LITTLE BOXES MADE OF TICKY TACKY

(On creativity in corporate spaces)

Here’s a tidbit: I’ve been working and writing in corporate North America for over 10 years. Rounding down the number to avoid the painful realization that it’s way too long. Thing is, corporate years are more like dog years. And, as a POC, I think we should tack on a couple more. Because even when you speak perfect English, you need to learn yet another language. The passive aggressiveness that generally speaking, people who’ve been in these spaces ancestrally already know very well. And you, you don’t. 

As a newcomer to the scene, it’s a little bit more intense to understand the subtext that goes into being a foreign person in an office doing office things. The thing turns even more bizarre when you’re a foreign creative person in an office doing office things and explaining creative work to analytical groups who think with a very different part of the brain. Follow me.

‘If they were creative, they wouldn’t be in maintenance’ 
That quote is from the horror/comedy film Cabin in the Woods, and as I was rewatching it with some friends, this words made a little fire go off. For context, the maintenance guys had placed the same bet for the past however many years without ever changing their approach. We need steady people like that, sure, but in creative fields you need the absolute total opposite. 

That said, maintenance guys usually have the big bucks to hire the weird people with the creative ideas they know themselves to be incapable of having. The maintenance guys are fascinated by the creative guys, and they even cheer us on at times. That is until our ideas are a little too wild, or look a tad too out of the norm for what their homogeneity-loving brain can allow. So, they push everything back into the corner of things they know. They push and push until they serve the same old thing back up. The very thing that maintenance guys find comforting. And what they usually find most comforting is unfortunately average. Painfully average. But it is comfortable. They know it, they’ve seen it, and the sameness feels so good.

I gotta admit that I don’t know shit about maintenance. So, in my mind, it makes total sense to let someone else do that job. And if I hired them for that, I’d let them execute. Maybe I’d peep my head from a corner out of curiosity, do a look over, you know? Make sure the operation is on track. But I wouldn’t push maintenance into my silly little worlds. Wait, I’m lying. Maybe I’d try. But if I met the wall, I’d like to think I’d get the message. That is not my space. Let those guys do what they do best. 

Pardon my going on a tangent about maintenance. I just can’t find a better metaphor to tell you what it’s like to be a foreign creative with global awareness in corporate North America. You’d think this pressure to brand everything would make things more exciting. This is simply and sadly not the case. 

The most exciting things are happening online through independent creatives who’ve been able to develop a whole new way of existing through that medium. Later, large companies wonder how they’re doing it, want to partner with them, and want to understand how to make something incredible like that. Then, when they get that great talent to become a part of their company, typically they can’t align philosophically to a new way of doing things. They want to continue doing the same thing they’ve done and expect different results. Ultimately, that crushes inspiration, motivation, and innovation. So, the talent takes to Tiktok (or used to, RIP).

I’ve been trying to understand this phenomenon in the USA for a long time. Blink and place yourself in a few suburban towns across the country and you’re in the same place. All the shopping plazas, homes, and towns look sort of the same. This kind of homogeneity is eerie to me. It's taken me a long time to understand its uninspiring function. And how it has affected my brain.

The title of this piece comes from a song the show Weeds used as the title opener. It always annoyed me but paired with the visual of a quiet neighborhood filled with the literal little houses made an impact on me. It’s the perfect little way of illustrating the weird feeling of living amongst the lethargic and spiritless.