Follow the white rabbit – find your voice

The white rabbit is many things to many people, Lewis Caroll invented him, Jefferson Airplane wrote a song about him, and one more modern reference most people will remember is in The Matrix.

I’ve read many of interpretations of who and what Lewis Caroll’s White Rabbit is but I’m simply going to talk about the white rabbit inside of you that can, if you follow it, lead you down the rabbit hole and take you to Wonderland.

In both Alice in Wonderland and The Matrix we find two worlds… we have the world of limitations, of social conditioning, adult rationality and logic (perhaps sometimes the most irrational and illogical kind), of rules that shape and conform what we hear, see, smell, feel and experience into the recognizable, safe, comfortable… boring, predictable, imprisoning “reality” that is almost impossible to break free from.

Then we find another world, a world where everything we know is turned on it’s head. Up is down, left is right, right is wrong… but can become right again in a instant for very little logical reason. Reason and logic are unreasonable and illogical… and best of all anything can happen at any time. Rules can be bent, or broken altogether, goalposts can be moved at a whim, and you’re guaranteed to know or predict very little of anything at all.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and considering the source of truely great inspirational creativity and originality when it comes to the artists we love and revere and the works they produce.

For Jefferson Airplane the song White Rabbit is clearly about getting off your face on whatever chemical source of “inspiration” you can lay your hands on… anything other than the pills your mother gave you because clearly those don’t work. Red pills, blue pills, mushrooms, whatever it takes to send you to your own psychadelic chain smoking catapillar… just don’t end up losing your head.

In the words of Jim Morrison, the goal here is to “break on through to the other side”… to break the chains, the train tracks that hold us captive to the real around us… if just for a short while… long enough to see something in the mist, to comprehend and grasp something that the real shrouds from the mind’s eye… and most importantly to document it, so it can be pulled out of the mist and into reality.

Drugs and alcohol are a lazy man’s excuse for a ticket to the “other side”.

Have you ever woken up from a dream that was so vivid, so real that you were left for a few minutes in total wonder and amazement at the place you were just so rudely extracted from?

Those dreams happen far too seldom… but I have started keeping a notebook by my bed. Sometimes I look at it in the morning and an idea that seemed so clear to me a few hours before is actually not so great in the morning light… but sometimes I see something staring back at me from the page that is brilliant and that has clearly come from some unknown address inside me… where did it come from? how? what pulled it from the depths of my mind and why does it happen so rarely?

I’ve never had a out of mind experience, let alone one as wild perhaps as that of Raoul and Dr Gonzo in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but I’m not convinced that place is the right destination to find your source of creative originality although for some artists it seems to have worked.

There is a white rabbit inside me, and at long last I think I’ve found him and the hole that leads to the other side.

I’ve begun to notice that when an idea begins to take form in my mind… almost immediately that it appears I try and put it into a mold. Here lies the first mistake… where did that mold come from? That mold is a pre-determined image of what that particular kind of idea “should” look like… and it’s based on what I’ve seen of other similar ideas and concepts.

If I start like this, my idea will inevitably come out of that mold looking like every other conventional idea of it’s type… I have failed before I’ve even begun.

This is not to say that we don’t all take our cues and inspiration from the works of others… we do, and should… ideas get better the more they are used and often there are legitimate laws and rules that must be taken into account but there is a quiet voice inside that will instruct you in fleshing out and defining your idea… your way. It’s instructions will automatically combine cues from your greatest sources of inspiration and result in something with a great deal of you in it.

The only framework you should take notice of is the framework that must define the function and end goals of your idea, because without those your idea has no purpose or will fail in its intended purpose and with no purpose you are well and truely in the dark… there is not much constructive that can come from a vacuum of purpose.

Once you have determined the purpose… the function that the end result needs to fulfill, and sketched in all the unmovable goalposts that you can, because there will be some, the key becomes hearing that voice… I’ve started to hear mine, and I’ve started to listen to it… and it’s producing fantastic results.

What are those immovable goalposts? How do I know that I’m not just locking my idea down into everyone else’s mold?

I’ll give you some examples.

If your idea is a story that you intend to become a movie, then you need to make some decisions that will define it’s outermost edges… it’s purpose. These form a structure in which you can work and will determine what it’s overall shape may need to conform to. If the movie for instance needs to turn a healthy profit and you know the overall genre in which it fits… if it needs to be the cornerstone of a viable business plan… then you need to acknowledge and research what similar stories have been successful at that goal in the past and look for common attributes that are most likely to have contributed to the success… you will start to notice repeated patterns… “laws” of economics at play. It can get incredibly complex with layers of interdependent attributes… but that’s the black art of producing, it comes with the territory and if you don’t know it, or don’t have any interest in it… then you should be writing for a producer who can help give you a structure ensuring your idea successfully fulfills it’s intended purpose.

Sometimes the reason the world’s mold for a particular type of idea looks the way it does is because it works… it’s tried and tested… and sometimes it’s the only known way it will work. If the reasons are based in physics… such as the laws of thermodynamics that govern the operation of a internal combustion engine, and you can’t change those laws, then your new eco friendly green engine idea or design is going to have to abide by those unchangable laws… that doesn’t mean there aren’t all kinds of possible areas for innovation but if you want your engine to work… you must abide by those rules.

In the case of aviation… a realm of engineering I studied and still hold very close, there are many examples. We all know and picture what we think an aircraft should look like… two large wings at the front, two smaller wings at the back, one vertical fin at the back with a rudder… all symetrical… at least one engine in the front, sometimes two or more on the wings…

Apart from the unchangeable laws of aerodynamics… and the physics of weight and balance there are so many variables that can be altered and still produce a working aircraft that flies perfectly well. The main lifting wings can be at the back, with the smaller wings at the front, the engine and be almost anywhere, the whole layout can be assymetrical, it can even just be one big flying wing… there is plenty of room for imagination and technical innovation but there are laws that cannot be broken or the aircraft simply won’t fly.

But… know what is changeable and what is unchangeable. This means you need to know the business end of your particular realm or sphere in which you are creating. If you are not a rocket scientist, don’t design a rocket… you will fail.

Fortunately this kind of base structure… the unchangeable laws and goalposts placed by the desired purpose of what you are creating is all head knowledge… it can be learned but it won’t make you a great designer or creator. It can make you a good copycat but not much more.

If you want to be a screenwriter… read books… get the head knowledge… Robert McKee’s “Story” is fantastic head knowledge… so are Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” books… and get the producing head knowledge you need too. All this will help shape your initial framework, give you your canvas… known and defined extents… but it won’t make you a great screenwriter… and in itself doesn’t guarantee that you will ever write anything at all.

Once that structure is in place then the white rabbit will show you the rest… it will take you by the hand if you let it, it will hold and guide your arm and stroke as you hold your paintbrush to canvas. The results in the end will surprise you… just as if you’ve re-read what you’ve documented half-asleep after a vivid dream and wondered where on earth it came from.

Your white rabbit will give you the heart knowledge you need to paint that canvas and it comes from someplace deep within you. You MUST tap into it or you won’t create anything that is truely your own… you won’t discover your voice.

You must discover your voice no matter what it takes. Learning to speak is the easy part… there are books, courses, degrees… the internet… but nobody can or will put words into your mouth.

It’s up to you if you are going to simply regurgitate the words of the creators who inspire you or if you follow your white rabbit… and find your voice.

I’ve found my white rabbit quite by accident… for me it’s the gut feel that has this kind of vocabulary when I’m busy designing or creating something.

“that looks right, I don’t know why and probably couldn’t explain it to anyone but it just feels right.”

… trust it, it is right.

“my mind wants this exactly centred… but my eye want’s it just slightly off-centre to the left… yes, there it is… feels good”

… let go, let it be “imperfect” to your mind… trust the white rabbit.

It’s in rythm, aesthetic balance and sensibility… all things that are slightly different from designer to designer… creator to creator… and most of the time if you’ve got any kind of natural ability in your chosen sphere you will find yourself abiding by the unchangable rules without even knowing you are doing it.

It’s not whether you take the red pill or the blue pill… it’s in allowing yourself to let go… to listen to that inner voice, acknowledging the important rules and not being afraid to abandon or break the ones that aren’t important.

When you do, you will hardly recognize the results, but others will and you can step to the ledge and people will see you… and take notice.

On another level, in time you will begin to see consistency in your own work… you will notice unintentional patterns, repeated themes… follow those deeper and they will lead you to your best works.