On 8 December 2022 I held the launch event for my new book, Creativity: Seven Keys to Unlock Your Creative Self, in which I talked a bit about the book and also played some of my music live for the first time ever. (Update!: You can now watch a video of the whole event).
The event gave participants the opportunity to experience every one of the following things:
→ Live music from me, because creativity has to be explored across all avenues, even the ones where middle-aged white men are making electronic music that nobody asked them to
→ Some key points about creativity, from the brand new book Creativity: Seven Keys to Unlock Your Creative Self, plus Q&A, and the “five diagrams” I promised in the promo material (one of them is a picture of a pear that I spent ages drawing on PowerPoint)
→ Food from proper Toronto caterer McEwan’s (“absolutely amazing” – Google Reviews)
→ Wine from the local LCBO (“a quasi-monopoly” – Wikipedia)
In an email to ticket-holders, I said: “You may be most excited about the food and drink, understandably. I’m both thrilled and nervous about the music part, but hey, I’m leaning into the uncertainty and also thinking maybe this is an exciting new presentation format. It’s an evening out, but a thankfully quite-short one. So please do come. It’s a real thing!”
The event was at HQ inside The Creative School’s Innovation Studio at 110 Bond St, Toronto.
In another email before the event, I explained: “My music, crafted over months inside electronic boxes, is never meant to be played live, which seemed impossible, as well as being something for which there is no demand. Therefore I have embraced this challenge, to maximize the opportunities for anxiety and shame in what would otherwise be an all-too straightforward talk about the doing of creativity.”
In the end it went well and people seemed to have a good time!
Thank you to everyone who came, for such a warm reception for my words, diagrams and music. And many thanks to Erin Kjaer for all the support setting it up; Geneva Hayes for running the bar; Risto Leivat from the university bookstore for selling books; and Zoraise Ahmad for filming the event.
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