CREATIVE ARCHETYPES: THE MUTABLE TO CONCRETE SCALE

You think you know, but you have nooooooo idea.

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On our endless quest to inculcate more people into the cult of creativity, we created 16 creative archetypes based on four different scales of material, psychic, and existential measurement. Each scale is a sort of fluid spectrum — honestly, almost a circle by the time you get to either pole. In this series, we explain each scale and how it contributes to creative practice.

THE MUTABLE TO CONCRETE SCALE

Of all the SPACIES spectrums, the Mutable to Concrete field is the most straightforward.

But there’s *checks notes* still a bit to unlearn in this area. Shall we?

If I found a lamp in a tiny shop in Istanbul, accidentally rubbed it and a low key fine-but-slightly menacing genie apparated out and granted me three wishes a la the 2022 Tilda Swinton stinker “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” one of my requests would be to Men In Black-style memory erase the connotation between mutability and creativity from the brain of every human being inhabiting the land masses formerly known as the supergroup Pangea.

Not all creative people tend towards mutability.

In fact, many do not, and these types of broad generalizations are not only incorrect, they help no one. It’s like saying, “All girls with anxiety and stomach problems are hot.” Actually, some of us are uber hot.

The passive observer flattens mutabilty to something that resembles fickleness; an ever-changing mind that’s due to:

1. extraordinary lack of personal confidence, or

2. callous selfishness, or

3. a weak, distractible attention span.

Flattering!

Suuuuuuure, a person with mutable tendencies may (at their very very worst, their personal nadir) be all of that. But mutable personas show internal flexibility, the ability to respond to the present moment, and resilience.

Improvisation is the language of a Mutable high-scorer.

Thinking ahead? Planning?? No thanks, pass-adena. Feet firmly planted in the present moment, Mutables don’t worry about calculating their next move. They just respond to what’s in front of them, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell-style.

If you’ve ever sat in on hour three of a jazz band’s practice session, or witnessed a rare performance at Upright Citizens Brigade that didn’t make you want to turn into an Alex Mack shame puddle in your chair and actually made you laugh (like seeing a unicorn!), you know that this approach can yield a supernatural, dare I say, holy? experience.

But it can also go very, very wrong. Floptastic.

The upside of taking big, risky swings (especially when paired with high Failure Tolerance):

… is that Mutable people often accidentally stumble through portals of potential that no one else bothered to consider.

They kick up their legs to do a headstand against the wall, fall over, knocking down a priceless Victorian portrait in the process, only to discover a button hidden behind the picture frame that when pressed reveals a secret passageway within the bookshelf. (To be fair I could be lifting this scene from an *anciene* episode of Scooby Doo, but the point remains!)

Naturally, a Mutable person would Yes-And the shit out of this scenario and step into the dark damp just-discovered stairwell — they’re simply vibing, seeing where the wind and synchronicity takes them.

While Mutables demand flexibility within structure, they still *need* structure like muscles need bones.

It doesn’t matter how strong or limber muscles are — without bones to latch onto and move around, they instantly crumple into an impotent pile of flesh. As any 26-year-old Brooklyn-based marketing manager with six intensive weekends of yoga teacher training under their lululemon belt bag can tell you, flexibility requires strength to be functional.

Successful Mutable-leaning people learn to love structure because it’s something for them to rebel against. They like slipping through structure’s fingers. In a way, Mutable people are defined by this playful relationship.

At their best, Mutable people are like water — powerful, clear, strong, and always in the process of transformation.

They find a way to fit the vessel they’re poured into while maintaining their atomic integrity.

When faced with a speed bump, Mutable people soften into the turbulence and allow for natural redirection. You know how they say drunk people don’t brace for impact in a car crash, and that’s often why they walk away from an accident without injury? It’s giving Mutable.

At their worst, they are so disinterested in structure and planning that they eschew ANY forward-motion as the enemy. Like a jejune player manipulating the King on a chessboard, they move one square at a time forward sideways backwards and end up in almost the same spot by the end of the game.

Don’t forget, the strength of the King’s mutable nature is amplified when the player has a strategy. Without the strategy, it’s a liability.

Mutable-leaning Creative Archetypes: Quicksilver, Reflector, Star, Channel, Author, Producer, Engineer, Trailblazer

Concrete people reading this article knowing that they’re up next

Concrete high-scorers are the Law and Order: SVU to Mutable’s Lost.

Sure, viewers were flyin’ high in season 1 — never forget the Black Smoke *god* I dream for monoculture of a simpler time — but Lost will forever go down in television history as second-worst series finale. (Game of Thrones, you’ve won that game.)

Yet Stabler and Benson continue on, 25 seasons strong, proving consistency doesn’t have to be boring or rote. Familiarity can provide a soft space for new ideas to gently unfurl.

Creatives with concrete tendencies liiiiiiiiive for a plan. An outline. Directions. Because when you know what you’re working with, it’s easier to freestyle.

I’ve never met a dancer who didn’t have a minimum 90-minute warmup.

A Concrete person wrote this

A warmup is a research practice, a religious rite, a superstitious ritual, the same movements repeated over and over again, a foundation of tedium that wild creativity can build upon. Jumping straight into improvisational movement sans warmup is a recipe for disaster (aka a lower back injury)

If Mutable people are floopy Air Tube Dancers, arms flailing with abandon with the slightest change in the breeze, Concrete people are fiddle leaf fig trees that grow happily when left alone and watered at the same time each day but dramatically drop leaves in protest if they’re moved even four inches to the right.

Concrete tendencies can come off as rigid.

There’s something admirable to this stubbornness, this dedication to a close line reading of the plan, so Harold Bloom-coded. Concrete people appreciate exacting language and specificity. God and the Devil are in the details.

Laser-like focus is a concrete superpower, for better or worse. Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson made the deliberate decision early in his career not to license his work — no Cartoon Network show, no Hobbes squishmallows, no Nintendo Switch games. He left an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars on the table because he refused to compromise his personal integrity:

“The artist gets to decide what his own creation is about and stands for. If licensing fits your vision of your creation, wonderful, go nuts. But I reserve the option of saying no for my own work. If I don’t like licensing, I should be allowed to refuse it. That’s all it was.”

Depending on where you stand, Watterson’s unwavering grip on his belief around licensing is either a low-key zaddy move or supremely stupid. Regardless, its textbook high-scoring Concrete creative.

James Cameron dedicating his LIFE to bringing those sessi Na’vi tails to the big screen??? Classic Concrete high-scorer.

At their best, Concrete creatives can build entire universes with their brains.

Because of their uncompromising vision, they start the creative process with the end in mind. They know exactly what they want to do, and manufacture a strategy to turn their dreams into reality. Society needs more people who are so committed to building a future world they know can exist that they launch headfirst into the process, even when no one else believes it’s possible.

Inevitably, life throws us curve balls. Concretes can struggle to bounce back from missteps, or if a project goes off the rails. They need to learn that integrity and compromise aren’t mutually exclusive concepts.

When things don’t go according to the Concrete plan

When totally out of balance, Concrete’s ego overshadows their soul’s desire to excavate itself through the practice of making work. They will never be satisfied (sooooo A. Hamilton of them) even if they follow the plan perfectly, because they’re so focused on execution and the endgame that they forget the magic lives in the process.

Concrete-leaning Creative Archetypes: Inventor, Dancer, Innovator, Magician, Intellectual, Architect, Creatrix, Shapeshifter

We need each other.

A mantra we all could benefit from

At this point, you know the drill. Each side needs a smattering of the other to function as creatively as possible. If you lean more Mutable, consider giving yourself some more parameters or rules for the project you’re working on. If you’re more Concrete, see what happens if you trust yourself to improvise in your creative practice today.

Curious about where you fall on the Ordinary World to Special World spectrum? Take the SPACIES Creative Archetype quiz.

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