Where does creative obsession actually come from? Not how to manufacture it. Not how to find it on a vision board. Where it actually lives. How it grows underground without your permission. And what it sounds like when it finally tries to break through.

This episode is the follow up to Episode 61: Obsessed. If you haven't listened to that one yet, start there.

This week I go back to a specific moment. Sixteen years old, a Mac G5, a cosmos built from scratch in a high school art room in Freeport Illinois. Two strangers from the Art Institute of Chicago who saw something I didn't. And then the long, complicated story of what happened to that signal when the framework got louder than I did.

We also get into David Lynch, Jon Batiste, the 19th century psychology of monomania, and a John Updike line that I think is one of the most honest things ever said about what separates artists from entertainers.

Clips used in this episode:

David Lynch on his childhood memory that inspired Blue Velvet

Jon Batiste on being misunderstood his first year at Juilliard

WALL-E opening sequence

Music: OK Go, Obsession

Lessons From A Terrible Photographer is available now on Amazon. Get your copy here

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Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.