Want to know how to be creative like Donald Glover? Be curious, read, and experiment.
Everyone will agree that Donald Glover is one of the most creative people still breathing.
From his music to his music videos to his TV series and movies, he is constantly pushing boundaries with his imagination and forcing the audience to think and react.
Take for instance his music video Telegraph Ave.
The majority of the video is like a romantic movie, where a couple spends a day together doing couple things.
They go out to eat, they do some boom chicka wow wow, and they hang out at the beach.
All pretty normal stuff that couples do on a date or while on vacation.
But at the end of the video, Glover’s character is hit by a car, which you probably saw in the video.
Anyway, two men come out of the car and warn Glover’s partner that she isn’t safe and should run away.
As soon as the conversation finishes, the camera switches over to Glover, who is standing in front of them with tentacles slowly coming out of the open wounds of his upper body.
Then, he attacks and kills the two men with said tentacles. He and his partner look into each other’s eyes and the video ends.
This music video started off as any standard romance movie does, but ended like it was a scene from Stranger Things.
And this is just a glimpse into Glover’s creativity.
He has produced some stories that were way weirder than this. Just give his TV series Atlanta a watch and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
He pushes envelopes in it and commentates on society with surreal stories and metaphors that catch you off guard and make you ponder what message he is trying to send.
But Glover isn’t just an imaginative filmmaker -his music is creative, too.
His lyrical wordsmithing is innovative and his beats never quite fit a niche. He combines genres to make music, so his music doesn’t fit into any genre.
And it takes, I think anyway, a lot of creativity and thinking outside of the box to be able to do this.
So, this begs the question: how is he so creative?
How Is Donald Glover So Creative?
In an interview with COUP de MAIN, he said that he just likes learning and doing new things.
“People are sometimes like: ‘Oh man, you’re so talented and you do a bunch of stuff.’ I’m not! I swear to god, I’m not. I just like learning stuff, I like doing stuff. And I feel like everybody can definitely do it.”
So, what’s the best way to learn how to do new things and gain new outlooks? By reading.
(You probably already knew that I was heading here because, ya know, the title is about becoming more creative via reading.)
Reading and consuming allows you to view different perspectives and points of view, which opens your mind up to different ideas and expands the range of your imagination. This increases your creativity because it gives you more things to draw from and reference as you create your art.
Donald Glover’s Favorite Books
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Thus, here are 3 books he recommends for getting you to fire up the processor and think differently:
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Future Shock by Alvin Toffler
Final Thoughts
Glover, like Kevin Durant, is a learner and experimenter.
He is fascinated by a lot of things and likes to try different things to push his creativity.
But to be able to do that, he has had to learn and consume.
So, if you want to be creative like Donald Glover, you have to read, learn, and experiment.