创意人士怎样找到自己的位置

How to Find Your Place in the World After Graduation

创意人士怎样找到自己的位置

PARIS

巴黎

LIKE practically everyone else, I gave a commencement speech last week. Mine was for the Paris College of Art, an American art and design school in France whose roughly 200 students hail from 48 countries.

像几乎所有人一样，我上周也进行了毕业典礼演讲。我是在巴黎艺术学院(Paris College of Art)做的。这是一所位于法国的美国艺术与设计学校，拥有来自48个国家的大约200名学生。

In deciding what to say, I couldn’t rely on my own experience with commencement speeches. When I graduated from college, a United States senator delivered his stump speech on Poland, then wished us luck.

在决定该说些什么的时候，我可没法从亲身经历过的毕业演讲中汲取灵感。在我大学毕业时，一位联邦参议员发表了一番关于波兰的政治演说，然后祝我们好运。

So I listened to lots of commencement speeches online. I quickly realized that the good ones are under 15 minutes; that it helps if you can do impressions; and that just because you starred in a hit sitcom doesn’t mean you possess great wisdom.

所以，我开始在网上听大量的演讲来汲取灵感。很快我就意识到：好的演讲不要超过15分钟;能来点滑稽模仿是件好事;仅仅因为出演了情景喜剧，并不意味着你拥有大智慧。

I also realized that commencement speeches are mostly an American phenomenon. In Britain there are graduation ceremonies, but no outside motivational speakers. “Every year, thousands of young British people collect their degrees and head into the world in a dangerously uninspired state — not knowing, for example, whether or not they should say ‘yes’ to life, or follow their hearts, or dare to be different,” wrote the journalist Oliver Burkeman.

我也意识到，毕业演讲主要是在美国盛行。英国会举办毕业典礼，但不会从外面请人来做励志演讲。“每年有成千上万的英国年轻人拿到学位，以无精打采的状态走向外面的世界——比如，他们不知道自己是否应该对生活充满信心，追随自己的内心，勇敢地走上不同的道路，”记者奥利弗·伯克曼(Oliver Burkeman)写道。

The French typically don’t even hold a ceremony; your diploma just arrives in the mail. An instructor at Sciences Po, one of France’s top universities, told me she showed her students Steve Jobs’s 2005 commencement speech at Stanford, in which he describes how he dropped out of college and studied calligraphy. Calligraphy seemed fascinating but pointless at the time, but years later it became the basis for the fonts in Apple computers. Jobs offered this as proof that, when you follow your passion, all your strange choices eventually make sense, and the great narrative of your life emerges.

通常情况下，法国人就连仪式也不举办;文凭通过邮件送达。在法国顶级学府巴黎政治学院(Sciences Po)，一名教员告诉我，她给自己的学生看了史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)2005年在斯坦福大学所做的毕业演讲。他讲述了自己如何从大学辍学并学习了书法的故事。那时候，书法看似美好，却毫无意义，不过几年后，它成为了苹果电脑的字体的基础。乔布斯把这件事作为例子，证明当你追随自己的爱好时，所做的各种奇怪选择最终都会发挥作用，共同打造出你人生的伟大篇章。

The Sciences Po instructor said that her French students were unmoved by this speech, calling it “completely disconnected from reality” and “so Californian.”

巴黎政治学院的那位教员说，她的法国学生对这个演讲无动于衷，称之为“完全与现实脱节”，“加利福利亚色彩太浓”。

All this put me in a tricky spot. The whole point of a commencement speech is to say something encouraging. The ones I watched typically boiled down to: Yes, you can. Here’s how.

因为这些原因，我感觉有些棘手。毕业典礼演讲的关键是说一些励志的话。而我观看的那些演讲基本可以归结为：是的，你可以，原因如下。

But I was in Paris, speaking to a graduating class that was only a quarter American. If I said anything too uplifting, I’d seem deluded. A French commencement speech would probably boil down to: No, you can’t. It’s not possible. Don’t even try.

但我是在巴黎，听演讲的毕业班学生中只有四分之一是美国人。如果说了一些太过令人心潮澎湃的话，那会让我显得在忽悠人。一个法国式的毕业典礼演讲很可能会归结为：不，你不能;这是不可能的;想都别想。

So I based my talk on a common French expression that’s optimistic, but not grandiose: Vous allez trouver votre place. You will find your place. I’ve always liked this idea that, somewhere in the world, there’s a gap shaped just like you. Once you find it, you’ll slide right in.

所以，我把这个演讲的基调定位在一个常见的法国说法上，乐观而不浮夸：Vous allez trouver votre place，意思是，你会找到自己的位置。我一直很喜欢这个说法，在世界上的某个地方，有个地方正好适合你。一旦找到它，你就会安然嵌入。

That still left a critical question: How do you find this place? This is especially relevant for creative types, who often won’t have a clear career sequence to follow. They’re not trying to become vice president of something. They’re the something. They’ll probably spend lots of time alone in rooms, struggling to make things.

仍然有一个关键问题有待解决：你怎样才能找到这个地方?对于身处创意领域的人，这一点特别重要，因为他们往往不会有一条明确的职业道路可以遵循。他们并不想成为什么东西的副总裁，而是自成一格。他们很可能会花很多时间独自待在房间里，拼命要做些东西出来。

As someone who’s spent years in such rooms, I offered this advice. It applies to many nonartistic jobs, too:

作为在这种房间里待过多年的人，我提出了下面的建议。它同样适用于很多非艺术类型的工作：

Stay in the room. It needn’t be an actual room. You can be alone in a busy cafe. I’ve gotten some of my best ideas while walking, or riding the Paris Metro (I recommend Line 8). I’ve never gotten a good idea while checking Twitter or shopping.

留在房间里。它不必是一个实际的房间。在繁忙的咖啡馆里，你也可以独自一人。我的一些最好的点子是在步行或乘坐巴黎地铁(推荐8号线)时冒出来的。我从来没有在查看Twitter或购物的时候想出过任何好点子。

You need to be blank, and even a little bit bored, for your brain to feed you ideas. The poet Wendell Berry wrote that in solitude, “one’s inner voices become audible.” Figure out your clearest, most productive time of day to work, and guard this time carefully.

你需要一片空白，甚至有点无聊，这样大脑才能为你提供想法。诗人温德尔·贝里(Wendell Berry)曾写道，独处时“才能听见内心的声音”。找出你一天当中最清醒、最有效率的时间，在这段时间里工作，并且要悉心保护它。

Always carry a pen, a paper notebook and something good to read. A lot of life consists of the dead time in between events. Don’t fill these interstitial moments with pornography and cat videos. Fill them with things that feed your work and your soul.

随时带上笔、纸质笔记本和可以读的佳作。生活中有很多事件之间的零散时间。不要用这些间歇来看色情或宠物视频。用它们来做些有助于创作和心灵的事情。

Your first attempt will be terrible. A large part of the creative process is tolerating the gap between the glorious image you had in your mind, and the sad thing you’ve just made. Remember that everything great you see started out as someone else’s bad first draft. Version No. 20 of your work may still not be brilliant. But version No. 1 almost definitely won’t be. And if you think it is, look again. Whenever someone sends me a manuscript and says, “It just flowed out of me,” I usually think: Let it flow back into you for a while.

首次尝试会很差劲。创作过程中的一大块内容，是忍受脑海里设想的光辉景象同你刚刚完成的作品之间的鸿沟。记住，你所看到的一切伟大的作品，刚开始都是某个人糟糕的初稿。做到第20遍，你的作品可能依然不出色，不过第一个版本几乎都肯定不太好。如果你认为初稿非常棒，那么再瞧上一瞧。不管什么时候，如果有人寄给我一份手稿并且说，“脑海里一想到，我就写出来了”，那我通常的反应是，让它回到你脑子再待会儿吧。

Everything that happens is potential inspiration. Or as Nora Ephron reminded us, “Everything is copy.” When someone tells you a story, you notice a recurring theme in conversations, or you turn a corner and see something that moves you — use it. In fact, when you’re deep into a project, information about it will pour into your life. Write your thoughts down immediately. One of the great joys of a creative life is that your observations and loose moments aren’t lost forever; they live in your work.

万事万物都是潜在的灵感。或者用诺拉·艾芙隆(Nora Ephron)提醒我们的话说，“一切都是复制品。”当有人给你讲了个故事，你在谈话中注意到了一个反复出现的主题，或是你在行进中拐个弯，就看到了打动自己的东西——在这样的时刻，就把它们利用起来。事实上，当你深入某个项目中去时，与之相关的信息将源源不断地涌入你的生活。立即把想法写下来。创意生涯的一大乐趣就是，你的观察和闲散时刻不会永久性地消失，而是会活在你的作品里。

Pay attention to what you’re doing on the side. I started my writing career as a financial journalist. On the side, I took samba-dancing lessons, and eventually wrote a first-person article about this experience. It was the first piece I’d written that lit me up inside. Though it took years before I got to write that way for a living, I had found my place, the tiny hole in the universe shaped like me.

重视你在常规工作之外的活动。开启写作生涯时，我还是一名金融记者。工作之余，我上了桑巴舞课，最终以第一人称记录了这一经历。那是我写的第一篇点燃了内心激情的文章。尽管多年后才开始以这类写作为生，但我已经找到了自己的位置，找到了宇宙中那个与我契合的小地方。

It’s O.K. to be an obsessive. Three or four days before any deadline, I descend into a frenzy. I barely see my children. I stay up late panicking, eating cookies and vowing to change professions. My husband once asked: “Does it always have to be a herculean extravaganza? Can’t writing be a normal job, where you wake up, calmly do it and then go home?”

有点强迫症没什么。在离截稿日期还有三四天时，我会陷入疯狂。我对孩子视而不见，会熬夜到很晚，一直惊慌失措、吃饼干并发誓要换职业。丈夫曾经问我：“写作必须永远是一件劳心伤神、令人抓狂的事情吗?它就不能是一份可以让你正常起床、平静做事然后回家的普通工作吗?”

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Creative work isn’t a regular job. Sure, eventually your skills improve and you get better at structure. You learn to compress the process. But it’s still a herculean extravaganza. A journalist I know calls this being “deadliney.” I now accept that I’ll gain a kilogram per column.

遗憾的是，不能。创造性的工作不是常规工作。当然，最终你的技巧会有所提升，能更好地布局构造你的作品。你会学到如何压缩这个过程。但它依然是一份劳心伤神、令人抓狂的工作。我认识的一个记者将其称作“截稿日期状态”。我现在已经接受一个专栏胖一公斤的说法了。

I’ve also forgiven myself for being an obsessive. The comedian Louis C.K. said, “Anything you do should be better than anything you did before.” Your bosses and clients will always expect you to deliver good work. You’re the only one who will care enough to make it great work.

我也原谅了自己是一个强迫症患者。喜剧演员路易斯·C·K(Louis C K)说过，“你做的一切，都应该比之前做过的更好。”老板和客户总是希望你给出好的作品，而你自己是唯一一个足够重视，希望它成为出色作品的人。

This herculean extravaganza is totally worth it. For most people, getting married or having a baby are the peak moments in their lives. But when some mysterious place in you churns up a book, or a dress, or a scent, or a graphic design, and other people respond to it, that’s a peak moment, too. As a creative person, you get to commune with the universe for a living.

这种劳心伤神，令人抓狂的状态是完全值得的。对大部分人来说，结婚或生子是他们人生的巅峰时刻。但当你内心某个神秘的地方构思出了一本书、一条裙子、一款香水、一种平面设计，并且其他人给出了回应时，这也是一种巅峰时刻。作为一个有创造性的人，你要以与宇宙融为一体为生。

I ended the speech with some advice from my husband. It’s the only crucial take-away: When you get out of a taxi or a bus, look back to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything. Because if you lose your portfolio, you won’t get the job.

在演讲的最后，我分享了丈夫的一个建议。这才是学生们唯一需要记住的：下出租车或公交车时，回头看一眼，确保没有落下什么。因为如果弄丢了代表作品集，你就得不到工作了。

Congratulations to the world’s graduates. And may you all find your place.

祝贺全世界的毕业生。愿你们都能找到自己的位置。