I was introduced to a big-shot client the other day as being a ‘creative type’. It’s not the worst thing I’ve been called over the years. But it was the look the client gave me that stopped me in my tracks. It had me wondering if I’d somehow turned up for work wearing the wife’s underwear on a jaunty angle on my head.
It wasn’t just that he was looking down his nose at me. I knew exactly what he was thinking, I could see it in his eyes. “Please go back to your shell you cretin, you arse, you fluffy headed creative person and bring me someone that I can have an intelligent conversation with, pronto.”
Now I don’t wear remarkable clothes or have a remarkable haircut. I’m a pretty normal looking bloke. But some people view creatives as being akin to an inmate of a high-security psychiatric hospital. They think we spend our day hanging from the ceiling rafters, colouring our faces with felt pens and doped out of our minds. (OK, well there was that day, last June.)
The fact is, that word “creative” often gets misinterpreted. Equally, so does the word ‘daydreamer’. While I was at school that word was often used as an insult. A child who dreams and has their heads in the clouds – sorry kid but you are a loser. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Yet everything we are surrounded by – cars, clothes, furniture, houses, all these things came out of someone’s imagination. They dreamt it, they drew it, and they made it. The practical minded miss the fact that we live in a world of dreams. Dreams that a creative person has brought to life.
@fountainjohn
