a way of understanding how
new ideas are executed in many cases
privacy has been the only way that we've
created the innovative ideas that we are
honored to celebrate thank