Insights
Thin Air Manufacturing, Edges, and an Extraordinary League of Imposters
“How long d’it take you to learn a trick like that?”
One day, at an undisclosed point in history, a fairground magician takes the stage. He proceeds to do many tricks of some notecard tricks, collapsing hats, coin juggling, endless knotted ropes of kerchiefs pulled from sleeves — the usual kind of thing.
Then, at the climax of his act, something amazing happens. With one finger pressed to his lips to promote an air of anticipation in which the wonderment might actually happen — slowly and assuredly, he pulls a beautiful, lustrous white rabbit out of thin air. The crowd gasps. How DID he do that?
At the end of the show, the crowd disperses to reveal a small girl standing in front of the magician. The small girl looks up and asks:
“How long d’it take you to learn a trick like that?”
The magician looks at the girl, looks into the distance, thinks a while, and then replies:
“Well, the white rabbit part, not so long — but the thin air from which I pulled it, now that’s been a lifetime in the making.”
I’m not sure where I heard the story first — or did I make it up? God knows.
But it is the inspiration for my company name. Why did I set up Thin Air Factory? To try and find a way to manufacture the ‘thin air’ from which great ideas might be plucked. Sometimes that thin air is the product of previous ideas slightly rearranged — and sometimes it is simply from a purely human insight our rational selves might have missed. Often it is made up of a collision of disconnected and disassociated thoughts, insights, and ideas coming together to reveal something ‘other’. Regardless, thin air is what I set out to fabricate.
Why? Decades in the ad industry [or communications as the grown-ups now call it] had made me more than slightly myopic. The relentless conveyor belt of brief after brief being delivered to me by the smart people upstairs [or downstairs depending on the agency] was, for many years, the greatest fun — as was creating brand ideas and all the incumbent creative paraphernalia that accompanies them — TV scripts, films, i.d designs, tone of voice, social activations. But it had left me with too many ‘edges’ — parameters, models, frameworks, peripheries, coordinates, margins. I felt like I was on rails. I found myself at a point where I was more fascinated with the atmospherics, the environment and the landscape around the brief than the brief itself — the why of what I did as a day job.
When I speak of finding myself with too many edges, and reacting against that, to be clear this is linked to yet another obsession of mine: immersion.
Immersion to me is the portal to something extraordinary of the self. To immerse yourself in anything — fear, desire, fascination, complexity, ritual, unknows, repetition, banality, daydreaming — to the point where, even for the briefest moment, you lose the edges of what you know, think, and often feel — that is transcendence for me. This chaotic, slightly sick-making version of the creative process [as opposed to the highly-tuned, reductive, and highly-crafted version mostly practiced in Communications agencies the world over] is the one that really tweaks me. Part of the reason for me knowing this is where I am happiest lies in the lived experience of what I am not. I know brilliant advertising creatives — highly-lauded, top-of-their game creatives of audacious talent — who do the highly-tuned, reductive, and highly-crafted version of their creativity to an award-winning degree. I’ve worked with some incredible people. Humility, therefore, demands that I accept that I am simply not wired like them — and very unlikely to be as brilliant, driven or focused as them in that world — ever — even on my greatest day.
But in working with them I have also realised that my need to lose the edges in search of answers or revelations or solutions of any kind — to do and think ridiculous, obtuse things with no real direct equivalence to the brief [in rational and modal terms at least] is where my value most likely lies. Over the years I’ve developed an ability to bungee jump into the furthest corners of my own mind [sounds terribly windswept but frankly starts with the parlour game of word association and the equivalent of a game of cultural Snap].
I go there gladly, though previously not always healthily — to claim that I haven’t used substance or fuel in the past to accelerate my journey to there would be lying. And I go there for all manner of reasons — often not anything to do with traditional brand requirements or outcomes. In that, I am always just a breath away from cluelessness.
Where’s the edge I need to lose?
Somewhere in the process, there is a particular and tangible lag moment where I am utterly overwhelmed or confounded by the task or challenge in front of me — to the point where I think ‘I’ve no idea what I am doing’ — and in that moment I am unequivocally quite lost. A moment where all of the coordinates, experience, knowledge, information, hacks, skills, and traits I have to hand simply desert me. And every time [so far at least], after some time, eventually, a crack in my utter cluelessness will appear — a hairline fracture. That’s all I need, a hairline fracture to climb into and back on track, hopefully on a path of exquisite mending — of Kintsugi Creativity — finding new beauty in what cracked and broke. But in every project no matter how large or small — there first must come that moment of nothing - of breakage.
I think this broader need to go into things I have no understanding of or no rhyme nor reason to be anywhere near is my extreme sport — and I do it often. If something scares me, even for a moment, my character is to move towards it. I’d like to say that is a brilliant and awesome trait. But not always. Thankfully there have been enough positive outcomes to outweigh the bad — so far at least.
There is a clarity of purpose that comes with this awareness.
Often, when entering into rooms and conversations and topics of which I have no depth of knowledge or credential, my only right to be there and the basis of any commentary or application of skills I might have is predicated on nothing more than me being human. I seem to do an OK job of representing the human in any room. I have half an idea of the kinds of storytelling — the arcs, characters, framings, and acts — that might get ordinary people and audiences of some particular nature to engage with things they might otherwise not engage with.
Can I make a complex thing simple and compelling?
Applying the not-quite-intelligent-enough [NQIE] mode is a powerful tool when trying to do so. Accepting that I have neither the deep business experience, systemic or operational oversight, economic knowledge, academic intelligence, hyper rationality, or profundity of understanding of complex subjects like genomics and the bio-economy for example, forces me into a useful position — that of the ordinary person.
That I am incapable of dropping into the complexities of the subject, and my tendency to try and find the story in everything [I believe that storytelling is one of the most important evolutionary human technologies we have after language — watch this space!] means that I am compelled to scrabble through cultural and social constructs; themes, threads, and narratives to see if I can find one or some that echo, mirror, reflect or simply capture the essence of what my NQIE receptors are picking up. From this random collection of items, I create a sort of coarse, intellectual papier-mache anagram to gawp at, poke, and try to fathom or solve.
So, I would say that losing the edges of what you think you know is essential to pursuing fresh thinking and ideas that you might still wish to surprise people with — beginning with yourself.
I worked with a big wave surfer who applies this through an eternal student model. Ensuring that you are always the novice in something, unfettered from the overconfidence and one-dimensional perspectives that exceptional proficiency in anything brings, will unlock corners of ability and revelation you would otherwise have completely missed.
Also — just to say the NQIE mode also points to one of my other Journeys to Glory theories [the classical Greek odyssey kind that is, as opposed to Spandau Ballet’s debut album of the same name, though I did love it — especially Mandolin!]. My theory is that, beyond random collisions of anything, either by accident or design, Imposter Syndrome might actually be the GOAT driver of innovation. Unlike experts and highly-seasoned specialists, Imposters can be relied upon to turn up, quietly terrified, most of the time– and with that terror goes an often slightly desperate scrabbling for outcomes with greater disregard for the inputs — messy, eclectic, erratic, chaotic, irrational — logic dispensed and rationality binned in some desperate attempt to avoid humiliation.
So I am uncertain as to what the stronger driver of truly innovative thought might be — the assured entitlement of the highly intelligent expert to be innovative as an affirmation of their greatness — or the fear of the highly anxious imposter to be innovative as an accident of their smallness?
The jury’s out but I’d love to do some research on that [unless it’s already been done — if so, please forward to me!] If there was to be a conspiracy theory about world domination, I’d love to think that there is a League of Extraordinary Imposters out there — a cabal of uber-imposters, with the ability to apply the magical power of NFIWID [acronym answers to Kathryn Hamilton please] to staggering and audacious net effect.
One point of clarity.
The greatest Imposters are, I believe, the high-functioning kind, who present as some of the most expert and highly-specialised individuals in just about every discipline you can imagine. The Imposter aspect lies deep within them and maybe the very driver of their exception — BUT the trigger is in there — a glitch in their code — a rogue energy waiting to be sparked.
Frankly, as long as both collisions and imposters are at work in the pursuit of things that make our lives better — it’s all good by me. There is of course a clear link between Imposters and Collisions. Imposters are by their very nature going to have little or no clarity of the foundational order, precepts and understanding of any specific conceptual framework within which they are working, and therefore are far more likely to set off a chain-reaction of collisions between unconnected things in such a way as to potentially reveal something new. The randomness fuelled by their unknowing is useful and often productive.
So perhaps the key ingredient of the thin air I set out to manufacture is ‘unknowing’ — that pure moment of existence where, even on the simplest job, my faculty for conjuring anything let alone something deserts me — that moment where the system breaks. Perhaps in writing this out loud I realise that the thin air I try to create is of the Kintsugi kind — breaking what is — both in me and in what sits in front of me — and then seeking to find a new beauty in repair and remaking —and in the process turning it into, hopefully, something elevating or transcendent or revelatory.
In realising that, perhaps I also realise that maybe I should have followed the science path — because [and I may be just riffing and punting here but] I’ll bet a kintsugi cup on the fact that you have more theories, models, formulae, systems, designs, concepts, algorithms, diagrams and structures to break than any other. In science, you have the candy-store of breakables that every Kintsugi kid dreams of.
But:
If all of that extreme unknowing and breakage sounds a little too dramatic, try starting with something small. A sort of Kintsugi-Lite. Whatever it is, just make sure you end up ‘somewhere’ previously unknown to you. Start there.
In closing, if that reads like my excuse for continuing to turn up in rooms I have no right to enter into, I’ll take that and raise it. What’s more, if you’ve got a room that would scare the shite out of me, or baffle my tiny mind, give me a call, as it already sounds interesting. Somewhat magnetic in fact.
About the Author
Julian Borra is a creative writer working in the commercial communications industry, with a particular passion for using creativity to make complex things simple, most particularly in the sustainability, tech, and science spaces. Long term projects include shaping a more inclusive and aspirational sustainability conversation, most particularly through his work with Peggy Liu on her China Dream project, as well as his continuing works as the Lead Creative Strategist on Socialising the Genome, a Wellcome Connecting Science & Genomics England Initiative, now entering its next major phase of works centred on Engaging the Disengaged to create a fairer, more inclusive healthcare future.
Julian also writes the odd book, having co-authored Liferider, a NYT Bestseller, with Laird Hamilton, legendary big-wave surfer, and waterman amongst other things.
To find out more about Julian and his work connect with him out on LinkedIn or go to thinairfactory.com.
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