Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

I love Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon for the same reason I love Norman Rockwell. The people in those worlds are quirky but loveable, flawed but happy, sincere but imaginary. When you think about it, Lake Wobegon is a lot like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, where the children are mischievous but good-hearted, racial tension is nonexistent and all the women are homespun and pure. Just like they were in Michael Landon’s Little House on the Prairie. Michael grew up as Little Joe Cartwright on the Ponderosa before he became Melissa Gilbert’s “Pa” in an even better idyllic environment.You do realize Lake Wobegon and Mayberry and Little House aren’t real places, right?I’ve always loved Norman Rockwell but let’s not pretend he told us the truth. Rockwell painted a nation that never was, an idealized America, the nation of Paul Revere and Valley Forge and the key on Benjamin Franklin’s kite string as that adorable old man stood alone under a lightning-filled sky.America’s love of country music is an escape to that world of Bo and Luke and Daisy Duke and their bright orange General Lee, the original NASCAR driven by the original good old boys:Tommy Lee Jones is a Man’s Man. He don’t take no shit from nobody. Damn. If he was president, he’d sure whip that Middle East into shape, wouldn’t he? And then he’d use common sense to lower taxes, save Social Security, create jobs and sell us gas for a dollar a gallon.Hero worship breeds naiveté. It causes otherwise intelligent people to make idiotic “Tommy Lee Jones” statements and then vigorously defend those statements with extrapolations and fabricated facts. I am a professional romanticizer. My job is to write ads that make certain products and people larger than life. I am, frankly, very good at it.The American worship of “The Founding Fathers” is wearisome to me. I hear people speak of them as though they were emissaries of God’s Perfect Will rather than the debt-laden, combative, self-interested businessmen they really were.Am I speaking heresy? If so, you believe America to be a religion that needs to be protected and enforced. My crime is that I see America as a people.“Well, things sure were simpler and better back then.”No they weren’t. Things were exactly like they are now but without modern medicine and electricity and cell phones and cars and central heat and air conditioning.Make no mistake; heroes do have value.Bigger than life, highly exaggerated and always positioned in the most favorable light, a hero is a beautiful lie. We have historic heroes, folk heroes and comic book heroes. We have heroes in books and songs and movies and sport. We have heroes of morality, leadership, kindness and excellence. And nothing is so devastating to our sense of wellbeing as a badly fallen hero. Yes, heroes are dangerous to have.The only thing more dangerous is not to have them.Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by. They are tattoos on our psyche, the embodiment of all we’re striving to be.We create our heroes from our hopes and dreams.And then they create us in their own image.– from The Monday Morning Memo of the Wizard of Ads, Feb. 17, 2003 I am a true believer in the power and beauty of heroes. I do not wish to live in a world without them. But please hear this: a hero is that by which we should measure ourselves, as individuals. If you measure others by your heroes, you will quickly descend into a dark and frantic judgmentalism, crying, “All is lost and there is none that is good. No, not one.”Fearful discontent is a horrible master. Roy H. Williams

“Two heads are better than one,” is often quoted but horribly wrong.  Trust me, I know.Anything with two heads is a monster.“Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”– John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Chap. 13, 1952This is the point in the discussion where one could easily say, “Well, that’s your opinion and Steinbeck’s. But I happen to know that brainstorming as a team leads to better idea generation.”But do you know that, really? Or is brainstorming just another sacred cultural myth?Jonah Lehrer published a research article this week that eliminates the need for speculation and debate.Alex Faikney Osborn was the “O” in the famous advertising agency B.B.D.O.  Alex was full of ideas. His first book, How to “Think Up”, was published in 1942, followed by Your Creative Power in 1948, Wake Up Your Mind in 1952, and then in 1953, Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving.In the opening paragraphs of Jonah Lehrer’s marvelous research into “Groupthink,” he writes,“Osborn’s most celebrated idea was the one discussed in Chapter 33, ‘How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas.’ When a group works together, he wrote, the members should engage in a ‘brainstorm.’ The book outlined the essential rules of a successful brainstorming session. The single most important of these, Osborn said, was the absence of criticism and negative feedback. Brainstorming was an immediate hit and Osborn became a popular business guru. The underlying assumption of brainstorming is that if people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they’ll end up saying nothing at all. Typically, participants leave a brainstorming session proud of their contribution. The whiteboard has been filled with free associations. At such moments, brainstorming can seem like an ideal mental technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is one overwhelming problem with brainstorming. It doesn’t work. The first empirical test of Osborn’s brainstorming technique was performed at Yale University, in 1958. The results were a sobering refutation of Osborn. Although the findings did nothing to dent brainstorming’s popularity, numerous follow-up studies have come to the same conclusion.”Interesting, isn’t it? Sixty years of scientifically controlled experiments, studies and tests have proven brainstorming to be significantly less effective than individual effort but the brainstorming myth just won’t go away.Here’s the real kicker: discussion and debate – the very two things prohibited in a ‘brainstorming’ session – have been repeatedly proven to bring out the best in us.And now I must pause to do my Happy Dance.Okay, I’m back now.I’m happy because Jonah Lehrer describes, in the second half of his research article, what has been proven time and again to be the ultimate environment for true creative breakthrough, “a space with an almost uncanny ability to extract the best from people… a magical incubator.” He then gives us a clear description of the kitchen and courtyard of Engelbrecht House, the student mansion on the campus of Wizard Academy.Many of you reading this Monday Morning Memo will recall my greeting during the opening session on your first day of class at Wizard Academy. “Each of you came here to be enlarged by your instructor. You will, I promise, not be disappointed. But at the end of these days and nights together, as you prepare to go back home, you will realize that the most precious gift we gave you was the gift of each other.”Do you want the recipe for magic? Real magic? World-changing, life-altering magic? Here it is:1. Gather about a dozen or so really curious people.2. Let them share meals together, have coffee together and drink wine together between multiple sessions of mind-stretching stimulation.3. The magic will emerge during the times of casual discussion, relaxation and recovery as these people bring out the best in each other with questions and stories and the sharing of personal observations.Discussion and debate, sharing and defending your viewpoint with an open mind, considering and processing the input of other smart people in a fun and safe environment. Welcome to Wizard Academy.I felt certain we were on the right track.Thank you, Jonah Lehrer, for proving it.And now I’m going to do my Happy Dance again.Roy H. Williams

A brief summary of this episode

Media Buying Lesson Number OneI’ve never seen a business fail because they were reaching the wrong customer. But I’ve seen hundreds fail because they were saying the wrong things. Most ads answer questions no one was asking.How did we Americans become so fixated on “targeting the right customer” in our advertising?That question has two answers. The first is, “because it’s completely logical” and our natural inclination is to follow the footsteps of lovely Logic, even when she leads us to erroneous conclusions.  The second reason we’re fixated on targeting the right customer is, in two words, “advertising salespeople.”If you were selling a commodity that was only mildly different than the same commodity sold by your competitors, you’d focus your sales presentation on those mild differences, right? Because if you didn’t, price would be the only remaining factor for your customer to consider.I’m not accusing the ad-selling community of deception. I know these people and I like them. A lot. Many have been good friends for years. But like all sellers of products, they cannot be successful unless they convince themselves that buying advertising from anyone else would be a tragic mistake. And they care too much about you to let you make that mistake.Advertising salespeople rarely succeed unless they(1.) sincerely care about their clients and(2.) believe they are telling their clients the truth.But mass media – in all its forms – is a commodity. We call it “mass media” because it reaches the male and female, young and old, rich and poor, white-collar and blue-collar masses.“Who is your primary target?”“Females 25 to 34 years old.”“Excellent! Barbie 98 is the Number One radio station for females 25 to 34! That’s exactly who we reach! If you don’t buy our station, you’re going to be missing the Barbies. We fit your needs like a hand in glove.”“The Wizard of Ads told me to buy Wacko 103.”“Well, I like the Wizard of Ads and I read all his books, but this time he’s wrong. Wacko 103 ranks number 7 with females 25-34 and they cost 20 percent more per ad than Barbie! That just doesn’t make any sense at all. Oh my god! Look at this data. Just 7 percent of Wacko’s audience are 25 to 34 year-old females while 17 percent of Barbie’s audience is exactly your target. Wacko 103 is just a tragically, horribly inefficient buy for you. The Wizard really missed it this time.”Before we look deeper into this Barbie/Wacko fiasco, let me ask you a different question: Do the people outside your target have value? Is there anyone whose opinion you DON’T care about? Is there anyone you would rather NOT recommend you to their friends?Decisions are rarely made in a vacuum. Each of us is guided by co-workers and family members, neighbors and friends.If you are normal and healthy, you maintain about 250 people in your “realm of association.” Some of these are permanent members of that realm while others will pass through your life and be replaced. But the number hovers at about 250. And guess what? Beyond their connection to you, these 250 people have little, if anything, in common. They are your personal world: the male and female, young and old, rich and poor, white-collar and blue-collar “masses” that give your life purpose and meaning.You are someone’s target customer. If I fail to reach you with my ads but my company is beloved by half the people in your realm of association, what’s the likelihood that you’ll hear about me?Google and Facebook, radio and television, magazines and mailers, billboards and flyers are called mass media because they reach the masses. The ability to “target” using mass media is more illusion than fact.Now let’s get back to glorious Barbie 98 and that tragic mistake, Wacko 103. (This example, by the way, is not extreme in any way. My media analysts see this scenario several times a day.)The plain facts are these:17,000 of Barbie’s 100,000 listeners are females 25-34.14,000 of Wacko’s 200,000 listeners are females 25-34.Do the math and you’ll see the advertising salesperson was telling the truth. Seventeen percent of Barbie’s audience is your “target” while only seven percent of Wacko’s audience fits that profile. (17% versus 7% sounds a lot bigger than the reality of 17,000 persons versus 14,000 persons, doesn’t it? But still, it is 3,000 more persons…) But wait! While Barbie gives you an additional 83,000 people outside your imaginary “target,” Wacko 103 delivers an astounding 186,000 additional people.If we calculate Gross Rating Points for the 25-34 female “target,” Wacko appears to be 46 percent more expensive than Barbie on a cost-per-point basis. But if we consider that we’re paying for the entire audience of each station and step back to look at the question from this strange, new perspective, it becomes obvious that Wacko 103 offers twice as many people for just 20 percent more money. This means that Barbie, in truth, costs nearly twice as much as Wacko.To be fair, there are other factors to consider: Average Quarter Hour persons (AQH) and Time Spent Listening (TSL) will dictate how many ads will be needed on each station to insure the average listener will encounter your ad with sufficient repetition each week, but these calculations are easily made.Unless, of course, you accidentally multiplied Reach times Frequency to calculate Gross Impressions, the first required step in calculating Gross Rating Points (GRPs.)Oh? You did that? You calculated Gross Rating Points? Well then you’re screwed. Sorry. Have a nice life with Barbie.And tell her to eat a little, okay? No one should be that thin.Roy H. Williams

People today are different, less naïve, less gullible, less open to suggestion than in the past. Christopher Isherwood describes this difference perfectly: “To live sanely in Los Angeles or, I suppose, in any other large American city, you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be. They have planned a life for you from the cradle to the grave and beyond which it would be easy, fatally easy, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up… you’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment.” Yes, people today are definitely more skeptical than they used to be. Have you noticed how few people these days spout the old “positive thinking” platitudes that were so popular during the revved-up years of Reagan, George Sr., and Bill Clinton? Quiet determination and clenched-teeth endurance are the virtues we admire today. A person spewing happy platitudes and cliché’s is likely to be told, “Talk is cheap. Shut up and do something. Don’t tell us what you believe. Show us.” Conversations among friends are less likely to be shallow and superficial than in the past. Concerns run deeper, fears lie closer to the surface and frustration often simmers deep inside. Even the happiest people are a little bit angry. The public is no longer looking for a perfect icon to worship. Most of them are looking for an equally-flawed friend with whom they can connect. The online world gives us instant access to information. This has sensitized the public to the absence of facts in most selling messages. Unsubstantiated claims in advertising are likely to fall on deaf ears. Much has been written about the importance of transparency as though transparency were still a choice. But it isn’t. You are transparent whether you choose to be or not. Search engines have removed any veil you might have hidden behind. I hear a voice whispering in the night:“Relevance and credibility, ad writer, are the words you must engrave on your heart if you will write ads that move the needle. The customer is asking, ‘Does this matter to me?’ They are looking for relevance. And their second question is, ‘Do I believe what they’re telling me?’ They are looking for credibility.” Today’s customers have been lied to by the best. All but the stupidest of them can spot a half-truth a mile away. Make no mistake; there are still plenty of stupid people left in America. Fools must outnumber con men or the con men could not find enough to live upon. My seat-of-the-pants estimate is that roughly 15 percent of Americans are gullible fools whose prejudices outweigh their intellect. I’m not trying to be vicious. I just don’t want you to cling to those obvious exceptions that would appear to disprove the larger truth. Fifteen percent of the population is still a pile of people and frankly, you can make a lot of money by yanking their chain with hyperbole, misdirection, overstatement and lies. But to me, writing ads that target stupid people is like beating up little children. I can do it. I just don’t want to. I’ll bet you don’t either. Eighty-five percent of your prospective customers are intelligent people with unprecedented access to information. And as such, they are a hard public to convince. These are men and women who have seen an actual war launched by imaginary weapons of mass destruction, an actual economy ruined by imaginary credit-default swaps, and billions of dollars bilked from hard-working investors through imaginary securities created by Bernie Madoff and his Wall Street cronies. Yes, today’s customers have been lied to by the best. As an ad writer, I’ve chosen to write ads for the intelligently suspicious 85 percent. It’s hard work, requiring clenched-teeth determination and a willingness to wrestle with advertisers who desperately want to turn back the hands of the clock.The simple truth is that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are gone, Norman Rockwell is dead and the Reagan years are over.  But I believe the best is yet to come for business owners who understand the new rules of communication. Come, the future awaits us. Roy H. Williams

1845: This is the year Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman will plant his final apple tree. Mark Twain is 10 years old, living the boyhood that will bring us Tom Sawyer. Florida will be added to the U.S. this year, raising the total number of states to 27. We think of life as being simpler, more idyllic back then, don’t we?The American Revolution was more recent to them than World War II is to us today. Memories of colonial times were only just beginning to fade. But Thoreau felt compelled to take a sabbatical in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, saying, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”Stéphane Mallarmé was 3 years old and living in Paris in 1845, much too young and too far away to extend a hand to Thoreau. But in just a few more years he’ll bring a generation of world-changers together on Tuesday nights at 89 Rue de Rome.Gertrude Stein never met Mallarmé though their houses were only 3 miles apart. Stein arrived in Paris in 1903, 5 years after Mallarmé died. Stein’s living room is where Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Matisse, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salvador Dali and Man Ray banged ideas together while Josephine Baker danced to the music of Cole Porter who played the piano and sang. None of them was yet famous.Prior to 1953, America was too uptight to embrace outside-the-box thinkers so Paris was the haven for renegades. The living rooms of Mallarmé and Stein were like cabins in the woods. But when several Henry Davids arrive at a cabin simultaneously, the dust in the air begins to sparkle as the place becomes an island of pirates. Tinker Bell can be seen if you look quickly enough. Peter Pan is learning to fly.The salons of Stein and Mallarmé brought together the great minds of their day and tumbled them like clothes in a dryer, influencing, stimulating, inspiring one another to new heights above the accepted norm.Stein and Mallarmé were unimportant writers who surrounded themselves with the shapers of fashion, the inventors of tomorrow, the makers of the future.I strongly identify with Stein and Mallarmé.Funny, isn’t it? No one wants to be average, but everyone wants to be normal.How about you? Will your need to be “normal” condemn you to a life of screaming mediocrity? You’re familiar with the phrase, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…” but the truly frightening part is the thought that follows, “and go to their graves with their songs still in them.”Thoreau went to Walden Pond because Wizard Academy was not yet built.This bizarre little business school in Austin, Texas, is barely a dozen years old but its alumni and friends include an astounding array of scientists and musicians, journalists and authors, businesspeople and government officials. Tony Hsieh of Zappos recently sent us his endorsement of Pendulum, the book we’ll release this spring. Two of our alumni will be elected to congress in November.Don’t go to your grave with your song still in you. Come and tumble topsy-turvy with people who will make you sparkle and shine. It’s time you learned to fly.The day-to-day can wait. Don’t allow the merely urgent to displace the truly important.Let 2012 be your year.Roy H. Williams

America contained about two and a half million people when we declared our independence in 1776. Today’s Portland, Oregon is bigger than that.The Constitution (1787) empowered every citizen who was white, male and a landowner. Minorities, women and poor people? Not so much.America was unlike Europe in that we didn’t divide our population into nobles and peasants. We divided our people into landowners and land workers. This was different from Europe where the nobles owned the land and the peasants worked on it. You see the difference, don’t you?Three years later (1790,) our first census reported that America had mushroomed to 3,929,000 people; roughly the population of Seattle. But Seattle did not yet exist. It would be another 13 years before Thomas Jefferson would buy the Louisiana Territory and send Lewis and Clark to the other side of the continent to search for Starbucks. They didn’t find it, but they did find enough land to ensure that everyone who wanted to be a landowner could easily become one.“Land? I can own land?” Here came the people.Study America’s history and you’ll find that most of us are the children of castoffs, rejects and refugees. Some of us were even brought here against our will. But that was also true of the original settlers of Australia, wasn’t it? Australia, wow. What a gorgeous place to start a penal colony! If you’re going to banish me, England, please send me there.My own belief is that modern America – America 2.0 – began in 1883 when a 34 year-old writer born in New York City penned a poem to be auctioned in a fundraiser to help erect a 305-foot statue of a woman lifting a torch to the sky; “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” Emma Lazarus died just 4 years after she wrote that phrase, never suspecting her words would help shape the personality of America for a century. The rest of the money needed to erect the statue was raised by another Jew, a young refugee who had started a little newspaper in New York. His name was Joseph Pulitzer.Jews understand the importance of tolerance.The Dutch understand inclusion. Throughout history the Dutch have been quick to shelter the outcast and embrace the oppressed, so you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that a fifth-generation Dutch New Yorker was President of the United States at the zenith of the “Me” in 1903* when the statue was finally finished and those now-famous words of Emma Lazarus were officially placed on the pedestal beneath it. This visionary Dutchman shut down the power of big corporations to oppress the poor and put an end to child labor. But before he did any of this, his first official act as President of the United States was to invite an African-American, Booker T. Washington, to the White House.Tolerance and inclusion. “I accept that you are different and I want you to be in our group anyway.”  This is America.Humility and courage. “I cannot do it alone, but working together, I believe we can.” This is America.Audacity and a sense of humor. As Babe Ruth reportedly introduced himself when he met the Queen of England, “Hey Queen, pull my finger.” This is most definitely America.Emma Lazarus, Joseph Pulitzer and Teddy Roosevelt believed in the beauty, the power and the wisdom of the little guy. They believed in you.Wizard Academy does, too.The US census tells us there are 5.91 million businesses in America with fewer than 100 employees. Wizard Academy is a business school created expressly for them. This is where we teach big things quickly, the kinds of things that often mean the difference between failure and success.The American Dream is alive and well and 2012 is going to be a very good year for you.Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.Roy H. Williams

A Barely Explicable Collection of MomentsEvery person is a collector, I think.Businesspeople collect money.Travelers collect places.Competitors collect shining moments.Insecure people collect conquests, panties hanging from the bedpost.My own collection consists of curiosities, tokens of moments nearly forgotten; captured glimpses of interesting lives. I’m not certain what this says about me but I like to think it says I’m a writer. Marcel Proust lectured, “The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.” So I try to interpret what I find.Arthur Schopenhauer added, “The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.” So I do my best to make each small item in the collection interesting.Mignon Eberhart echoed my soul when he confessed, “I seat myself at the typewriter and hope, and lurk.”My collection of curiosities is a rock that skips across 500 years of cultural icons. The worldwide ocean of art is impossibly deep and wide and my rock touches only a few superficial places.But the ripples are amazing:A 500 year-old Spanish ship’s bell dragged up from the ocean floor in the Philippines, very possibly from one of the two ships Ferdinand Magellan lost there in 1521 during his historic circling of the earth.A pencil sketch of Napoleon drawn by his little brother, 24 year-old Lucien Bonaparte, shortly after the pair of them captured the throne of France in 1799.Don Kehan, Marshall of Manchon, the original manuscript of an unpublished book about Don Quixote written by John Steinbeck.The world’s only copy of a 1936 photo of Jacqueline Bouvier at a horse show when she was just 6 years old, but already unmistakably “Jackie O.”The Wise Men who sat on the piano of Liberace each Christmas, complete with Joseph and Mary and an angel with just one wing. A one-of-a-kind, handmade set dressed in velvet. (Liberace was a flamboyant piano player known for his over-the-top costumes, the original Elton John.) A cultural icon is never about the thing itself, but the idea it represents.Magellan = ExplorationNapoleon = StrategyQuixote = Commitment to a DreamJackie O. = EleganceLiberace = ShowmanshipYou’ll find these and other curiosities touching Teddy Roosevelt, Pablo Picasso, the Wright Brothers, Oceanic Flight 815 and dozens of other ripples on the water of time as you tour the campus at Wizard Academy.You’re coming, aren’t you? Roy H. Williams

I’m a Merry Christmas person. Does that make me bad? “Happy Holidays” doesn’t carry quite the same exuberance for me as “Merry Christmas.” And I must shamefully confess that deep in my heart I still think of Navajos, Cherokees and Apaches as Indians. My publisher tells me there is no such place as the Orient anymore! So are the boundaries of Asia the same as they were back when I was in school? In those days Asia was everything east of Constantinople. I’m sorry. My bad. Istanbul. Russian Cossacks with their knee-high boots and furry hats, Arab Sheiks with their flowing robes and elegant turbans, and those squinty, inscrutable men wearing silk gowns with big sleeves are no longer to be differentiated from one another. They’re all just “Asians” now. Evidently, the goal is worldwide homogenization. We’ve already achieved it architecturally so now we’re spreading that colorless twilight over every other expression of individuality. Welcome to Zoloft Grey where the mood is forever funereal. Cultural Splendor lies quietly in the coffin there but please don’t look at it, admire it, comment upon it or celebrate it. If you do, you’re obviously a racist. If you fail to ignore cultural differences you are a very bad person indeed. Indians? The Orient? Shame on you! What were you thinking? I just finished Agatha Christie’s mystery novel, Murder on the Asian Express. John Wayne starred in a lot of cowboy and Native American movies. I’m sorry. My bad. Cowperson and Native American. The best Indian food I ever had – (I can still say “Indian” if they’re from India, right?) – was in 1986 at the Bombay Palace restaurant in Washington, DC. I’m sorry. Mumbai Palace. I don’t want to be insensitive. What the…? I just Googled Bombay Palace in Washington DC and they’re closed! I wonder if it was because they failed to change their name to Mumbai Palace in 1995? Does the word holiday come from holy day?  I should check into that. I don’t want to be insensitive to people who prefer to live deity-free. I’ll let you know what I find out. In the meantime, from me and mine to you and yours: Merry… Happy… Have a good day. Roy H. Williams

Do Creative People Have to be Self-Destructive? New York Times writer Samuel G. Freedman asks,“Can the forces that make you creative also kill you?”“Can you live with control and yet create free of restraint?”“Can you live enough of the dark side to tell the tale without becoming a casualty?”Freedman’s curiosity is well founded. History is littered with the corpses of creative geniuses who were self-destructive. Vincent Van Gogh cut off his own ear and mailed it to his girlfriend. Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko would likely have made out the mailing label and taped up the box. Rothko is the lightweight of this trio. His most valuable painting is worth only about 80 million dollars, while Van Gogh and Pollock have paintings worth 150 million each. Nobel laureates Hemingway and Faulkner are the opening names on a Who’s Who list of alcoholic authors. James Joyce, Dorothy Parker, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson and dozens of others trot faithfully behind. Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain and Winehouse are the high-stepping drum majors in a holiday parade of musicians who flirted with death until it finally seduced them. Each of these artists deserved better than what they gave themselves. In her research paper, Creativity, the Arts, and Madness, Dr. Maureen Neihart says, “The belief that madness is linked with creative thinking has been held since ancient times. It is a widely popular notion.” In his book, Creativity and Madness: New Findings and Old Stereotypes, Dr. Albert Rothenberg says, “Deviant behavior, whether in the form of eccentricity or worse, is not only associated with persons of genius or high-level creativity, but it is frequently expected of them.” But we still haven’t answered Freedman’s questions. Let me do that for you now: Q: “Can the forces that make you creative also kill you?”A: There are no “forces that make you creative.” Practice and determination are what make a person good at basketball, ice skating or cliff diving. The same is true of creativity. Q: “Can you live with control and yet create free of restraint?”A: Yes. Q: “Can you live enough of the dark side to tell the tale without becoming a casualty?”A: Can a man fight in a horrible war and return home safely to the people he loves? Examine the life of a creative genius who got lost in the dark and you’ll find that he or she had no partner watching out for them. When Pennie says, “Honey, help me carry the trash to the curb,” it’s not because she needs help with the trash. I’m always annoyed that she broke my concentration in the same way a pot smoker is annoyed when you harsh their mellow. But I help her carry the trash to the curb. As we fall ever deeper into creative thought, we float weightlessly in a silent world underwater where time stands still and everything is beautiful. But it is dangerous to go swimming alone. Be sure someone who loves you ties a rope to your leg so they can haul you up when you’ve been under too long. Self-talk is the other key to keeping your balance. Do you want to drown in the darkness alone? All you have to do is say to yourself, “No one understands me… I’ll never be appreciated… Some people have all the luck but nothing ever works out for me… It just wasn’t meant to be.” Each of us believes what we hear ourselves say. The maternal side of my DNA includes a strong predisposition to depression and suicide. I am familiar with that darkness. The most effective antidote I’ve found is to tell Pennie 2 or 3 times a day about some small thing that makes me happy. Many of the things I choose to celebrate are admittedly stupid but the technique works anyway. “This bowl of beans and rice is really hitting the spot tonight! I’m glad I found this can of beans in the pantry and I put exactly the right amount of black pepper in them. And this Fuji apple is the perfect side dish. Food just doesn’t get better than this.” Pennie smiles and nods. She knows I need to find something to be happy about, no matter how small it might be. Each of us believes what we hear ourselves say.And it changes our mood. What have you been hearing yourself say lately? Roy H. Williams