The Empty "Creative"
Attending “Events” and Having a Good Instagram in LA
If you park yourself at Maru Coffee on Hillhurst Ave in the Los Feliz neighborhood of LA for an hour or two, you will come across many interpretations of what a “creative” person is supposed to look like. A creative is a polished, clean girl, hair glossed back in a low bun, Reformation cardigan chicly tied around her shoulders. A creative person is colorful and kooky, Ms. Frizzle-adjacent, in boldly embroidered cardigans, curly hair worn untamed. A creative person is a twenty-something white guy with a bleached buzz cut, baggy jeans, and one silver hoop earring. Or he favors the Rick Rubin look, growing his beard and hair long, his unkemptness a marker of his prolific, wandering mind.
Is creativity tamed and subdued? Is it boisterous and obvious? Does taste in any artistic realm necessarily translate to taste in fashion? You will wonder this as you survey the passersby at Maru, and inevitably reflect on your own relationship to creativity, wondering silently what your Brandy Melville T-shirt and blue straight-leg jeans are communicating about you.
The reality is that a lot of these people, despite what their outfits might tell you, aren’t visionaries of any kind. A lot of them spend more time curating their personal Instagram profiles than creating or engaging with what you and I would recognize as “work.” This isn’t meant to be a burn or a dig; this is merely a state of the union. An assessment of the modern artist’s identity. A glimpse at what I call the “empty creative.”
