Forever learning, always stupid

It's been 11 years since I began interviewing people. It started because we had no budget for a professional to do the interviews we'd secured for the voluntary awareness campaign I created and directed on behalf of Campaign Against Living Miserably . I talk a lot, and this was less GQ and more 'here's what they reckon,' so in I went, praying the famous people'd take me seriously.

If I were being pedantic, I'd say 14 years because in 2010, Danni Skerritt and I, under the guise of 'Quenched Music' sneaked into the VIP area of 'Unconvetion' – a Manchester music event – and got talking to filmmaker, DJ, and musician Don Letts. After the chat, wowed by a few things Don had said, I remembered a possibly true story about him admitting himself into Bob Marley's hotel room to bag an interview and asked if we could write our natter up for our blog. He said yeah. But that wasn't a formal, planned thing. So let's say 11.

I quickly fell in love with it. Like most art forms, if you channel your authenticity, and do it for the right reasons, it tends to garner positive responses. Something about my approach made it easy for my guests to open up. The deep subject matter also helped.

So I kept on. First a series of conversations about the emotional benefits of artistic expression, then, interviews for my debut book Champagne and Wax Crayons. The rough and ready Arrest All Mimics podcast evolved into The Creative Condition, and a combination of excerpts from those chats and dedicated book interviews amounted to 64 conversations in my 2nd non-fiction book The Creative Condition.

And this is where you find me, still deep in the throes of the best education I've ever had. And I've been more than fortunate in my formal studies.

I pondered it all on this morning's dog walk. How when I arrived at art college in 2000 to begin a BTEC National Diploma in graphic design (it was closer to a foundation, as graphic design courses should be), I didn't know my arse from my elbow. Fine art? I thought that was very detailed drawing. Illustration? Never heard of it. I knew I loved to draw, hadn't found any other passions other than sport at which I was very average, and hoped that here I'd find some direction. I did. My tutors were great, I got a vague sense that there was an industry in which I might find something I'd enjoy spending 40 hours a week doing. But truth be told, I've always been behind the curve on the theory.

Even now I'm woefully stupid if you gauge intelligence by the remembering and regurgitation of facts. But I suppose that's more about being intellectual, isn't it? Intelligence comes in many forms, and, over time, I've realised I am far from stupid. I just absorb information differently and I'm obsessed with human nature and creativity.

Today, I don't know the total, but I've held over 350 long-form conversations with the broadest range of humans in my ongoing, lifelong attempt to elevate the understanding and societal implementation of creativity as a vital necessity to happiness and our very survival.

This morning I'm tired because I spent 3 hours yesterday talking to Natalia Talkowska ?? and incoming global CEO of 腾迈 Erin Riley. Both wowed me with their life stories, experiences, and feelings around creativity, and the details of their professional lives. Ask enough questions until you get a sense of their version of creativity and your audience will benefit from it. Bit by bit, person by person, I better know what people need, and how creativity is inseparable from good mental health and genuine progress. Something Erin and I touched upon was the way that a more rounded approach to culture and society would benefit the economy, more sustainably so, rather than the historic disproportionate amount of focus we still put on economic growth in isolation.

It's a tiredness I adore, and I sit here, wilfully stupid, a dozy grin on my face, already planning my next conversations with fascinating people. On paper, I remain qualified only as an illustrator, but each day I'm observing, listening, soaking up stories, and seeing which doors open in front of me, which magnificent characters fly into my web, then accosting them with my microphone and stupidly large headphones.

The latest episode of 'The Creative Condition' podcast is out now:

Supported, as always by IllustrationX