There has to be more that creative minds can do than shake their heads or their fists.
I’m not interested in positioning artists anywhere on a political spectrum. That road leads straight to identity silos, and I’ve spent enough time trying to bust those up. What I’m interested in is gathering people who have an imagination and know how to use it.
Poets, composers, architects, choreographers, novelists, filmmakers, designers, makers of every kind. People who can look in one direction and shake their heads at the self-absorption and fuzzy logic over here, then turn around and shake their fists at the self-absorption and fuzzy logic over there.
They’re not the same problems, but they share a common ingredient.
Most civic leaders and politicians can’t live in that in-between space. Their incentives won’t let them. But you and I share something they generally don’t: the ability to make something out of nothing, and the discipline and courage to actually do it.
The Asset Most Leaders Don’t Have
That capacity lives in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which manages high-level thinking, planning, and the generation of new ideas. It’s the same neural territory a choreographer activates when building a piece from silence, or a novelist uses when pulling a world out of thin air.
We don’t just have opinions about the future. We have the faculty to imagine and build it.
So let’s fill a room with people like that.
In my next newsletter, I’ll be making a proposition directly to my subscribers. Perhaps you, like me, will see what’s possible.
Editor’s Note (2026): This essay was written during the earliest days of Res Creativa, when the project was first being imagined. It remains here as part of the organization’s founding story.
A version of this post was originally published on Substack, Mar 26, 2026
Banner image: Charles and Ray Eames, designers, working with an aluminum group chair at their office, photograph circa 1958. Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Context from the Library of Congress exhibition on the Eameses’ fiberglass and plastic chair innovation, No known restrictions.
