Storytime: How Isolation Became My Greatest Creative Ingredient
Tampa, FL - September 2021
You ever just sat in your home, looking at the wall and really just taking in what it would sound like if you did absolutely nothing?
I don't mean "nothing" as in someone calls you and you have the phone between your neck and your shoulder and you say, "Oh, nah, man I ain't up to nothing much". This is not idle waiting for your microwave to thaw out the inside of your Hot Pocket. I mean literally sitting in an apartment and hearing nothing but air.
It had been about a week and a half earlier that I'd come home from a trip from Miami to find out that my apartment had been broken into by burglars some time around 1:46am at night. The verdict: $5500 worth of equipment stolen without a trace - literally - and not a single lead other than a person of interest the police insisted on interviewing. The more they pressed on interviewing a date that I had come over for hookah the week prior, the more I realized I probably wasn't going to ever see my stuff ever again.
Among the materials stolen, my Numark DJ Controller, Nikon Camera, 3 microphones, 2 laptops, a mac mini, my mixer, the list goes on and on and on even down to my Tumi cologne (which was a gift) and oddly enough my Tom's non-aluminum deodorant (told ya'll it's good stuff). When I say there was really nothing in my apartment, I really mean that it was Mango, my Sony bluetooth speaker, a 32" TV with no chromecasts or cable, and myself (furniture still there, of course).
There's a bunch of details about what I had to do to even get my front door back, but you can read about that in my blog post that talk's about Tampa's housing market and climate.
I’m not talking downtown high rises, baby. I ain’t talking your Vinik-sponsored Channelside condo, either. I’m talking your ashy, dusty, valet-trashing, broken front gate, flickering street lights, built in 1989 apartment complex that hasn’t offered any upgrades or changes in that 34.9% increase. I’m talking your vanilla Tampa apartment complex - $1634 average. - Tampa's Housing Market is Getting Critical. I Believe It's By Any Means Now
Much of that equipment I had owned for years, even for as long as I had been running GoodKnocking. Others I had invested heavy money into, and due to the pandemic, some of it wasn't being restocked by manufacturers. In short, it was one thing for it to all be gone, but it was another for it to be virtually irreplaceable. And so, sitting in the living room with just this Sony bluetooth speaker playing as loud as it could (it just couldn't beat the Boom Team - which was 3 of my Google Nest Minis in a unified sound group), there were some bleak revelations I started to think of.
One of those realizations was that I did a terrible job at putting my belongings away when I was home. Things kind of just stayed out, right in plain sight and weren't ever stored away properly. It was very much giving bachelor pad of a creative. The second was that most of what I owned I just wasn't getting a lot of utilization out of. My biggest regret was not pushing myself to use what I had on my utility belt. Camera, controller, tripod, and music equipment could make for a hell of a run, but instead it was catching dust in my place and sitting out like table ornaments. That's the painful realization.
The next painful realization was that, unfortunately, I was going to have to figure out a way to get a lot done with very little.
What can a man do with 9 thumbtacks, a blue sheet, and a smartphone?
Just year earlier, I put the finishing touch on the bows for MRVL WRLD, with a focus on creative enablement - which I was defining as identifying resources and helping business unlock internal talent and resources to keep up with the social media age. My goal was to grow the company to a point of being consultative in how we approach content marketing for businesses who had more at their disposal than they realized they had.
My goal, though, wasn't to jump into the market immediately, but instead use the first year to legitimize the idea - do the research, survey the market, and identify what consulting would look like. That first year would be relatively quiet because I was planning on establishing all the inner workings that I needed to do.
Year 2 was going to focus on brand familiarity and piloting services for the market, while still focusing on the Year 1 goals. What that would look like is making the MRVL WRLD name as easily recognizable as possible - by any means. One of which ways was to experiment with making trailers to promote my book releases.
Finally, by the third year, we would begin to roll out our actual services suites with go-to-market strategy, expertise, and the whole 9.
July 2021 was the beginning of that Year 2.
So, as far as designs go, moving from a one-line logo for MRVL WRLD to the stacked font in Bebas Neue, the plan was to slap it on an almost infinite amount of content, collateral, merch, etc until everyone could easily recognize MRVL WRLD as easily as they would Mistah Marvel or Alex Auguste (this was important since there wasn't a lot of attention put on the launch of The Unlikely Company - MRVL WRLD is a fictitious name).
There were documents upon documents and iteration after iteration discussing how intense of a roll-out all of this was going to be, starting with the release of A Boy Bathed In Blood and the release of the new That Girl Graphic Tees by the then-TagsByMarvel.
But all of that lost an huge amount of steam due to that break in and the loss of $5500 worth of equipment. I kind of fell into a bit of depression about the whole thing, coupled on top of a few other situations I was dealing with personally.
That equipment kept me entertained, it kept me busy on late nights, and it made me feel excited about experimenting with new ideas, one of which included making my own mixes to add to reels.
The list of marketing strategies that was impacted was so extensive that I actually considered hanging it up for the rest of the year to "recoup" from the losses. But I couldn't.
The very last revelation that I had about the subject was that the only way to get all my equipment back was going to have to be to "create my way back to it all". And so, with 9 thumbtacks, a blue sheet, a smartphone and an old 70s funk playlist, I grabbed about 7 outfits, 2 copies of my book, and enjoyed about 4 hours of shooting photos and BTS footage of me listening to music, and recording audio of me describing the business plan while getting dressed ('cause y'know...ain't have a computer).
Let's forever refer to this as The Striplin Reel, named after Sylvia Striplin, whos song, "Give Me That Love" plays over it.
The being alone part wasn't as big of a struggle as not having my equipment, though. After all, I had been living alone for almost a year and a half by the time that situation came to be. Isolation has been one of the greatest ingredients to me really tapping into my creative sauce, to be frank.
Teams require communication, and communication can sometimes slow things down. Feedback births revisions, and revisions birth iterations. Doubts are the byproduct of iterations, and I've found that there's less doubt in myself, my abilities, and my work because there's less need for communication.
There's still plenty of iterations because I've built it into my creative process.
I naturally create about 4-5 versions of anything before releasing it. I usually feel connected to the first, but I usually can't deny the second, third, and final to usually be the absolute best. It creates quicker muscle memory for learning how to make certain edits, with pointers and lessons on how better to record. It helps me find new angles to record, remind myself to shoot more than you need to, and to keep the cameras rolling - no matter what. While the the Striplin Reel took me about an hour to a month to edit, a typical video like my latest reel on Instagram now takes about 15 mins at a maximum. With that, it leaves me with leftover material to repurpose later. When working in teams, iterations are usually scrapped.
This isn't to say that I wouldn't want to work in teams, though. I've enjoyed working with the likes of I Am Da Top Dog, Queen Sandii, Treble and Flame Candle Company, Creative Tech Expo, Carpe Diem 360, all of whom have given feedback and who I've worked through many iterations. But all of those collaborations have followed my process, and so none of the creations go to waste.
A team, though, might have told me that a 5-minute video of me straightening my chain and standing and sitting down on a stool was not going to be representative of the direction MRVL WRLD was trying to go for Year 2. Maybe. I'm speculating. But in my mind that 4-hour shoot produced over 35 photos that have been used across my entire digital footprint.
Actually, it's probably the most important video I've ever made. Why?
Because it was the very first video that included the stacked MRVL WRLD font on a video. The video is in itself pretty nonsensical, but sometimes nonsense births dope.
Everything Born From The Sylvia Striplin Reel
The end credit of the video included the rose emoji in the MRVL WRLD font, a hint to the rose-patterned joggers I had bought to wear to AfroPunk Atlanta. But at that point, and we're talking about a week-and-a-half before AfroPunk, I was really debating going (because sh*t...last thing you want is to come back home to another break-in...I don't know). Luckily, I stuck with the plan and ended up going to AfroPunk, with all the intentions of creating content and recaps.
After being a rose-tattered, shirtless hot boy in the Atlanta sun for almost 8 hours, my photos and reels gathered enough impressions and I'd knocked out enough solo networking to build out more and more new followers, while prepping to launch the final cycle of merch for TagsByMarvel, including the Give Me Space Bombers. Crossing the stars of TagsByMarvel and Origins24 with the rose concept, I prepared plans to rebrand TagsByMarvel into Vivid Life Apparel.
And though AfroPunk was just a stop in Atlanta, it held me accountable to continuing the Vivid Life Tour, a calendar of events for my hosting, performances & sets, broadcasts, and releases. It invites followers from different locations to check out events, experiences, and to link with me at different organizers' events while also giving me an opportunity to create networking and marketing for my brand.
Chopped down to :52 seconds and posted a whole month later, the Striplin Reel really is the first true MRVL WRLD video, and since that first iteration, 85+ videos have graced the feeds with sporting that logo. My focus changed entirely from photos to videos and have only gotten more creative and more creative with each release.
With those 85+ videos also came a strategy that purposely looked to use songs like Sylvia Striplin's "Give Me That Love", which doesn't exist in Instagram's music catalog and therefore won't be flagged for copyright issues. This means my music selection can be directly suited for my video content and storytelling instead of having to crunch videos down to make sense to those popular, trending audios.
Lastly, the Striplin reel proved the MRVL WRLD mission to be true and proven. There is a creative strategy that can exist to enable businesses and creators to unlock more of their own potential even if their resources are low and far between.
Wednesday's Crate Diggin became the central way of delivering my way of enjoying new oldies gems that I wanted to share, and has helped me stay on my toes with music, even without DJing.
If you think 85+ is a lot, think of the videos that never made it to the feed. Those are the videos that ended up being used as backdrop and story for my 2022 mini-doc, My Real Vivid Life. Most of the storyboard for that 13-minute short narrative was done using un-used footage from my Instagram stories. I've also decided to make it an annual release, and so get ready for a follow-up that covers the development of MRVL WRLD through stories and first-hand accounts like this one you just read.
To any creators and creatives out there working or struggling to work in solitude, let this story be encouragement to you.
- Feedback is going to slow you down. Believe in yourself and your work and go forward.
- A creative process built with conviction is one that you'll hold onto because it's yours, no matter who your work with.
- Never throw your work away. Create as many iterations as you need to, but whatever you do, save all of them.
- Take advantage of not hearing external doubt, fear-talking, and unsolicited advice.
- Just release that sh*t.
As we move towards 2023, be sure to keep an eye out for information about MRVL WRLD Services and more.