Johnny Greenwood illustrates the difference between a genius and a dilettante

The Radiohead member and composer’s body of work benefits from a particular addiction to novelty.

From from The Quietus:

I'm always happiest trying new instruments… I enjoy struggling with instruments I can’t really play.

This is just an off-handed comment in a longer interview but this is the fundamental problem of the creative mind: the need to face new and novel challenges. It is a near universal attribute of being the kind of human who engages in creative work. It’s why artists so routinely crave and seem to thrive on discomfort: being uncomfortable is evidence that you’re somewhere new.

Now I say this is the “fundamental problem” not because it’s inherently bad but because if not managed the need for novelty pulls towards dilettantism. A dilettante is someone who develops a superficial interest in a field usually without a “real” commitment. Technically it could describe any hobbyist or amateur but it’s often used as a dismissive label for someone who has a shallow level of experience in multiple disciplines — the “jack of all trades, master of none”.

I certainly tend toward dilettantism. If left unchecked I may design, draw, paint, make videos, write, produce music and god knows what else in the span of 4–6 weeks. This may sound cool and it would be… if I were a 16 year-old unemployed high-school drop out. It would be cool because I would have enough time to figure out which of these I may truly excel at and make a contribution to one or more disciplines. But as a 44-year old with a full-time job and a family I can probably do any of these at a level that is “competent” at best and the results would be probably be most comparable to a straight-A high-school student: I would know a little bit about a whole of lot of shit but I wouldn’t really know shit about anything. Luckily for me I had to make a living as a graphic designer and teacher so eventually I learned some shit about one thing but even then I wish I know a lot more about a narrower slice of that one thing.

Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood is a rock musician, creates work for classical performances and scores films (There Will Be Blood, You Were Never Really Here). It would seem that he’s your consummate “multi-hyphenate creative” but that’s not true. He’s a musician rotating between three disciplines in a focused and repetitive (the key to mastery) way that feed each other directly:

…some of the good ideas [from classical music] filter back into the band: I wouldn't have done the arrangement to ‘Harry Patch (In Memory Of)’ without my time away from them writing orchestral stuff — and that's my favourite string arrangement.

I'm still keen to approach a Radiohead song by going to orchestra first instead of orchestra last, as is traditional. We did that with ‘Harry Patch’, which is just Thom and a string orchestra — and I think we should do more.

Greenwood faces the same need for novelty that all creatives have to deal with but he channels that need for discomfort into challenges that directly benefit his body of work: new instruments, new performance venues, new techniques. I guarantee that he wants to do more than that but somewhere along the line — consciously or not — he didn’t follow that interest in painting, film-making or cooking that would have been totally rewarding but would have diluted his genius as a musician.

If you look at many of the so-called “multi-hyphenate creatives” that you admire you’ll find that very few are doing six fundamentally different things well but actually doing one well and 2 or 3 that make them seem interesting (think anything Pharrell does outside of music or the fact that no one is a fan of anything James Franco does besides his acting and the overall gimmick being James Franco™. Or, and it pains me to say this, how I don’t like Action Bronson’s paintings but I love that Action Bronson paints). And if you dig into those who are deemed “geniuses” you’ll find that those multiple disciplines are feeding each other in tangible ways while still giving the artist the space to be uncomfortable (see Gerhard Richter’s painting, photography and sculpture all of which are ultimately about painting and perception or Takashi Murakami’s sculpture, painting, product design and toys which are all manifestations of one idea: Japanese nerd culture and its relationship to the history of Japanese art. In the music world you could look at the various ex-Sonic Youth members movements from easy listening rock to the edges of experimental music).

So that pull that you feel towards the new challenge? Don’t suppress it or try to avoid it. Accept it but recognize that you’re probably going to feel it constantly. Instead take a breath and think about whether investing your time in water polo will serve your purpose (and, listen, your purpose right now might just be “spend more time splashing around in the water”) or if it’s a shiny object distracting you from some other challenge that might be both rewarding today and fruitful for your work tomorrow.

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