As the author of a how-to book about radio(which has been purchased by over twenty universities now), I often find myself talking to groups of creative kids (high school and college) and their parents. This speech is as much for the parents as for the kids. It's to help show non-creative parents what makes their creative kids tick, and to let creative kids know that they aren't alone. Creative Kids
by Rick Kaempfer
I wish there was a night like this when I went to school, because it’s not easy being a creative.
That’s the term I’m going to use to describe all of us; people who think creatively. In my twenty years of working in radio I’ve met hundreds of the most successful creative people in America. The similarities are amazing. No matter what the talent; creative people are bound by one common thing. It’s the way we think.
It’s not like other people. Our brains are wired differently.
Let me ask you a few questions to see if you are one of us.
=Has anyone ever accused you of being spacey? Having your head in the clouds? Living in your own world?
=Can you see a creative project in your head before you create it?
=Has anyone ever said this to you: If you didn’t have your head screwed on you’d lose that too.
=Do you drive people crazy because you question everything?
=When you don’t want to do something, do you take more time and energy coming up with elaborate excuses than it would have taken to just do whatever it was you didn’t want to do?
=Do you feel like nobody really understands the way you think?
If you said yes to any of those questions, welcome. You’re in the right place. You’re a creative.
Notice the questions I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask if you were organized, or efficient, or methodical. Because you probably aren’t—are you? And the reason why it feels like no one understands the way you think is because they don’t. Organized people will never understand disorganized people. They look at us, and they think, why don’t you just get organized? That’s much harder for us, than it is for them. But is possible. I’ll tell you how it happened for me a little bit later.
It’s frustrating that there is no way to measure creativity. They don’t have a creative ACT score. It’s a subjective thing. Talent is another thing that is difficult to measure—especially in the creative world. If someone has told you that you have no talent, you are pretty good company. Let me tell you a story to illustrate my point.
A California kid was an English major at California State University in Sacramento, but he wanted to act. So, he tried out for the college plays. He couldn’t get cast in a single one. They told him he had no talent. After he graduated, he moved back home with his family. His little brother encouraged him to try out for one more play—a community theatre. He did, and because of his knowledge of the classics from his English degree, he nailed the part. That play eventually went on tour to Cleveland, making him a professional actor. The next year he got his first television acting job--dressing like a woman in an ABC sitcom that was cancelled after half a season. He has been a working actor ever since—you may have heard of him. His name is Tom Hanks.
Granted, not everybody is Tom Hanks. But if you think creatively, you have a chance.
The most frustrating thing about being a creative is that you know you have to pursue a career in a creative field, but you may not be able to explain why. For me, I knew I was a good writer, but I didn’t know that I could make a living at that, necessarily. I just knew deep inside that I had to do something creative. I remember trying to explain that to my Dad. I can still see the look on his face.
I should tell you a little bit more about my family. My parents were immigrants. My Dad was from Austria, my mom was from Germany. German was my first language at home. If I can generalize; the German people have a lot of positive traits. They are organized, efficient, punctual, and orderly. In other words, all of things I mentioned creative people are NOT. Don’t get me wrong, they do get creative. They had a good run in the 19th century with people like Beethoven and Wagner. But since then, not so much. To my parent’s generation of Germans, creativity meant trying chicken schnitzel instead of Wiener schnitzel.
I only tell you that story so you can fully appreciate the horror my parents felt as I was getting ready to choose a college major. We compromised. I enrolled as a liberal arts major at the University of Illinois. My dad was happy because he went there and it’s a good school, and I was happy because I wasn’t in business or engineering or some other field that would have been horrible for me. I eventually transferred into the communications school and got my degree in advertising.
The most important thing I learned at college, however, wasn't learned in the classroom. I learned that I wasn’t alone. I learned that at the college radio station. That’s where I met my peers. My fellow creatives; people with the same talents, interests, and weaknesses. I didn't feel so odd anymore.
There's no reason to feel bad about those weaknesses either. Remember what I told you: You aren't alone. Let me give you a few examples...
See this tie? My wife tied it. I’m over 40 and I still can’t tie a tie.
Have you heard of Andy Warhol? One of the most famous artists of last century. His mother had to move in with him in New York because he couldn’t figure out how to turn on the stove. She eventually became his agent because he couldn’t figure out how to balance his checkbook.
I’m not making these stories up.
The late sportscaster Tim Weigel was a friend of mine. I used to write for him and helped him do his Weigel Wieners. He was a talented and creative guy—but driving with him was like putting your life on the line. He was a gregarious conversationalist, and when he was driving, he spent more time working on the conversation than he did watching the road. I said a little prayer every time I got in the car with him, and spent most of my time in his car stomping on the imaginary brakes on my side of the car.
John Landecker must have lost his wallet a half dozen times in the years I worked with him. He is a gifted radio performer, but it took him twenty minutes to find his keys every morning.
Parents, am I making you feel a little better? Sound like anyone you know? When I talk to parents of creative kids they usually say the same thing….”I’m scared to death that my kid will try to go into the arts or broadcasting.” My answer is “What if they don’t?” They have to follow their talents. It’s their best chance of happiness, but it’s also their best chance at a career. There may be a thousand artists better than they are, but they may develop that talent and amaze you. They seem pretty sure they will. That should tell you something.
Let me tell you a story about a fraternity brother of a good friend of mine. He was a journalism major at the University of Missouri—a very prestigious journalism school. Only he didn’t go into journalism. He moved to California before he graduated. His first job there was driving exotic dancers in a limo. His second job was moving refrigerators. Can you imagine what his parents thought when he called up to tell them his third job was dressing as a giant chicken while handing out fliers for a Mexican restaurant? They probably got over it. His name is Brad Pitt.
Despite what you’ve heard, starving is not the alternative, even for the kids that don’t make it. Creative kids are usually pretty smart. She may not become a famous painter, but last time I checked most art galleries weren’t owned by painters. He may not become a famous radio host, but may become a producer or a writer (like me) or God forbid; management. She may not become a famous actor, but may become a casting agent. There are so many possibilities.
Have you ever seen the movie “Amadeus”? You think it’s the story of Mozart’s genius, but really it’s about another composer named Salieri. He feels cursed that God has given him only the appreciation of great music and not the ability to create it. He doesn’t recognize the value of his own talent. He isn’t a genius, but he recognizes genius. He is a music critic—someone who helps the rest of us mere mortals appreciate great music.
Roger Ebert wrote one film, “Return to the Valley of the Dolls,” and it wasn’t exactly one of the best movies of all time. But he is tireless supporter of film genius—he is the Salieri of our time. And nobody would argue that he isn’t in a creative field. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his film criticism.
When I was your age I had a teacher tell me the odds for reaching the top of any creative business is something like 80 million-1. What she didn't tell me was there are many happy professionals at every other level of every creative business. Creative kids are smart. They’ll find a place. They will. Trust your smart kids.
Let me tell you a story about a smart kid named Ted. How smart was he? He got his B.A from Dartmouth, and then got a graduate degree from Oxford. His parents were so happy and proud. But imagine how they felt when Ted told them he wanted to be a cartoonist. An Ivy League and Oxford-educated cartoonist. It gets worse. He got a job at an advertising agency, and his first assignment was drawing bugs for a bug spray campaign. In his spare time, Ted continued to play around with some drawings, and then put silly words to them. Ted changed his name so that his parents wouldn’t be humiliated if he was ever published. And he was published many times. Theodore Geisel became Dr. Seuss.
Now that I’ve told you some of the reasons that you should go into a creative field, let me tell you three reasons why you shouldn’t.
Bad Reason #1: Money.
I’ve met hundreds and hundreds of creative professionals, and some of them
have been extremely successful and rich—but none of them went into it for the money. If you are doing this because you want to be wealthy, and that’s the biggest reason, you’re making a huge mistake. You know the old adage—‘do what you love and the money will follow’. It’s true that the money will follow if you really have a talent and discover how to harness it. But sometimes it takes years to blossom and discover that inner drive to make you successful.
The people that go into it for the money quit before they learn how to make a living doing what they love. On the other hand, if you are a creative, you don’t care about the money. We aren’t wired for that. To my relatives this is a character flaw. Maybe so. But if it is, it’s a character flaw that is common to all of the creative people I know.
Bad Reason #2: Fame.
First of all, it probably won’t happen. Let’s say you beat the odds and it does happen? I’ve talked to several celebrities about this subject. The people I talked to didn’t exactly complain about fame, but they were under-whelmed by it. If a complete stranger loves you, it doesn’t mean anything because you know that they don’t even know you. People close to you loving you—now that’s the real thing. When you hear that fame is empty, that’s what they mean.
Bad Reason #3: Prestige.
You remember the story about Brad Pitt working as a chicken? If you can’t handle that, you’ll never stick around long enough for the prestige. Listen to this story of a young newspaper reporter. He was working as a legman for newspaper columnist Jack Mabley. At the time, he wrote for the Daily News (a paper that is no longer with us). It was 1957, and Mabley got an invitation to a nudist colony in Indiana. He thought it was a great story, but he wasn’t willing to go nude himself—so he sent his young legman to cover his first story….and he had to do it nude. I’m sure that story is not in the official biography of esteemed journalist Walter Jacobsen.
If you are a creative you owe it to yourself to go to college and experience as much as you can. You may not be able to locate that creative switch inside of you yet because you haven’t found the right form for your creativity. You might just find it in college, and it might be totally different than what you thought it would be.
=Dan Rather went to college to play football at Sam Houston State University. Now the broadcast journalism school there is named after him.
=Rupert Murdock, the owner of the Fox Network, went to Oxford to study philosophy.
=Bill Cosby, the comedian, went to Temple on an athletic scholarship.
=Howard Stern went to Boston College for journalism. If you’ve heard his show, you know he chose another route for his career.
You may discover your talent in college, but not find your creative switch until later. I already told you about Tom Hanks. Here’s another story:
This kid was an English major at the University of Maine. He discovered he loved to write. He sold one short story when he was still in school and made a whopping $35. He wrote a novel after he graduated and nobody was interested (it was rejected by 20 different publishers). He was so hurt by the rejection of that first novel, he didn’t write again for a few more years. He needed to get some life experience first. He became a teacher. He got married. He settled down and had a family.
A few years later he wrote of couple pages, but crumpled them up and threw them in the garbage. His wife found them, liked what she saw, and begged him to finish this second novel. In January of 1973 he submitted it to a publisher. Doubleday bought it. In May of that year, they sold the paperback rights to New American Library for $400,000. The book was called “Carrie” and the author was Stephen King.
If you think you are a creative, and you think like a creative, you are one. Even if you haven’t found that internal switch yet. It may take a few years. Writers particularly need some life experience.
I was 28 when I found my creative switch, and surprise surprise; it was located within my German-ness. I was the producer of the Steve Dahl & Garry Meier show at the Loop in the mid-to-late 80s. That was the number #1 rated afternoon show in Chicago at the time. Unfortunately, that job required me to do all of the things I couldn’t do. I had to be organized. A producer has to know everything that is going on in the world, in the nation, in the city, at the radio station, at the competing radio stations, and in the media. He has to be on top of everything. In order to do that you have to be organized.
I don’t know how much you know about Steve and Garry, but when I let something fall through the cracks, I heard about it. Unfortunately for me, several hundred thousand people also heard about it. They liked to conduct their business on the air, and I was being hammered every day. That was really great motivation to get my act together. I went searching for my inner German-ness to save my butt. And I actually found it. When I found that organization within me, I also finally found my creative switch—and surprise, surprise; it was nestled tightly next to those inner German traits of organization, efficiency and punctuality. Those traits didn’t hinder my creativity, they allowed it to flourish.
Since then I’ve written a musical play, a Second City stage show, a sitcom script, over 100 songs, an award winning children’s story, a novel, over 20,000 radio segments, hundreds of commercials, and a non-fiction book “The Radio Producer’s Handbook,” which by the way is available on Allworth Press for a very affordable $19.95. If you want to go into radio keep your eye for that book.
Buy it by clicking here
I want to mention one more important thing about being a creative. You hear the sob stories of the dark brooding artists who have to feel real pain before they can become creative. That’s nonsense. They would have been artists without experiencing abuse or eating out of dumpsters. And you also hear that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. It doesn’t hurt to know people, but if you have talent and learn to harness it, it doesn’t matter where you’re from or how much pain you’ve experienced.
Let me tell you a story about a suburban kid. He studied drama at Hofstra University, and then went to UCLA to study film. He didn’t know anyone. He didn’t live a painful life. But he had talent. He found that he could write, and he took a stab at screenplays. One of his first screenplays won the Academy Award. The movie was “Patton.” That led to a producer job. He produced a film called “American Graffiti”. That was nominated for five Academy Awards. It also got him the clout to direct. You may have heard of that little movie he directed…The Godfather. His name is Francis Ford Coppola, and he’s a suburban kid who didn't suffer and didn't know anyone.
As for me, after over twenty years of working in radio, I’m finally working in the field of my major; I now co-own an advertising agency. My mother can finally tell people what I do for a living without saying…”but he got his degree in advertising.” My agency is called “A.M.I.S.H Chicago Advertising.” And we’re doing amazingly well for a company run by a bunch of creative guys. Check out our web site at www.amishchicago.com. I’m not Amish. That’s an acronym. It stands for Ad Men In Search of Happiness.
It’s still a search as far as I’m concerned, but I’m enjoying the journey. I’ve gotten to work with my radio heroes Steve Dahl & Garry Meier, and John Records Landecker. I’ve gotten to meet some of my creative heroes like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Sir George Martin. But for now I’m happy with my advertising agency because it allows me to spend time with my new creative projects…my sons Tommy, Johnny and Sean.
And those are my most satisfying creative projects of all.
And they are creative. This creative ‘illness’ runs in families by the way.
Even my German family. After my Dad died I found a pile of poetry that he wrote. It was written in German, but it was brilliant. His father, the grouchy old German, mellowed so much in his 90s that he finally admitted to me what his lifelong dream was: He wanted to be a professional accordion player. His uncle wrote the newspaper in their tiny little town in Romania. I never heard these stories growing up. They wanted to spare me from the anguish of being creative. Guess what, you can’t spare anyone. And in America, you don’t have to.
We’re lucky—you and I—we live in a society that values creativity. And someday, you’ll find your place in that society.
Albert Einstein was once asked what his greatest gift was. He answered: imagination. Because it has no limits.
And if you came here tonight, you can bet that you have a great imagination. And you have no limits to what you can achieve.
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