“Born This Way” is an extremely well-built song. The music is upbeat, catchy, and danceable. The lyrics are uplifting, unchallenging, and engineered to be attractive to open-minded people of any persuasion. I admire it for its craft; all the success it has is more than deserved.

But it’s also (kind of) a giant lie.

Lady Gaga was born Stefani Germanotta. Following a chain of Wikipedia references shows that she spent several years as a clean-cut Catholic schoolgirl who was interested in music and dated clean-cut guys. Her name became Lady Gaga, depending on what you believe, when she received a text message that had autocorrected a misspelling of “Radio Ga Ga” to “Lady Ga Ga”, or as a result of a marketing meeting that was called to craft the persona that Stefani and her manager would pitch to record labels. I’m not particularly interested in learning the truth; either way, the process of learning to live to that new name took years and lots of hard work. The Gaga of “Born This Way” may be who she is now, but she was certainly not actually born that way.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Enter Weird Al Yankovic.

“Perform This Way” is Yankovic’s effortlessly skillful send-up of “Born This Way”. It highlights the obvious artifice in the persona of Lady Gaga; lampoons bizarre things that Lady Gaga has done, like wearing dresses made of meat or bubbles; and makes specific reference to how Gaga’s “…little monsters pay/lots cause I perform this way”. I originally read it as an expression of frustration with Gaga’s popularity, which I found almost offensive. I don’t find Yankovic’s work bothersome in general, but attacking Gaga’s popularity by labeling it shock-driven and shallow rings hollow coming from an artist whose penchant for crazy costumes and spectacle is so well-documented. Such an attack would be so childish, in fact, that I eventually decided that Weird Al was way too smart for that to be his point.

Here is the alternate reading that I now favor:

1. Weird Al consciously created himself as a shock artist, succeeded because of it, and is proud of having done so.
2. You can create yourself anew as anything you want.
3. It is offensively disingenuous for Lady Gaga to hide the artifice behind her persona.

The slow rise of Weird Al as a parody artist is well-documented. From accordion lessons at age six to his first big break on the Dr. Demento show in 1976 to being the opening act for The Monkees to seven platinum records in 2006, Weird Al has been at it for a while and is unambiguously successful. It would be strange for him to not be proud of that.

I get the second point from Yankovic’s reversal of the title of the song. Gaga’s version preaches unconditional self-acceptance; Yankovic denies the relevance of the current self, and is worried only about the performance. A functional definition of identity is beyond the scope of this post, but if Yankovic thought that your current state of existence at any point in the past mattered, he might have mentioned it somewhere in the song.

The biting sarcasm present in Yankovic’s version must be accounted for, of course, which is where I get the third point. Yankovic is clearly frustrated with Gaga for something, but it can’t be for achieving success in exactly the same way that he did. As I noted above, that would be stupid. The only thing I can come up with is that he’s frustrated that she has obscured the path to that success so thoroughly. Yankovic’s lyrics are obessed with Gaga’s artifice; although it is hard to speak with a straight face about a meat dress, I don’t think Yankovic’s tone ever crosses from merely-pointing-it-out to outright mockery. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with what she does, but he wants to make damn sure you know that she’s doing it consciously.

I find “Perform This Way” to be the far more uplifting version of the song. I’m all about accepting who we all are as people, but I’m much more interested in becoming different and better than I am in rationalizing stagnation. Want to be a superstar even though you aren’t one right now? No problem. Act like one, buy a bubble dress, put a porcupine on your head, and go to town. It may not work, but I’m sure it’s a vast improvement over the zero chance that “being yourself” has.

Recently, I read two books about the creative process: Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art and Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. Both books explain the process of creating finished, shipped work out of nothing. Both also believe that human creation is the most important endeavor in the world, and they want you to both want to help and have the tools to do so. From ten thousand feet, they are exactly the same book.

Zoom in a little more, though, and they aren’t at all.

Tharp is a choreographer, and the examples from The Creative Habit come from the dance world. Pressfield is a writer, and The War of Art’s examples are all about writing. There is a larger difference between the attitudes that the two authors have toward the creative process. Tharp’s goal is to leave you comfortable enough in your creative skin that you can be free to make things, and she explains her entire creative experience from beginning to end to ease you into comfort. Pressfield has given up on comfort entirely, and wants you to do the same; rather than tell you what creation is like, he casts it as a war, and says that you should treat it as such. It will never be comfortable, he says, and the sooner you give up on comfort, the better off you’ll be. This distinction, of course, comes through in the books’ titles. Tharp wants you to develop a habit; Pressfield wants you to win a never-ending war.

Why is it good that both books exist?

The top-line message of these books is important for the world to hear. We should all be making and sharing art, in whatever form each of us is inspired to make. Therefore, any increase in the number of ways people can hear that message in the world is an improvement.

Different versions of different ideas can also work better for different people. The Creative Habit is friendly, nurturing, and reminiscent of a conversation with a friend who wants to see you succeed. The War of Art is in-your-face, combative, and feels like getting yelled at by a drill sergeant. The latter tone worked much better for me, but your mileage may vary.

The last reason, and to me the most compelling, is that one of the two books is probably better. As humanity moves forward, it continually keeps the best technology it has access to, throwing out less efficient things. Ideas are no different; we keep the ones that work best and forget the rest.

In mathematics and science, the “best” expression of an idea is the most concise one. Einstein’s e = mc^2 and Euler’s e^i(pi) = -1, for example, are equations that would be very difficult to improve on.

The War of Art is a much more concise work than The Creative Habit on many levels. First, it’s much shorter in total. It has fewer chapters. I would guess that its average sentence length is shorter. This suggests that The War of Art will be the longer-enduring version.
I vastly prefer The War of Art to The Creative Habit. Pressfield is a writer, and his attention to craft shows through. Not a word is wasted, and the whole book buzzes with energy. I also enjoy that the combative tone of the book matches his message. Creation is war; just as there is no room for quarter against the resistance, there is no room for a single wasted word in his work.

Everything worthwhile that you say in your work has already been said by someone else. That’s okay. First, if you and someone else both independently wanted to say it, it’s probably worth saying again. Second, we still want your version. It will probably be different, and it might even be better.

Two days ago, I posted an entry that explicitly promised another entry the following day about another topic.

Yesterday, I procrastinated on writing until I was too low on energy to write. I distracted myself while getting to this point by watching Exit Through The Gift Shop, which was awesome, and reading The Unfettered Mind, which was also awesome. At the end of this, I had burned my weekly blog cheat day.

Today, it is late. I just got back from sword class. Nothing great is coming to mind.

Various sources tell me that it takes 30 days to make a habit. I started a six-day-a-week writing commitment on April 27. May 27 is eight days away. I want to make writing blog entries a habit.

So I must post.

This is a post. For today, I win, and at this stage, winning is more important.

I think we use “identity” to mean two different things.

The first form of identity is one of self-description. How would you, or someone else, describe you? Are you a writer? A martial artist? A speaker?

I’ve been described as all three of these things. Why am I a writer? Because I leveraged a previous blog into thousands of dollars of freelance writing and because I’ve written a weekly column for a website for the past two years as part of my job. Why am I speaker? Because I gave a talk about game design at the University of Washington. Why am I a martial artist? Because I have a purple belt in kenjutsu.

Does any of that tell you anything about me, fundamentally, as a person? I claim that it does not. Tim Ferriss is also a writer, speaker, and martial artist, and that doesn’t help you compare him and me as overall human beings.

This is because all three of these identity descriptions are based on results, and we don’t all agree on the results necessary to earn a description. A “writer”, under this discussion frame, is a person who trades words for money… unless you choose to measure someone’s writerhood by how influential their ideas are. The definition of “speaker” is equally malleable, and may or may not require paid work. And who can possibly define what a “martial artist” is in anything resembling a useful way?

Most descriptive identities are vague, and they are especially so when we look at them as aspirations. If you told me that you wanted to be a doctor, and I was feeling particularly snarky, I might ask you how you will know when you’ve succeeded. Will you be a doctor when you get your M.D.? Will you be a doctor when you finish twenty successful heart surgeries? Will you be a doctor when you own your own practice? If you don’t know, then when can you be secure that you’ve made it?

It would be fair to describe me, right now, as a game designer, as I receive money in return for time spent making games. If I wanted to transform from a game designer into a pizza delivery guy, I could quit my job, call up a Domino’s, and deliver twenty pizzas. If I wanted to transform into a college professor, I could start reading behavioral economics journals, apply to graduate schools, get a Ph.D, and then fight for tenure. If I wanted to become a pop star, I could start taking voice and dance lessons, then recording and posting YouTube videos of my performances until a record label signed me. Some of these transformations can happen faster than others, but the point is the same: results-based identity is eminently hackable with some work.

That should be exciting to you. Do you want a new and different description? Define the specific results you want that would make you feel that you’ve earned it, then go and produce them.

There is another consequence of the hackability of descriptive identity: becoming attached to a descriptive identity of oneself is silly. These descriptions are results-based, and you can change them on the fly to match anyone else’s set of descriptions, so they’re useless for the purposes of defining yourself for yourself.

If descriptive identity isn’t useful, we are clearly missing something, as I don’t know anyone who would claim that every human is the same. What is the second form of identity, and how do we find it?

That is a question for tomorrow.

I don’t care about who you are.

I don’t care that you like writing novels. I don’t care that you like taking pictures of cats and writing funny captions on them. I don’t care that you like to drink and do karaoke at bars.

I care about what you do, and specifically what you do for me. I care that I enjoyed reading your book. I care that your cat pictures make me laugh. I care that I had fun the last time we both were at Monday night karaoke at Ozzie’s.

I can’t see who you are until you do something. For my purposes, you are what you do, and I only care about that until you stop doing it. If you stop, that’s not who you are anymore, and I stop caring.

I care about Tim Ferriss because he challenges my assumptions about how little effort I can put into parts of my life I care less about. I care about Steve Pavlina because he reminds me to incrementally improve everything I do. I care about Seth Godin because he pushes me to create and share art. They’ve each been doing these things for as long as I’ve been familiar with their work, and they show no signs of stopping.

What do you do? Should I care? And will you keep doing it?

I am very tired.

Today, I went to an SCA fight practice. I was fighting on and off for about two and a half hours in thirty pounds of armor. We were practicing one on one fights, in which my weapon of choice is a greatsword. Everyone I was practicing with was fighting sword and shield. In the greatsword versus sword-and-shield matchup, their goal is to use their shield to close as fast as possible to negate my range advantage, and they were correctly charging me at the beginning of each fight. To win, I needed to use my greater mobility to attack them from the side, or just keep them at range and whack away until I scored something. Despite the extra armor weight, I had to move quickly if I wanted a chance at success. The day took a lot out of me, but I had a mental breakthrough that I suspect will be important later, so I’m happy I went.

I just got home from having dinner at some friends’ apartment, where I nearly fell asleep on their couch before realizing that I should probably just go home.

There is a large part of me that doesn’t want to write this post.

Yet, here I am. Why?

First, I committed to posting six days a week. I want to prove to myself that I can do that. I spent my one cheat day a week this past Thursday, so fulfilling my commitment to myself means posting something tonight.

Second, I want to build discipline. I need to write regularly to practice, so I want to train my brain that daily writing is not an optional activity.

Those two factors sound nice, but they weren’t enough to get me to post. The deciding factor was the idea that I could make today an experiment. How little effort could I put into a post before it was publishable?

Why would I do this? Let’s take a detour into the land of martial arts. One of the textbooks that we study at the kenjutsu dojo I am attending discusses the three stages of learning any technique, from the most basic vertical cut to sophisticated entering techniques that require split-second timing. I’ll use the basic vertical cut as my example.

The first stage is learning how to do the technique at all. The motions must be programmed into your body. Move the sword from center gaurd to above your head with a snap, then move your hands forward before snapping the sword on the way back down. Stop the power as soon as the snap is finished so that you don’t overextend your wrists. If we can do all this without prompting, no matter how slow or unrealistic it looks, we’ve satisfied this criteria.

I know how to write, and I’ve created several five hundred to one thousand word blog entries in the past few weeks.

The second stage is learning how to do it without thinking about it. To execute a vertical cut in combat, you need to be familiar enough with the technique that your brain can reproduce it while it is focusing on other things. Deciding whether or not a vertical cut is a good idea right now takes up a lot of energy, and can take up all the mental space you once used to remember how to do it at all. In martial arts, we develop this ability with tons and tons of repetition. I find that I get to this level with a technique at around the thousandth repetition.

I haven’t written a thousand blog posts, but I’m getting better at identifying whether an idea will work well in a blog post and what the structure should be before I start writing. I still have more work to do, but I can feel this coming.

The third stage, and the most challenging part, is to learn how to do it while expending the minimum required energy. Once you transcend your brain as a limitation on doing the technique, we move on to your body. Physical energy is a resource, and hurting someone with an attack requires power. Our goal is to spend as little energy as possible on each attack so that we don’t run out of energy before we run out of things that need to be attacked. To develop this skill in martial arts, we execute the technique over and over again until we are exhausted, then keep going. When we’re tired, we force our bodies to do things in the most efficient way possible, because there simply isn’t energy to do it any other way. Once we find this way, we can use it when we are fresh, and we’ll get tired more slowly.

I currently have trouble writing for more than three or four hours before getting fatigued, and quality starts to suffer after an hour or two. I want to develop the ability to keep going longer than that. This is a chance to practice writing tired, and when I cast it that way, it was obvious that I needed to write.

I may be exhausted, but to my eye, I was able to write something that is readable and delivers value.

In the past two weeks, what entertainment have you consumed? Music, TV, movies, blog posts, and books all count.

When you encounter a new work that you must decide whether or not to consume, you hold it to standards that are set by the media you consume on a regular basis. When you create your own work, however, you will hold yourself to those same standards. If those standards are high, this will help you produce great things. If they are not, they won’t.

I’m extremely picky about the media I consume. I watch less than ten films per year. I read about twenty books in a year. I subscribe to twenty blogs in my RSS reader, which give me about five posts a day to read. I don’t watch TV at all, but when I did, I watched one show all the way through its six year run and nothing else. This restriction of input forces me to be very picky about what I commit to consuming.

I think very highly of the entertainment I consume. That’s not a surprise, though, because I chose it, and I bias toward thinking that I chose well. To check whether something actually is high-quality or not, I often ask what a highly-informed person thinks of the work. Does Roger Ebert say that this movie is high-quality? Do other fiction authors recommend this novel? If so, I can be confident that I have chosen well. If not, I have to consider that my standards could be higher.

You will naturally try to produce work that is at least as good as the standards you set for your own consumption. Therefore, consume only a small number of the highest-quality things. If everything in your life is high-quality, you won’t be able to imagine making anything less.

A year and a half ago, I became active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a living history organization. Although the SCA focuses mainly on medieval Europe, any culture that interacted with Europeans before 1600 AD is fair game. I’m all about medieval Japan, and the Portuguese landed at Tanegashima in 1543. I knew from the beginning that I was going to be a samurai.

In order to learn about my chosen place and time, I read several books about fuedal Japanese life. I was particularly interested in the sections that talked about clothing, as it’s hard to do reenactment without plausibly looking the part. Unfortunately, each book’s discussion of Japanese clothing had gaping holes. Most contained only an overview of the garments. Few included any amount of detail about their construction. None felt it necessary or useful to explain how to put everything on.

This is not nearly granular enough for a serious reenactor, who wants to know in very fine detail how things were made and used. I can only assume that the Japanese literature on this topic is more enlightening, but the language barrier made that inaccessible for me.

The most vexing thing, though, was a claim I found repeated in book after book, each time without justification. No self-respecting samurai, each book said, would go out in public without an overgarment on. The repetition of this statement made me think it was probably true, but no one was willing- or perhaps, I began to suspect, able- to tell me why.

To get the information I needed to construct the clothes I wanted to have, I networked with other SCA members who have Japanese personas. They provided me with patterns and rudimentary knowledge of how to dress myself, and my closet began to fill with clothes fit for a samurai. However, the overgarment claim remained unsubstantiated.

One day, I was pondering this while I got dressed for an event. No one of high status would be attending, and no one else there has a Japanese persona. There was no particular reason to dress formally, I reckoned, if no one there would notice or care how casual I had dressed.

The kosode is the 16th century precursor to the modern kimono. I put on a white one as an undergarment and secured it with a belt, then put on a patterned silk one over that, secured with a second belt. Kosode are very large garments, so I gathered the extra material at the small of my back to make the material in front of my body smooth. Then, over that I put on a hakama, a baggy sort of trousers that any man of status wore when he was outside of his home.

Before leaving my apartment, I checked my work in the mirror. My collars overlapped nicely, and the front of my kosode was smooth. Then, I turned around and looked over my back. What I saw horrified me. The point at the small of my back where I had gathered the extra kosode material was a wrinkled mess. Everything else about my clothes appeared neat, but that one spot was so unruly that it demanded a viewier’s attention and overshadowed the order that was apparent everywhere else.

I didn’t want anyone to see that. I needed to cover it up with something.

Right then, everything clicked. Self-respecting samurai wore overgarments because they looked sloppy when viewed from behind if they didn’t, and now there was no way in hell I was ever leaving the house without one.

The authors of the books I read may be able to spout facts about sixteenth century Japanese clothing, but can they make it and then dress themselves competently in it? If they’ve never been in position to have the realization I had, I don’t know if I believe they can.

I can.

I’d rather be me.