I Read Hideo Kojima’s ‘The Creative Gene.’
An important piece of advice that I’ve begun to really follow more and more as I’ve grown older is that one should never meet their idols. At the very best case scenario, you’ll find they’re a great person, they’ve shared their time with you, and they will really honor your value as a person who has invested their own time in that idol’s career. What a rush. On the other end of the spectrum, you’ll find this person is disconnected from the world, isolated within their own ego, is drunk or addled, is crude, rude, dismissive, the list goes on.
But somewhere in between, somewhere in the space of humility, we will find that our idols are deeply human, just like us. The glow simmers into a tone, the praise just becomes rumor. We find that the people we have created all of these silent myths in our mind about are only straw cities waiting on an ember of reality to raze it from ground to sky. They just become us, they become the people that we could have been, the people that we could still be. And on some level, that’s deeply inspiring. But on another, in my mind, I think we need these proto-human idols. We need larger than life figures who we believe have ‘powers’ beyond our own, who have seen through the algorithm of the human element and are able to squeeze through the cracks of contemporary progress, instead elevating, escalating and innovating in ways that are simply not within our DNA’s vocabulary.
In Kojima’s book, I do believe that this is the closest I will ever come to meeting him.
And in some ways, I’m a little crestfallen.
A couple of years ago I made a list in a notebook of all of the people who I see as creative heroes, people whose vision was one that still reached out of some split in time and space and snatched ideas that I could never have culminated, even in years of silent thought and creation. Their abstract concepts are so unique and so courageous that I absolutely adore not only the fictions that stir from them, but also the fact that the brain that created them resides within these people. It feels like a cosmic reactor frenzying at all times, at all moments, and all that needs to happen is for them to feel inspired and to grab an idea and their dedication, their skill, and their talent will amass to construct all the ductwork, the magnificence, the blueprints, the energy and they will stand beside their creation momentarily, only stepping away next to create something else new. Now, I get that even our most genius creative minds don’t operate like that, and I know that’s a bit of a fairy tale way to look at things, but I know that these people have the potential to be this kind of creator.
Hideo Kojima was (and will always be) on that list.
The creator of the sprawling and mind-dissecting opus of Metal Gear Solid and the high-concept world uniter Death Stranding among other titles, the way this man writes stories and narratives and characters is unlike anyone else I have ever seen. The way he shares on social media from an optimistic creative standpoint and shines light on some of his contemporaries, the way he shares the music that makes him want to create certain games or scenes, the way he will show off new additions to his film library, all of these little things really personally inspire me to always fuel the machine, to always reach out and find new units with which to spark fire inside the mind. He has always had a sort of naivety about him in the way he communicates, a sort of child-like awe and go-get-em attitude that I also am impressed by as someone who has been run through the game industry’s ringer, but also as someone who has had so many eyes on him from so many directions. He just seems to “Get it” and he seems to always be working on something new, and if not, he is “fueling the machine” to make more. To find the next spark.
Initially, reading this book dimmed some of the shine of what I believed this man to be. The language he uses in this book is very basic, very straightforward. There is no flourish and there is a kindly passion bared on the page that feels very shallow. Nearly one-dimensional. It’s a sense of naivety through to the point of a hint of adolescence and simplicity. He is talking about films, books, albums he has loved. I love that! However, we rarely get to see these pieces of media as ones that have made him look at his own work, past and present, in different ways, works that have resonated deeply within him for ideas he may use in the future.
Reading this book, I am led often to wonder about the way we recommend or claim things. I will speak from personal experience, but the arc of my consumption and the shapes of banners I waved began low at its base, claiming things that were initially relatable, excitable, easy to identify with. I liked to recommend things that I knew would sink in instantly and easily. At my absolute summit, I strived to find the most niche and abstract films, books, bands, albums to hand off to friends. My imagination ran wild with the sense of blind ambition this would inspire in others, to have a seed planted in their mind and heart that something like this could exist, something that was difficult to find, something that was obscured from all normal vision. I thought it would spread like a viral contagion, the passion and longing for new things that existed below the surface, if only they too could take that one extra step to discover a new director or a new record label. It isn’t until now that I am getting to the stage that I believe Kojima is at while writing this book, that regardless of how he found these books, these films, no matter if these things are standing in a spotlight in front of the eyes of billions or something he found as a one-of-a-kind artifact, he just wants to share his joy about it. That’s the type of language I’m finding within this book: joyous. His excitement for each unit is bright and tangible.
In my own sharing of different media, mainly music, I have often said that when I send out a playlist or hand out a mixtape, the ultimate goal is for someone to find just one song or band that they’re going to keep with them, and sort of remember the process of how they found it and hope to do the same in their life going forward (with anything, not just music). I think Kojima is accomplishing this, doing almost exactly what I tend to do with these bi-annual releases I make. He’s sharing the stuff he loves and giving personal connection to why he wants others to check it out. Am I reading this book for a new upgrade of how I understand the language, to be swooned by incredible turn-of-phrase? No. No way. I read this book to see the types of fuel that this powerhouse creative feeds his machinery with. And this book delivers. I do love this aspect of that. Especially because this book is a collection of older essays that he’s written in the past.
I think the most misleading thing about this book is that I assumed (something I take full accountability for) that this book would feel a little bit more like a course in how to siphon that fuel and turn it outward into something of your own design. I had visions of reading how he took these books, these films, these records, and how he channeled it into specific elements of his own games, how different lines in a novel changed the way he wrote a MGS scene. How he constructed an entire 8 hour portion of Death Stranding around a single time he heard a Chvrches song. This is not that book. So for that reason, I do feel a bit disappointed. The title itself and the subtitle I think are absolute misnomers. I don’t believe we discuss any Creative Gene, whether it be genetic or memetic, nor do we discover how these movies, books or music inspired the creator. We learn what he likes. We learn that he is inspired by them. And that’s fine! But we definitively do not learn how these inspire him.
The core tenet of this book, though, is one that I think is one that I believe is crucial for fans of any media to learn. I think it was attempted to be instilled in us during high school english classes, and truly an art form of its own that gets a lot more time in college courses. That is the idea of thinking critically and abstractly about media on its own. Some may argue that thinking about what art is takes away from what art does (or vice versa), but I don’t think I have enjoyed music, film or literature quite as much as I have when I have two or three parallel lines or analogues being built alongside it while I’m experiencing it. This book does a wonderful job of giving early insight on how to understand why we consume the media that we do. How it creates landmarks across our life of not only how the plots of books, how the sound of songs or how the scenes in movies exist as memories in their current form, but also who we were before and after we experienced them, the way that those moments shaped our lives coming out of them and the way that they changed the way we think about all things that occurred before and after them. Kojima’s kind and direct language is an enjoyable beginner’s course for how to do this. In fact, I know that while I’m reading this book, I’m thinking and wondering what my book of this very nature would be as well and I’m sure plenty of others have had similar thoughts.
I don’t recommend this book unless you really love Kojima and can’t get enough of his content. I came away from it with a couple of books added to the Want to Read list and a few movies in the queue, but nothing that changed how I saw creativity or creation, nor was it able to change the way I felt about existing media or a fresh take on anything that I wanted to watch or listen to. There was no hidden gem within, no shining nugget at the core of the experience.
