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An awkward see how far you can piss type of question.
I was doing some work at an event a few weekends ago and I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in quite some years. We got to updating each other about what we are currently doing and I remember being quite thrown when faced with…
So what do you actually do bro?
In my head I remember hearing the countdown clock music ticking away to the internal monologue of “what the actual fuck?”. I was confused because I didn’t know how to reply. Truthfully. I’ve got a lot of skills, I know how to do a lot of things but I have no title. I had no pigeon hole, no box, no category and I was stuck, back to a closed door facing a Terracotta Army of panic. What was I going to do to break the few milliseconds of silence before my reply time had expired…
“I do a lot of different things to be honest…”
Take that muthafucker! Yes! A vague but heavily annoying reply, before slipping him a business card which read…
K O., Creative Consultant
At that point I was saved by another one of his distant associates he hadn’t seen in quite some time and made my exit. I remember coming away from the interaction quite thrown, it reminded of the time at uni when I had a tutorial with Mykaell Riley who had asked me the same question. I knew at that point that I had definitely needed to define exactly what I did.
I’ll be real honest, at the time of making the business cards, the title Creative Consultant was something I flirted with because I had always done a bit of that through Up In The Ear and the people around me who asked me for advice and creative guidance. It was also easier than being a ‘slasher‘. You know someone who is a…
DJ, Producer, Designer, Actor, Model, Cook, Reader, Eater, Follower, Brother, Sister, Father, Ancestor…
I had despised ever being in a predicament where I’d list all the things I did, some of those being creative endeavours more than professional pursuits, however within all of that there was always a desire to do the things I was interested in and nothing else. Hence why they are two separate words that describe me independently and in unison. I was even thinking about my salaried job, the best part of it is when I get to sit and have ‘spontaneous’ artist development and consultancy sessions with the artists that come through the building. That for me is the most rewarding.
This week especially, I realised that I had wrote the blueprint a very long time ago in the early days of my degree. I had a spontaneous consultancy session with Wayne Francis, United Vibrations, and I referenced my dissertation “The Deification of Popular Culture: The Cult of Personality“. The day before I had a spontaneous social media consultancy session with Angelina Luzi, and all day at the event in question I was consulting young creatives on what they can do to make the most of of their skill set and get their hustle on.
At this point in life, to pretend that I haven’t found the right path is stupid, the next step is to research avenues which allow me to do what I’m best at; communication, creation and consultation. That being said, if you require any of my creative consultancy services feel free to get in contact…
[Edit 28th March 2015: I actually refer to myself as Creative Etcetera as I got bored of consulting people. Creative Etcetera allows me to generalise all of my different endeavours in one title.]
[Edit 19th Jan 2019: I couldn’t give a fuck about categorising and defining myself tbh. I do what I want to do because I only do what I like. Being yourself is the easiest thing you could ever do.]
Originally published on Up In The Ear.
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