Imagination & Junk

There are a million possible ways to start a new creative project, but they can all be reduced to one: Just start. In the premiere episode of Imagination & Junk you’ll meet your hosts: Bill Barol, a longtime professional writer in just about every medium, and Mat Ricardo, a variety performer who’s toured the world for decades, playing every kind of venue from street corners to theaters and festivals. Locked down by COVID in their respective home countries (the US for Bill, the UK for Mat) they begin a transatlantic correspondence that attempts to get at some basic questions about the kind of work they do: What is creativity? Where does it come from? Why is it worth thinking about? And how much does it boil down to a magic trick?

There's a misconception that creativity means coming up with ideas. But ideas are one thing, results are another, and the distance between them can only be traversed by work. How do creative people sort ideas, develop them and emerge on the other end? That's where process and technique enter the picture. Also: Mat makes the first of several references to professional wrestling, and Bill explains why if you're a comedy writer, the name "Nakamura" gives you night sweats. For more information, visit the web site.

This week, in the second of two Very Special EpisodesTM️, we're wrapping up our mini-series "I Might Be Wrong, But... " with a look at the 1973 blaxploitation demi-classic "Willie Dynamite." Bill takes the position that it's worth a second look; Mat argues the contrary, taking the classic dialectical stance he identifies as "Nuh uh." Wherever you come down on this cultural question, surely we can all agree on one thing: This episode is 33 minutes long.
Imagination & Junk returns for its third season on June 12.

It's one of the paradoxes of creative life: the longer you do it, the more tools you acquire, the more it becomes the goal to get simpler. To do less. This week we're talking about the quest for simplicity, and about finding the sweet spot between brevity and clarity. Plus: Slow TV, phantom limbs, Robot Thatcher, greening, a blow to the head, Wesley Van Wesleyson, promises and threats, and content cubed.

Every creator likes think they're shiny and golden, dancing with their muse in a singular act of invention. But is that true? Is that how it works? Or is all creativity an act of remix? Are we inevitably treading on ground others have walked before us? And if there's no such thing as originality -- why do we bother?
Also: Brain fizz and sparky fingertips, Woz, falling down, Pinwright's Progress, high blood pressure, how to breathe, grand larceny, DJ Kool Herc, Muskification, and 400,000 years ago (a Tuesday).