7.14.24

I’m flying to Paris today, and that has me thinking about creativity and intellectualism and writers and poets and painters and all the rest. And specifically:

Why do some places develop an outsized reputation as a hotbed of creativity for a while other places never seem to be acknowledged for generating any of the creators who come from there?

Why is Paris or Austin branded in the public mind as cities for people who want to create, while places like, say, Minneapolis are noted only as a strange outlier when folks like Prince hail from there?

Let’s start with – in my mind – why Paris?

There’s a gallic tradition of intellectual ferment. For an (exhaustive) hagiography of this evolution, To The Finland Station offers a sort of James Burke “Connections” history, if not a real explanation for “Why there?”

I don’t know that this really explains why Paris in particular developed a reputation for being a mecca for artists, and particularly writers. I suppose all I’ve seen in my many visits there is a mecca for tourists and service-industry folks who are surly about having to serve them. But then, perhaps that’s just the nature of a tourist destination in a major city. And this week, between the Olympics – celebrating sport and athleticism rather than creative pursuit – and the recent French election, which seems to be interpreted as a triumph for the right wing, it’s hard to really feel much of whatever might have fueled this collective creative desire in centuries past.

So what about other places? Well… Florence during the Italian Renaissance is often spoken of in similar context. Silicon Valley in California gets love (and money!) as a place where creative entrepreneurs go to create machines of wealth generation (though not-so-much literature or art). When I was vising Beijing in 2015 there was a strong feeling of entrepreneureal energy and creative hustle – at the time I judged that from the inflow of massive amounts of capital, and the wild-west spirit of the Chinese internet at that time; my understanding is that the Party didn’t love it and so the party didn’t last. Austin, as I mentioned earlier, is associated with some talented filmmakers like Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguiz, and certainly the “Slacker” creative spirit was strong there in the nineties; lots of us channeled that Birkenstock no-rules approach into making games. Since then it’s become part of the Austin brand, though I struggle to really name great creations that have emerged from there. SoHo, The Village, Atwood’s Toronto Alley, TinPan Alley, Berlin for a time, and a few other cities have all received a lot of love as centers for fostering works of creation in different fields at times.

Is the idea of a fertile creative hub city a romantic myth created after the fact as a sort of Chamber of Commerce branding to drive tourism? 

Austin certainly feels like that to me when I go back home.

In a few hours I’ll land in Paris, and I will look around for people actually MAKING things other than Aperol Spritzes. I’ll report back if I see any.