On Creativity and Finding Yourself
Photograph by @virginiamarketingandmedia
This interview took place in Spring 2021 for our Make Cheer zine.
I'm from Virginia in the US, on the East Coast. About 10 minutes from the beach. It’s cool here, and at this time of year it’s a little cold. My childhood tasted like fresh city air. It sounded like water and zoo animals because there's a beach and a zoo here, but it also, like I said, sounded like a city. So very loud. Very loud and very fast. It smelled like salty water. It was fast. It was a lot. I grew up in the 90s. I was listening to Usher. I was listening to Chris Brown because he was the guy that was able to sing. He was able to dance, and he was just like the personality-wise, and I think he made me, regardless of his reputation now. Just speaking of his music abilities, he opened a pathway for young men to maybe just express themselves in that way. Like I said, it has nothing to do with his reputation now.
I think culture sometimes will limit us subconsciously without knowing it. So growing up, I don’t think I felt free to be who I am. Even on the baseline of just expression of feelings, culture says men are super masculine. Men don't even say I love you to one another much. So just that simple thing of just men being able to express how they feel was limited. Of course, being an artist and being a creative, that's hard for me because that's what I'm based off of is feelings and emotions. That's how I create. It's from that place. I think that's everywhere in a lot of places, but your ability to fight past it I think is what matters.
I always knew I needed to create a world for myself. Actually, not even necessarily create a world, but explore this other world that had no limitations in regards to what I was able to create. I just knew that it was a journey and that being a creative and being someone who was going to create is a very vulnerable space because you have to allow yourself to grow. So I just think it was created, and it was found because I wanted to explore. When I think of creating, I think of God and how he's created this whole world. But everything in the world isn't good. Some of those things aren't good, so that just makes you very vulnerable in the work and still appreciating every part of it but knowing all of it isn't good and knowing that every part of it won't be good. That's the journey part of it.
Growing up, religion was a big… I wouldn't necessarily say a big part. It was not a big part. I wouldn't even say that I'm religious now, to be honest with you. But my Grandmother would pick me up and take me to church every so often. When my family would argue, my Mom would be like, "No, you can't come this Sunday." So it wasn't like a thing where I just had to be there all the time. I actually never learned anything, but I do think that seeds were planted and, as I grew, again, explored the world of spirituality and was like, oh okay, I'm not religious but I am spiritual.
With me being very complex and being very ... You know, there are layers. There's so many of us that have so many layers, and we're so complex, but I feel like there are not many spaces for us to necessarily flourish, and then there also aren't many representatives either. Even just in the sense of growing up and never seeing anyone like me, it made me feel really alone. Being dynamic and young and black was not popular unless you were famous unless you were a celebrity.
You don't necessarily see that in the homes. You don't see that in the school systems. You don't see that necessarily in a lot of spaces where other demographics would dominate. If there were those spaces, they were very limited to how a black man should be and how he should express himself, and so I think that one of my biggest motives and one of the things that I just realized that allows me to create better is knowing that if I create a safe space for myself, other people will want to be a part of that. It takes the pressure off me of trying to prove something but become, like I said, a more inviting space and become a representative for this space. I wanted to add value. I wanted to be the person that I needed growing up, and I wanted to be someone who added value because I looked at my childhood, and I looked at the people. They added value but not the value that I feel like I wanted. And that's not to say anything bad about my family or people that poured into my growing up. There's a different type of love that I think that we, as creatives and artists and dynamic people and layer people, need. Spaces like our platforms are really important for them.
I used to feel the need to project myself more than I do now. I feel like... And this is something that everyone goes through because you start in the game really humble. That's how you get started. You're super vulnerable. You're very humble. You're willing to do whatever. You're willing to reach out to whoever. You're willing to make whatever connections. You're on time. You're super tenacious. Whereas a few years in the game, you get a little tired. Then you look back on all of the accomplishments that you've done, and you're like, "How can I beat this? How can I beat this?" And then you end up trying to project beyond who you were trying to beat your past self in a way that just puts you in an unhealthy way to create. I feel like… I'll just say there was a point in time where I created content to reach my audience instead of to resonate with me.
First, I have to be connected to the why, even doing it in my brand, like collaborations. If I'm working with a brand, I have to care about your brand. I have to care about the mission. I have to care about what you do, who you highlight, the way you highlight it. I think about all of those things. When I'm connected to those things, I'm connected to my why. I'm connected to my purpose. It just allows me to be able to express myself a little bit more freely. If it doesn't necessarily resonate with me in my spirit, I'm like uh. So I know the work won't be great. I know it'll be C average work. Whereas if I'm connected to the why, I'm connected to why I'm doing it, the work will be great because it'll come from a pure place. That's one of the first things that I do when I think about creating from there. I give myself time. I give myself time to create. I also accept my creative abilities. I don't try to be anyone else anymore. I just let it flow.
It took time to get to that point. It took a lot of time. It took a lot of trust in the process. That's such a cliché statement, but you really do have to trust the process, and everyone's process is different. Everyone has different ingredients in their lives that make them who they are. I really did have to trust the process. And in my process, I arrived at something that sparked my individuality. Something that sparked in me that said whoa, brother, you can do this. You can create your own life. When I realized I could create my own life is when I realized that I would start creating my own life. I was working at a university. I had worked at another university previously previous to that. I was recruiting.
My why is to be the person that I needed growing up, and my why is to serve people. To love God and to serve people. That's it. Sometimes I definitely fall out of that because my actions don't say that I love God at all. But in the sense of my why, that's my why. Hopefully that answers your question.
At college, I studied interdisciplinary studies. I have an associate's in that. I dropped out after my third year because I wanted to explore my life, because I realized that I could create my own life, so I was maybe like 23, and I'm like, "I'm done with this." I'm making more money than my friends who had degrees. I'm booking jobs. I'm like, wow, okay. I'm living alone. I dropped out after a while, but I did get my associate's.I was in Lynchburg, so I was in the mountains. So not too far from the Rocky Mountains. Blue Ridge Mountains. I was doing life with my friends in college. We were young, in our early 20s, and that's when you grow up. That's when you establish maybe how the rest of your 20s are going to go. I went to a Christian college. That really shaped a lot of my view on religion and spirituality and just being centered, and just a lot of stuff wasn't lining up. I eventually kind of stepped outside of that bubble, and I was like, okay, I want to live my life.
It wasn't until I was maybe about 25. I moved back home to the city, and I was just working. I was doing the same thing I had done for the past five or six years. I was just working at an institution, and I jumped, and I was like I'm going to start my own business, and that's when I started my platform 20something. That's when it all felt angular, per se, because I was like, okay, you've done the corporate thing, Brenton. You can be creative. If that doesn't work out, you can always go back. You can always get a job. That's when it felt angular when I took the risk.
It felt freeing and it felt scary at the same time. It felt freeing because I wasn't dead yet. And then it felt freeing because I was doing it, and it felt scary because I didn't know if I was going to fail, but the freedom was found in me just doing it and just me getting up everyday saying, "You've got power. You're superman, basically."
Working on 20something was amazing. I was on the news twice. I've done 10 to 15 events. I was in hundreds of articles, hundreds of photo shoots, so many brand collaborations. Just worked with so many people and just so many interviews that I've done that I was a part of, and it was great. It was great. I published a book too. It's an anthology. It's a collection of stories from myself and 18 other individuals, and we just tell our stories of triumph. Some of us write it in a very metaphorical way while some of us just tell it like a portion of our childhood that allowed us to flourish and where we are. I'm most proud of that because I was able to connect with other people.
Making a reputation for yourself and doing this work is all about being genuine in your process. Being pure and genuine is the only thing that you can do because people are not going to like you. Some people are going to love you, but you can never go wrong with being genuine, whether you are upset, whether you are angry, whether you are a funny person, an awkward person. If you are genuine, people will connect to that. There's a saying in our culture. We say real recognizes real.
You have to resonate with what you're doing. You have to resonate with the core of it in order to create a good campaign because it'll always be generic. It'll come from a place of you just not really knowing and you just creating a fake blueprint, whereas the core of you knows what you love and what you care about. So if you go with that, that's a blueprint. That's a blueprint. That's not something that we're like hypothetically speaking. You know what you like. You know what you don't like, and you know what you care about, and you know what other people care about. You know what people don't care about. That's why I say you have to be genuine. When you do that, you can get a good campaign. You can create a good product. It may flop. But as long as you care about it, you're good because you've got to live with yourself. You have to trust your process, and then you have to trust that you are who you are, who you're created to be. I never feel envious, thankfully, but I'm confident in knowing that I'm a helper. I don't hold you back. I'm going to help you. You can be one of two people. You can either hold people back, or you can help them move forward.
Sometimes I feel like I’m giving too much. That's one of the things that creatives or artists struggle with, is realizing that you are one of every 10 people. That's why I also talk about healthy boundaries in my brand because that's a part of being who we are as lights - is knowing that you give it out, but there's also a moment in time of realizing that you cannot give out what you don't have. I never feel bad about those boundaries that I've placed.
Right now, I am a youth director working with high school students. I really love my career right now. I'm really focused on young people and pouring back into the community and pouring back into people that are chasing freedom. What's next is me just honing on those things. I do see myself as a speaker. I want to be able to come to where you are and speak on a panel with you guys one day.
I have one day off during the week. That is generally Fridays. Even today, I need to get dressed because I want to make content. I know that I'm going to brunch with my friend, and it's a brunch that's been planned for two weeks because the week is so crazy, so I'm actually going to put up some boundaries today and say you're not doing any work other than the work that you want to do. So today is going to look like having day drinks with my friends while looking really, really nice and telling myself that I look really nice.
Brenten Sims
@brentenjomar