This article featured in the April issue of Australian Bartender
By Philip Duff.
Philip is a staunch advocate of riding the bus without iTunes, supermarket shopping without Twitter and having a coffee with out your iPhone all in the name of creativity. Release yourself…go on put the screen down and listen to some whale chants. Put it down! In saying that, he can best be reached at philip@liquidsolutions.org if you’ve got something creative to show him.
I subscribe to Dilbert author Scott Adam’s theory that we live in a time of stunted creativity, because we no longer allow ourselves to be bored, not even for a moment. Waiting in line at the supermarket? Whip out your iPhone and continue reading Suzanne Collins with the Kindle app. Stuck in traffic? Crank the tunes, or play that French In Three Weeks CD. At a party and you find yourself momentarily alone? Why not Twitter about it? Watching “Californication” on DVR or DVD, it’s seven minutes in and Hank hasn’t boned a chickie yet? Go on, fast-forward that sucker!
We are never not distracted, so there is no thought going on, no chance for an idea to pop into our over-stimulated heads. We used to live in a radio, TV and newspaper world, where you were constantly exposed to influences and information you’d never have thought of: we now live in an iPod, TiVo and blog world, safely insulated from anything that might surprise, challenge or upset our cushioned misconceptions
This creativity cull bedevils our industry on both sides. Drinks marketers are only interested in selling stuff that already sells by the bucket-load. Skinnygirl – a gimmick brand created by some nobody harpie with basilisk eyes from a US reality show you’ve never heard of-started life a year ago as a cocktail premix. Sadly, it sold shitloads. By this summer, there will be Skinnygirl wines, Skinnygirl vodkas and God knows what else – 12 products in all. Twelve! – on shop shelves. Take me now, Lord. As I write, the world’s largest drinks firm, Diageo, has responded to the runaway success of the Pinnacle whipped-cream-vodka brand (zero to 1 million cases in less than 2 years) by launching both Smirnoff Whipped Cream and Smirnoff Fluff Marshmallow. Make it stop.
We are no better. Who really creates cocktails anymore? What was once a mixologist’s trade secret – take a classic cocktail and change one ingredient for a closely-comparable one – has become common currency. Plus, every brand that sells more than two bottles a week has its own ambassador or consultant, who is lumbered with coming up with cocktail recipes morning, noon and night, in much the same way that chained-up bears are milked for their bile in China (although under far less humane circumstances).
Marian Beke (of Nightjar, London), Alex Kratena (Artesian bar at the Langham Hotel, London), everyone at Worship Street Whistling Shop and Purl (London) and Evan Zimmerman (The Woodsman, Portland, USA) are really being creative. The rest of us are just playing Mr Potato Head with classic recipes, or riffing endlessly with pointless, miniscule twists on the Manhattan, Old Fashioned, Sazerac and Martini.
How do we get our grooves back you ask? There are different schools of thought. Have empty periods of boredom. Drive. Don’t read or listen on the bus or train – just gaze around and think. Run without music. Exercise without videoscreens (the mind boggles at the thought). Plan computer-off thinking time at the office, if you have one. Force yourself to be alone with your thoughts (ignore the ones about shooting the Prime Minister, though). Inspiration through other media – forced synaesthesia, if you will – is useful. Read a book on architecture and re-imagine Gaudi’s Barcelona as a cocktail menu. Translate the feel, weight and look of a Tag Heuer into a drink recipe. Craft a cocktail as dark, tragic and southern as a James Lee Burke novel.
Perhaps you should just get off your arse. We live in increasingly coddled societies. Our biggest decision is espresso or cappuccino for breakfast. Maybe creativity needs hardship? A deadline? There is compelling evidence that motivation leads to quality output. And you know this too. How many rich kids have you seen blowing their inheritance on a bar or restaurant or (more usually) nightclub which goes spectacularly bankrupt within months? Loads, right? That’s because they don’t give a shit, those trustafarians. Nothing to lose. Now, how many good bartenders do you know who opened a bar with their savings and their balls? How many of those lost their way? Not as many, I’ll bet. Why not take a few risks? Open a bar? Start a brand? Self-publish a book? Emigrate?
I beg you. Do something, anything, before you find yourself hurrying home to watch reality TV, at which time you’ll be beyond help and should be humanely destroyed before you breed.