Creative Quest
by Questlove
Added:
2018 May 23
Description
A unique new guide to creativity from Questlove - inspirations, stories, and lessons on how to live your best creative life
Questlove - musician, bandleader, designer, producer, culinary entrepreneur, professor, and all-around cultural omnivore - shares his wisdom on the topics of inspiration and originality in a one-of-a-kind guide to living your best creative life.
In Creative Quest, Questlove synthesizes all the creative philosophies, lessons, and stories he’s heard from the many creators and collaborators in his life, and reflects on his own experience, to advise readers and fans on how to consider creativity and where to find it. He addresses many topics - what it means to be creative, how to find a mentor and serve as an apprentice, the wisdom of maintaining a creative network, coping with critics and the foibles of success, and the specific pitfalls of contemporary culture - all in the service of guiding admirers who have followed his career and newcomers not yet acquainted with his story.
Whether discussing his own life or channeling the lessons he’s learned from forefathers such as George Clinton, collaborators like D’Angelo, or like-minded artists including Ava DuVernay, David Byrne, Björk, and others, Questlove speaks with the candor and enthusiasm that fans have come to expect. Creative Quest is many things - above all, a wise and wide-ranging conversation around the eternal mystery of creativity.
Notes & Highlights
Chapter: The Depature
In 2016 I started Questlove Supreme on Pandora. It was a departure for me, in a sense – I have talked about how it gave me a new way of using the DJ part of my brain and activating the formal curatorial impulse.
One of my favorite shows was my interviewing Stephen Hill, then the president of BET. We talked about how he started as a DJ at Brown University, and how he remained interested in the energy of being a radio personality. I’m fascinated by his passion for radio. As the president of BET, his fantasy was still to be an afternoon jock.
That’s someone who understands that departures work in two directions: that when you move on to something else, that earlier thing becomes your departure, in a sense, as well as your anchor. You need to both push toward new ideas of yourself and push back toward the earlier ones that encouraged you to push toward the new ones.
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