Severance. Dividing Our Creative Life
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been watching season one of the Apple TV+ show, Severance. Season two has just started, and I had never watched any prior episodes. I’m still not caught up, and I will not reveal any spoilers here.
The show is about a group of employees working on highly classified projects at the biotechnology corporation Lumon Industries. They are required to undergo "severance," a medical procedure that implants a device causing them to lose all memories of the outside world while working within the basement floors and having no memories of their work while outside. This creates two separated personalities for each employee: their "innie" working at Lumon and their "outie" living their personal lives.
The premise of dividing our lives may seem all too familiar for many creative people, myself included. The division between what we want to do, create our art, and what we have to do, work a day job or a side gig, in order to pay bills, eat, and put a roof over our heads. Occasionally, the stars align, and our living is creating our art, but for many of us, it feels like living two lives. Our inner life of making art and our outer life of work.
Day jobs and side gigs are looked down upon by some people, but they are necessary. The goal, after all, is to make money so that we can keep making more art.
Be kind to yourself on your creative journey.
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You have reached the end of the newsletter. Here is a video of Britt Lower, who plays Helly R. on Severance, talking with Seth Meyers on Late Night recently. She talked about drawing sketches to help her prepare for her character.
"Be kind to yourself on your creative journey." - Thanks Andy for sharing this !
And yeah many of us do live 2 lives, one to support the other - inner artist. They work together and they have to be grateful to each other. I don't know what the relation of innie and outies are in the series. Is it some kind of struggle or collaborative !
I love the video with Britt talking about her drawing process to get into her character. Great find, Andy!