A Legacy of Creativity | Part 3: Future

Robots and Poets

Last year, I went looking for evidence of a robot that probably doesn't exist. I'd found a newspaper article from the 1930s, that mixed fact and fiction indiscriminately, and I wanted to sort out which was which for myself. The article made mention of a robot in England called The Televisor. So I did a search of British newspapers from the 1930s for the words "Televisor" and "robot."

I didn't find any mention of such a robot anywhere. What I did find was something in the children’s section of the Nottingham Evening Post in December of 1932: a brief story, part three of a series, which included something called “the Magic Televisor,” and a group of gizmos known as “Anthony Rowley’s Robots.”

I ended up digging up and reading all five parts of this very weird and silly story and fell immediately in love with it. Over the next few months, I adapted it into a play, which I have plans to perform with puppets, once I have the resources to do it justice. The story was called The Pound-a-Line Poet, and if we’ve hung out for any length of time over the last year and a half, you’ve probably heard me talk about it.

What Makes a Legacy?

“But Steve,” you wonder aloud, “What does a children’s story from 90 years ago have to do with your creative legacy for the future?”

Here’s the thing: Since discovering it, I’ve done extensive searches across Google, Newspapers.com, and more, and as far as I can tell, the only place that story was ever printed was the Nottingham Evening Post, over the course of those 5 days in 1932. I have no idea who wrote it, as there was no author listed, but I think it’s safe to say that they, the people who published it, and most of the people who read it when it first came out, are all long gone.

But I discovered this story over 90 years later, and it had an impact on me. I connected with it across a chasm of nearly a century, and it inspired me to want to carry the story on, to tell it in my own way and spread it to the people around me.

That’s the kind of creative legacy I want to leave for the future. I don’t particularly want to be famous. Sometimes there are aspects of fame that I think would be cool. It would be nice to win an Oscar or an Emmy (or the coveted EGOT), or be interviewed on a late-night talk show.

But on the whole, fame just sounds exhausting. Being followed everywhere by a slew of photographers trying to make a profit off of my private life? Having a random comment spoken in haste and taken out of context be published all over the Internet, turned into memes and think pieces? Being invited on Hot Ones and having to admit that I’m a total wimp when it comes to spicy food? No, thank you.

A Different Kind of Legacy

No, when it comes down to it, the legacy I want isn’t about fame. What I want is this: Twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now, I want someone who doesn’t know me, who has never heard my name, to experience my creative work and connect with it. I want someone to read a script that I wrote and decide to mount a stage production. I want someone to come across a story of mine in an anthology and be inspired to turn it into a film. (Side note: I actually have a short story available in a brand new, just-released anthology. You can’t have the film rights, but if you wanted to buy and read it, it would make me very happy.)

I want to build the plot that they can’t get out of their head, that character that they see themselves in, that story which, for years afterward, they find themselves thinking about every now and then, and are inspired to come back and read or watch again.

I want someone to send my creative work to their circle of friends and say, “You have to check this out! It’s awesome!” And then for those friends to give that person weird looks and say, “Umm, sure, OK.” Except for those one or two friends who get it, who also connect with it… And then they bond over it and turn a random line in my work into an inside joke that they share between them for years afterward.

Maybe they even share the work with their kids. Or maybe their kids just grow up hearing the inside joke often enough that they start using it themselves, even though they have no idea what it means. Either way, it becomes something that they connect with. And when they connect with it, they’ll share it, pass it on, and continue the legacy that came from my work.

Putting It Out There

So how do I go about building that kind of legacy? A lot of it seems to rely on random chance: create something and hope that it lasts, in one form or another. Hope that someone a century from now is still able to find it, and if they do, hope that it’s something they think is worth remembering, worth sharing, and worth reviving. How do you do something like that? I’m not sure. But there’s one thing I do know: it starts with creating things and putting them out there.

That’s how any creative legacy is built. Whatever your goals are for your art, whether it’s awards, applause, money, fame, or something more abstract, like spreading joy, instigating hope, inspiring thought on a particular subject… It all starts with making a thing. And continues with releasing that thing to the public. Two of the most terrifying things a human being can do—and two of the most rewarding.

Half-Baked

As a kid, you couldn’t stop me from making things and putting them out there. I was constantly writing new stories, scripts, etc., and talking about them to anyone who would listen. I talked in my last article about how I wrote and directed a full-length play when I was 13/14, and directed one of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays when I was 17/18 because it never occurred to me that I couldn’t.

This year, on the other hand, I had two different major projects I wanted to produce, and I ended up not doing either of them. One of them was The Pound-a-Line Poet. I spent months working on the script, and the day I finished it, I took one look at it and said, “That’s not happening this year.” The script was just too elaborate, too complicated, to do it justice.

When I was a kid, I would have done it anyway. As a teenager, I would have started casting The Pound-a-Line Poet before I even finished the script, signed up for performance dates on the calendar, created flyers, and handed them out to everyone I knew. I then would have started rehearsing with only half a cast and no idea how or where to get the puppets I needed. The show no doubt would have gotten postponed at least twice before finally going up in a greatly scaled-down form, with several cast members putting socks on their hands and at least two people who’d been in the cast less than a week. Still, it would have gone up. Of that, I’m certain. One way or another, we would have performed that play.

But what kind of legacy would it have been? What would I think about that script, that performance, looking back on it as my present self, two decades later? When I think about the plays I did do back then, I’m proud of the accomplishment. I’m not as proud of the actual work. I’m glad I did them, but I wish I had had more knowledge and experience, rather than simply rushing into a half-baked idea that I was nowhere near ready for.

Of course, rushing into half-baked ideas that you’re nowhere near ready for is one of the best ways to gain knowledge and experience. I’m a much better writer and director now than I was then, and one of the reasons for that is because I learned from the mistakes I made in those and other projects. If I hadn’t done them, or if I’d given up halfway through because I wasn’t ready, then I wouldn’t have been able to grow and improve. They’re part of the creative legacy that I’ve built, which means, even if no one ever mentions either of those projects again, they’re also part of the creative legacy I’ll leave for the future.

So what about The Pound-a-Line Poet? Should I have pushed it into production despite not having the resources, and found a way to make it happen regardless? No. Stepping away instead of pushing forward was the right decision. It’s a project that means a lot to me, and if I want to do justice to it, if I want it to have a lasting legacy, then mounting it is going to take a lot of time, a lot of hard work, a lot of resources, and a lot of help.

So rather than rushing into a half-baked script, I’m taking the time to figure out and put together the resources that I need, so that next year, it can be something truly spectacular. Something that, 90 years from now, someone else finds the script for and says, “This is wild! Let’s turn it into a fully immersive Holodeck experience! With puppets!”

In the meantime, though… Who wants to rush into some other half-baked ideas with me? Those are part of the creative legacy too… And they’re a lot of fun.