Experiments In The Service of Creativity: Strategy is Everything. Also, F*ck Strategy.

My personal and professional existence is so wrapped up in this notion that no one is strictly one thing or another. I'm a digital marketer. I'm a circus artist. Actor. Musician. Educator. Entrepreneur. Aspiring filmmaker.

I delight in my femininity. And I love my intense, masculine energy. I'm quite at home on stage and in the spotlight. But if I'm out shopping, I don’t want the staff asking me if they can help me find anything. I prefer to be alone, and if I need help, I’ll ask for it.

And how's this for contradictions? I'm a writer. Yet starting a new piece of writing feels like swallowing cough syrup to me. To quote my mother, who is quite the wit and wordsmith herself, "No writer likes to write."

I'm a percussionist. Yet if I set aside time to practice, that time is fraught. That's when I feel an ice chip in my heart reminding me of my younger self who burnt herself out practicing till 4 a.m. and sleeping overnight in the drum room because she didn't want to walk across campus alone that late.

I'm a juggler. How did that happen? At some point, events conspired to prove that juggling, for some reason, jives with me. Maybe it was all those nights of drumming till 4 a.m. that resulted in hand coordination and rhythmic timing that translates to juggling. But who really knows?

And here I am. Writing about being a juggling percussionist. A feminine, punk-clown, juggling percussionist. How's that for a long-tail keyword, Google? 

At what point does any of this become a good idea? With all these complex elements in play, there is no turning this into a profitable gig without feeling like I’ve been visited by a death eater…unless I negotiate a reasonable deal between thinking and feeling.

Scientists, marketers, circus artists - everyone says “experiment.”

There’s a strange similarity between marketing and circus training: both are disciplined exercises in coordinated confusion. There are always a million things going on at once with a need to have the next “act” waiting in the wings. And every production requires the appropriate balance of hitting specific, measurable goals and just trying stuff to see if it works.

It’s no wonder, then, why “experiment” lands on Buzzword Bingo cards for performers and marketers. But do we really know what we’re saying when we use that word? If I hear “We’re conducting an experiment,” my mind first conjures up images of lab coats and line graphs. But if I hear “What we do is experimental,” I’m more prone to imagine improv dancers in a black box theatre interpreting atonal music. 

Scientist. Artist. Clinical. Avant-garde. The perfectionist in me wonders which definition of “experiment” is the right one. But the me in me doesn’t like being told that I have to be one thing or another. So I say yes to both, always remembering that experiments, no matter their interpretation, are iterative things.

When I experiment with seemingly disparate elements, I get closer to being everything I want to be. My latest experiment occurred in preparation for The Allentown Night Market, a biannual fair in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood purveying “oddities and curiosities” from artists of all sorts. My challenge: create a juggle-drumming act lasting between 5 and 10 minutes. 

Here’s how it went…

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Strategy is everything.

Plato said that necessity is the mother of invention. Successful artists, scientists, circus performers, and marketers alike live by this adage, even though we may apply it in different ways.

My interpretation of that advice is this: Know what you need-lack-have. Yes, I just put three terms, including two antonyms, together into one word, but stay with me... I say “need-lack-have” because I think these belong in the same thought. Experiments are, after all, breeding grounds for creative solutions. And for everything we seem to lack in our pursuit of a desired outcome, there’s usually something else in our possession that lets us hack our way to that outcome - or at least pretty close. 

The need-lack-have proposition helps me simplify the search for an “aha” moment. It’s challenging enough to juggle and drum at the same time (not to mention for several minutes). So if my challenge is to render a unique, juggle-drumming act with limited time to conceptualize, practice, and perform a piece worthy of The Allentown Night Market, I better be strategic.

Know what you need-lack-have.

Here are examples of how I applied the need-lack-have treatment in this case... 

I need a juggle-drumming act for The Allentown Night Market that doesn’t require an elaborate setup.

I lack the guarantee of a microphone and, thus, the more economical but more delicate-sounding tricks I’ve performed in the past.

I have the various pieces of my 22-year-old drum kit equipment.

Creative solution: Mount a small, resonant trap table on top of a kick drum. The trap table will be my surface for juggle-drumming as the kick drum provides the booming, rhythmic back beats.

Fast forward a couple of months…

I need a resonant trap table that would sit at the perfect juggling height above my kick drum.

I lack the money to buy a resonant trap table (dear lord, they’re expensive).

I have the means to search online for a more economical solution from a hardware store.

Creative solution: See what I can do with a window screen. They’re lightweight and noisy (if you use them as a percussion instrument). Furthermore, they give me the option to thread strings laden with percussive hardware through the mesh. This is how I think, people… 

Unfortunately, the window screen was too difficult to mount on top of my kick drum without spending more money on hardware. Therefore…

I need another thing I can juggle-drum on with an adjustable height.

I lack the funds to keep spending money on new items to see if they work.

Creative Solution: Use my Frankenstein Table. My Frankenstein Table is a cabinet door I got at Construction Junction mounted to the hardware of the electronic drum kit that stopped working for me a few years ago. Also, nix the kick drum because it would be too difficult to fit it in my car along with my Frankenstein Table.

This cascade of need-lack-have propositions continued over the next month or so, during which time I was also moving to a new home. And as anyone who’s had to pack up and move before knows, it would’ve been less stressful for me to run a 5k, take a chemistry final, and get a root canal in one day.

But wouldn’t you know it? Lacking time and energy did yield some grade-a, creative solutions, and revelations. For starters, artists, scientists, and marketers all lack the same thing which is the need to do a 100% original act every time.

Research the world’s top comedians. You’ll find that many of your favorites rarely, if ever, launch a new tour with completely new material from scratch. As Steve Martin described his stand-up collaborations with Martin Short, “We never throw everything out and bring everything new in. It would be impossible…We change things one line at a time.”

When I put together a new routine, I include one or two tricks from a previous routine. One bit of flash I reused for The Allentown Night Market was an effect I discovered for a video project I did the previous summer called City Lights. In it, I took the top head off of a snare drum and dropped beads into it in a randomized fashion that made it sound like fireworks bursting in the sky. 

As I thought about reviving this idea, I thought “Wouldn’t it be cool if I had a video showing fireworks as I performed this? That’s right! I have a Canva subscription that lets me play stock videos on my iPad in front of an audience.

The iPad also connects via Bluetooth® to another thing I have: an ODD Ball. The ODD Ball is a motion sensor-equipped ball that plays programmed, nuanced musical sounds when handled in various ways. The sounds render through an an app that also contains a metronome and a library of backbeat grooves. Oh yeah. I can perform some regular ball juggling without losing the percussive element. A classic example of letting technology pick up the slack when you lack the time or energy.

The iPad also let me share another lighting bolt idea. At some point, I decided that I didn’t want to talk. Talking meant that I had to write talking points, and my brain was too fried to handle that with such limited time. So I came up with a Silent Clown shtick in which I introduced my act, one word at a time, by thumbing through a slideshow (which I also made in Canva) displayed on the iPad. In my signature pink and black, it read the following in big, bold letters: “Hi! I’m Lindsay. I’m a Punk. And I didn’t get a microphone. I only got a metronome. But don’t worry. You’ll still hear me.”

All this goes to show that in the need-lack-have game, performers and marketers all have the same thing: the freedom to use multiple means of communication.

Marketers, we know that a winning campaign involves a concert of tools such as email, paid ads, social media, and the list goes on. As an artist, in this case, I realized that I could create a 5-10-minute act with multiple skills and tools in my repertoire. I didn’t have to juggle-drum on my Frankenstein Table the whole time. 

Also, no one ever said that I couldn’t just drum. I was so fixated on the juggling part that I forgot how, once upon a time, drumming was all I needed to do to captivate an audience. So I filled about two minutes with drumline licks and tricks - no heroic reinvention required. Duh…

Ultimately, the act hit the required length even without the juggle-drumming part which, ultimately, became the big finish.

Sometimes, the fact that we don’t have something can be a great gift in itself. If we accept the opportunity, the perception of lack makes us remember and reimagine what we already have. Also, it makes us less likely to take any good fortune for granted when it finally comes our way. This creative problem-solving is key to experimentation. But it isn’t the whole equation. You need to agree to a healthy measure of “I don’t know what I’m doing here. But I’m going to find out.”

Also, f*ck strategy.

There’s a time and a place for everything. A trapeze when it's several feet off of the ground presents neither the time nor place for me to "just try stuff" without the appropriate education or experience. But if we're talking about a feminine, punk-clown juggling percussionist act, the world will keep on spinning if I totally bomb.

Again, the perfectionist in me wants to corral everything about this unusual, artistic endeavor into my control. But the me in me who insists on these creative fusion experiments knows better. There is no clever way to know exactly what we'll find on the other side of every choice, and the only way out is through.

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If there's a way to make a passion enjoyable 100% of the time, I don't know what it is. In preparing for The Allentown Night Market, my nervous system was coated in present-day, adult stressors plus the memories of the college kid who deemed it necessary to work so much harder than everybody else to be excellent. Yes, this was my passion. But I wasn’t loving it.

And remember when I said I'm "quite at home on stage and in the spotlight." Well, not all the time, as it turns out. Historically, I’ve experienced solid stage fright when I juggle solo onstage. Furthermore, this was a new act - one I had to conceptualize from start to finish like a writer (cue the cough syrup). On top of all that, I had to practice drumming (cue the ice chip). 

Why on earth would I voluntarily put myself in this situation? Because I pitched the idea and sold it, so I was going to drink every drop of the cough syrup slushie despite how much it made me wince. But the thirty-something circus artist and science communicator I am now understands something the obsessed college student didn’t. 

Often, when we’re about to try something unfamiliar or challenging, our minds trick us into thinking it requires enhanced energy. Our bodies respond by tensing up, and tension is a form of energy. That energy transfers to whatever objects we handle. For instance, if I’m tense while standing on a tightwire, the wire will shake. If I’m tense while juggling, anything I throw will fly too far, too fast, and I’m less likely to catch it comfortably.

Because I recognize this exchange between potential and kinetic energy, my intuition for effortlessness has improved. I can't make big changes effortlessly. But I can make small changes effortlessly. Thus, I'm more aware of when I can apply small adjustments in my body or my technique that make a big difference. 

Relax your elbow. Relax your shoulder. Look over here instead of over there. Slow down the tempo.

These were the kind of cues I gave myself when a skill wasn’t working the way I wanted it to. When I told my body that it didn’t have to work so hard, the challenge decreased accordingly to the point where I could practice, and later, perform the skill consistently. Not perfectly, mind you. That’s not a realistic expectation. With juggling, it’s a statistic inevitability that you’ll drop whatever you’re tossing at some point in your practice. So just accept that we need to drop at some point so we can figure out how to recover. That’s how we get better.

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The same phenomenon applied when I started writing this piece. Full disclosure, it still tasted of cough syrup. But I used a different brand of medicine that goes down easier. First of all, I stopped thinking that writing should feel a certain way. I can still write even though it’s not the most comfortable situation for me. That revelation, alone, makes writing less daunting.

Also, I gave myself permission to write what I wanted. While the marketing gears in my brain grind to turn “feminine, punk-clown, juggling percussionist” into SEO gold, I remember something one of my creative writing professors once said: "Sometimes, you have to write your way there." 

There. That's the extent of the strategy. Just write something with as much honesty and eloquence as possible, and let the themes emerge from there. The alternative is to keep the thoughts vaulted away in Braintown - the only place that’s always busy, but nothing ever happens.

When my thoughts flow out of Braintown and onto a page, they flow like honey. Some streams are fuller and richer than others. Some even get clogged on their way out. No matter what, they need their time to fully incorporate into the mixture of written words. It's not like I can ask AI to help me write an authentic piece about my experience of The Allentown Night Market. So if nothing flows, I don't sit around and put effort into making it flow. I go do something else, and let it come to me on its own. 

Go figure. I have more stamina to write when the piece writes itself. That’s why I was okay with staying up late to work on this piece. I didn't even have a title for it when I started writing. It didn't get done in a day. It didn't get done in two days. Yet here it is.

There is no getting around the effort. It will take time and grit and countless occasions of picking the ball back up. But if the effort is always a struggle, something needs to change. The changes aren’t always simple or easy, but you’d be surprised how often they are.

You'd think that, with all these mature revelations, my stage fright evaporated, too. Nope. I practiced. I meditated. I matured. It didn't matter. I still got nervous. And at that point, the best thing I could think was, "Well, I can do things nervous." 

Did that thought help? Yes and no. It didn't dial down my nerves, but it kept me from thinking that I couldn’t handle something going wrong. I first performed the act at 7 p.m. It had issues. Some technical, which were out of my control. Some artistic, which required me to edit. 

In any case, you roll with what happens like it's part of the act and move on when you're ready. As a gigging artist, you don't always get a chance to beta-test a performance scenario before it goes live. As I said, the only way out is through. But in the end, that 7 p.m. set was my big win for the event. Not because of any effect it may have had on the audience, but because of the effect it had on me.

It was the first time that I got to perform a juggling act twice in one night. "Why is that a good thing?" you may ask. With my nerves all aflutter, you'd think my brain said "Oh no. I have to do this again." No. It said, “Alright. I get to do this again!"

When you only have one shot to perform an act, you, naturally, feel more pressure before and during it. You want all that hard work and desire for self-expression to be worth it. So you risk falling flat on your face (literally sometimes) if it means the performance pulsing inside you sees the light of day. And when your one shot comes, adrenaline kicks in - sometimes to your benefit, sometimes not. 

Once I got through that first set, all the adrenaline left my system. Okay. I got through that without any scars. I don't need any extra brain chemicals to do that again. So when the 10 p.m. set rolled around, and I performed the edited, adrenaline-free act, it clicked. Still not perfect, but so much cleaner. Much less effort. 

Note to self: remember what this felt like. Yes, I can do things nervous. And I don't always have to be nervous. I could do this type of thing again if I wanted to.

Onto the next thing…

So many artists get stuck thinking they have to figure out what their magnum opus will be. And even once they think they’ve figured it out, they peter out trying to create the whole, damned thing at once. Truth be told, this is my first instinct as well. I’m too contemplative to turn off the lights in my Braintown just like that.

But any tendency I may have to overthink is surpassed by my belief that there is no magnum opus. There is only the next experiment. Then the one after that, and so on. We decide along the way how they all fit together.

So what’s next? What’s strong call-to-action do I write here, wrapping up this stream of consciousness while encouraging you to return for the next experiment on the horizon? Here’s the thing: I know there’s more to come. But that doesn’t mean that there’s a neat, tidy formula predicting the arc of this feminine, punk-clown, juggling percussionist. So I, frankly see no harm in concluding with the most fantastic call-to-action my brain can muster for the occasion.

So stay tuned. There’s more…and if anyone knows how to get a hold of Dave Matthews Band, let them know I’m available for conceptual music video they may want to make in the future.

Photos by Gary Margeson (@pittbuck).

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About Lindsay Surmacz