In his blog on April 12, 2013, Seth Godin observes: “Every day, I get letters from people who found The Icarus Deception at just the right moment in their careers. It has opened doors for people or given them the confidence to keep going in the face of external (and internal) resistance. . . . I tried to create a foundation for people willing to do a better (and scarier) sort of work.”
Godin is speaking of many kinds of “creatives,” including freelance copywriters, on whom MarCom executives often rely to promote their products and services.
In his other best-selling books, Godin’s argues that we should treat our work of marketing as art. And by art, he’s not referring to a “gene” or a “specific talent” for original thought, but to an “attitude available to anyone who has a vision that others don’t have, and the guts to do something about it.” He advocates for a different way of working and a different way of thinking about the work that we do.
At this late time in history, he believes that art “is the truly human act of creating something new that matters to another person. The only refuge left, the only safe path, is to be the one who makes art” (xiii). I remember, for instance, English novelist Zadie Smith saying in an interview that she’d rather write novels that are “loose” and “baggy” and maybe not entirely coherent, if they accomplish a new way of speaking to the reader, or of exploring something previously ignored, that the reader finds valuable. Saskatoon-based novelist Alice Kuipers similarly said in a recent interview that she wants to use the format of the novel to ask questions and explore possibilities, without having to be “perfect” or critically acclaimed. As Godin says, “the opposite of coherent is interesting” and “art is almost never coherent.” Continue reading “Provocations on Art: Reading Seth Godin`s _The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?_ . . . .Part One (Portfolio Penguin, 2012)”