Creativity is a Gift from God with Dan Lietha

Okay, and I think that we're going live but normally it would say that so this is that time where people when they watch the recording and months and years to come work and they go look at that Cooper.

Oh yeah it didn't work. Hold on just a second. Maybe you can push pause on the recording.

Okay.

Okay, I think this is going to work this time so hello, I am Terry cameras L and I'm here on behalf of creation fellowship Santee. We're a group of friends bound by our common agreement that the creation account as told in Genesis is a true depiction of how God created life and, and, and the earth and everything on it.

In just six days, a few thousand years ago, we've been meeting here on zoom since June of 2020. We've been blessed with by presentations that are a blend of creation science current events and theology and you can find most links to most of our past presentations by typing in tiny url .com forward slash cf Santee that see like creation F like fellowship and Santee is spelled s a n t e.

You can also email us at creation fellowship Santee at gmail .com so that you get on our email list we promise not to spam you, but we will send you links to each of our upcoming fellowships on Thursday night so that you won't miss any of our speakers.

Tonight we're blessed to have back with us cartoonist Dan Lita. Dan was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and he received Jesus as his savior and started drawing at a very young age, his love for dinosaurs and animals were instrumental in motivating him to start drawing and keep drawing, you might be familiar with his long running cartoons creation wise and after Eden that he drew for answers and Genesis.

Now Dan serves with the ministry reasons for hope and he draws truth jabs, which is a weekly cartoon he also draws a monthly cartoon for Dr. Lyle's biblical science Institute and that's called ready to reason so you can find those on Facebook and multiple locations, you can also find Dan's website at Dan lita .com and Lisa is I before he lita .com.

And so tonight we're happy to have him talk to us about creativity and the fact that it is a gift from our creator. So Dan, with that I'm ready to turn it over to you.

All right, well thank you Terry, and I'm going to go to my slides here because I depend on my visuals for my notes and so I'm going to minimize my face and look at some of the things that I've created and put together as far as my slides go but as Terry said, I work for reasons for hope so we're gonna, we're gonna find out a little bit more about the ministry that I work for and I'm going to give a little personal history to.

This is some of the crew that I work with Carl Kirby and my co workers. This slide was created when we went, we went down to Florida for a Christian educators conference and so this particular talk that I'm going to do tonight was fashioned for that crowd, so I've modified it a little bit for you guys tonight but I think it's something that hopefully everyone will be blessed by, but we have a, this is a bit of a smaller family than the one that I worked with when I was back at answers in Genesis, and these are a bunch of dear, dear people.

And our mission here is training and equipping the next generation to stand boldly on the Word of God our desire as a ministry reasons for hope is to, to train the upcoming generation to defend and to proclaim their faith, because they are being heavily targeted.

And we really really need to up our game to to preserve the next generation as they are we going to be the defenders of the faith. And part of how I do that and what I do is using the creativity that God has given me so that I can create images and slides and all kinds of things and tonight I want to talk about some of that.

And then incorporate what is creativity and think about that from a worldview point of view. All right, so it's from my point of view it's a it's a gift, and it's from God it's from our creator. So to sum up tonight's content, I want to talk a little bit about my career in my art.

The origin of creativity where that truly came from. And then I want to share some experiences of mine that I have when I was a young artist, and hopefully some of these things will be helpful for those of you that maybe you're not a creative person, you don't But you, you have contact with in your sphere of influence a creative person, a grandchild or a child or a student or something like that.

Hopefully these experiences that I'm going to share will be a blessing to you that you can encourage those creative people. And then I'm going to share some of my creative process, people ask questions about that a lot of me.

And then some tips and information along the way as well as some resources that I'll point you to. All right, so to start out with, these are my closest supporters. My, my wife Marcia and our daughter Hannah, and she is 19 years old now, boy the years have gone by so fast and she is a young creative that's grown up in my home.

And I've been able to encourage her and it's been fun to see her grow in her creative abilities and I think she wants to pursue some creative profession. So hopefully that'll happen down the road but she just enjoys creating and drawing on her iPad and that sort of thing.

So, it's been the Kentucky three for many, many years. But there's four people in this picture right here. Now, something I need to clarify too is that my wife works at the Creation Museum, she's been there for a little over a year now.

My daughter works at the Creation Museum, she's been there. See, we worked, she and I worked together at the Creation Museum for at least two years, maybe probably more. And then that young man next to her is not just her boyfriend, that's her fiance.

And they're going to be married this March, and his name is Noah Hamm. So, he is Ken Hamm's grandson. So, Hannah is going to become a Hamm, which is very, very interesting. So, we love Noah dearly. He's a fantastic young Christian man, solid foundation, and we are excited about Noah and Hannah.

All right, so I've been a cartoonist for many, many years. And it's not just that I cartoon, I illustrate as well. And so I like to dabble in both areas, although I primarily will tell people I'm a cartoonist.

And I've been able to do that in Christian ministry for around 30 years, somewhere in there. And it's been a blessing to do that. Now, again, my history is that I started in Christian ministry with Answers in Genesis.

I was with them for 23 years full time, volunteered for Ken Hamm two years, so about 25 years I worked for them. And as Terry said, in my introduction, I did a comic strip called Creation Wise from the very beginning.

I mean, that comic strip helped get my foot in the door, because I was doing that before I even joined the ministry. So, that was a very valuable tool for me. And then I started After Eden after I was there for a few years.

And so those two features are pretty well known by a lot of people. And, you know, to this day, I still keep getting a lot of requests about use of After Eden and Creation Wise and such. And so I want to take a brief moment here, because people know, wait, you left Answers in Genesis last week.

I think it was asked, why did I leave? And so just to help people know that I'm no longer there. And I can't grant permission for use of my cartoons that I did while I was there. You have to ask them.

But what happened was, on October 11th, it was a Friday, I was brought into the HR office. And they told me that they, as a ministry, had been doing some restructuring type things and that my position as cartoonist was eliminated.

So I didn't have a job for about three weeks. And the Lord provided reasons for hope for my next ministry position. So I'm super thankful for that. Something that's more recently occurred, though, is that my good friend, Dr. Jason Lyle, wanted me to do some cartooning for him, too.

And so on my off hours, on the weekends, once a month, I draw a cartoon called Ready to Reason. And so that's another avenue for my creative abilities and juices to sink my teeth into. And I very much enjoy my friendship with Jason and being ministry partners in that regard.

But Reasons for Hope now is where I hang my hat and my art, most of my art these days. And so I've got a feature called Draw and Know It. Again, for the young artists that are coming up, I want to instruct them.

And this feature teaches them how to draw line by line these particular animals. And then I'm not only teaching them how to draw the animals, but I'm teaching them about them from a Christian worldview.

So it's an art creation lesson. So you can find, I'll tell you where to find those later on. Truth Jabs is kind of my main cartoon feature these days. And so this is an editorial cartoon with a Christian worldview.

And if you haven't seen them, go look them up and please help us share them. Hopefully they're a pointed message, but one that points people to the gospel and to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. So that's the ultimate point that I want to get across.

So apologetics really is the realm that I've been in during my course of creation cartooning ministry. And for those of you that might not be familiar with the term, it's reasoned arguments or writings and justification of something, typically a theory or religious doctrine.

So it's a defense of the faith. And basically, when it comes down to it, there's two different opinions going around. There's God's word and man's ideas, man's fallible opinions. And so we're arguing for the fact that reality is ultimately based in God's word.

And man's ideas are not reality based. They're not as factual as people would want us to believe. So in this realm of creativity, then we ask the question, well, where did creativity come from? Which is a great question.

So again, let's take a look at that from a worldview perspective. And we're going to start with man's ideas on this. Now, if you look up creativity online, you'll see that a lot of people are dealing with this particular topic from the point of view is that there's no God, that there's an evolutionary process that, you know, everything started from nothing and then boom, it exploded and became everything.

And creativity was in there someplace. It all happened. It just happened. Right. So that's what Darwin would propose. And so that's how people are trying to explain why we have creativity in the world today.

Well, one thing that we can point to is let's look at nature and let's see if there's creativity in nature itself. And then let's see what we can tell from what we see in nature there. All right. So looking around, you see things like spider webs, which I know some people are kind of grossed out by those things, but I think they're marvelous, beautiful structures.

So I love spider webs. I think that the things that bees and wasps can make are amazing. Look, look at how consistent those things are. It blows my mind just just looking at those things. And that's that's a thought of as a lower type of creation.

Right. But marvelous things that they are able to engineer and to build certain birds, build certain nests. And so they apparently have this information in them that causes them to build these structures that are, again, I think, lovely and very unique and special.

These designs caused quite a stir online a while back as people were looking at them. It's kind of funny because some people were thinking maybe space aliens made these. They're kind of like the crop circles that you see.

But these are on the ocean floor. So for a while, they couldn't figure out where they came from. And then it was found that the culprit actually is there's a picture of the culprit right in the middle there.

It's a puffer fish. So puffer fishes make these things to attract a mate. And animals do all kinds of really interesting things to to get get a mate. Right. They sing songs. Think about music and that whole realm.

We see beautiful melodies and tones and I don't know if you call them songs or not. A bird song, I suppose, coming from different varieties of birds. Beautiful, beautiful things that we see in nature and hear in nature.

All right. And then the again, the courtships that some animals do and go through the displays that they go through and stuff to attract the mate. If you've ever seen a peacock strutting around doing its thing, it's shaking and doing its little choreography that it does.

Or other birds have this very unique choreography, too. So dance, I guess, would be a sort of a art that is in nature that you see. If you've ever seen a beaver dam, the engineering that goes into these things, again, amazing, incredible stuff.

This this particular one right here is very small. When I was growing up, I was able to walk across a beaver dam that was probably 10 times larger than this thing. And just a hint, don't ever walk across the beaver dam and bare feet.

OK, but marvelous engineering feet. So what can animals teach us about creativity? This is from a Web article that I found online. It says, but is creativity really unique to humans or do other species show any evidence of creativity?

Understanding how creativity evolved in other animals can help us better understand our own creative ability. So there it is. They've got this evolutionary worldview injected into looking at the creative things that we see in nature.

And they're saying that we can learn about ourselves by looking at our animal relatives. Right. So recent research suggests that creativity is a spectrum with other animal species showing rudimentary forms of creativity.

So you find simple forms of creativity in nature. And we're kind of a culmination of years of evolution. We're the we're the top of the creation, the creativity pyramid. So, well, let's ask the question again, though.

But so do animals have a measure of creativity? And I would say, yes, I would agree with a portion of that quote that I just read that there is creativity found in nature. However, it is far less than what we see in the human family.

All right. So here's an image that I made to kind of picture what they're trying to come up with as far as like an origin story for creation. You've got simpler forms, earlier ancestors, so to speak, that are starting to get creative.

And then as as humans supposedly evolve, then the creative abilities grew and grew and grew until you have an artist at his easel, you know, expressing his creativity and really fantastic in great ways.

So is that what really happened? No, but they they need to tie all of that together. They need to tie the creativity that we see or that the creative abilities in creation in the in the world around us in nature.

They need to tie that to the human family. And so to do that. They think about it like this. You see these structures in nature that there are similarities, right? You've got the whale, the frog, the horse, the lion, the bat and the bird.

If you look at limbs on those creatures, they look very similar in design to the human arm. They've got these fingers and the forearm and the arm bones and stuff. And so you see a pattern there that looks very familiar to all of those things.

And so you think, well, we all must be related because there's similarities there. And from a creationist point of view, though, it's not that we're related where we have something in common, though. And that's our our creator.

It's not common ancestry that produced us. It's our creator. And so those similarities are just God's choice in using similar solutions in solving problems with each of those creatures. And so that's why each of us has a similarity to a lion or a horse or a frog.

It's not that we're related. It's that we have a common creator. And so I want you to think about artwork in that way, too, or the creative things that we see in nature. There's a measure of creative ability in the creatures that God has created.

But that's because he's the creator and he's given those to them. We have a common creator. It's not that it's a product of evolution. That creative element is not an element of our evolution. And that's why we all have it because we're related.

It's because we have a common creator. So what about animals that can do things that are are closer to what humans do? That painting and some of that sort of stuff. Is that something that we see as well?

And I think that those types of things are promoted to get people to think, yeah, animals are closer to us than you think. They're always trying to connect those two worlds together. And the Bible clearly keeps them apart.

The animals are one thing. Human beings are specifically very, very different. All right. So here's some really interesting images. You can find videos and I highly recommend looking them up. They're very, very entertaining.

Very amazing, too. You can put a paintbrush in the mouth of a dog or a pig or an elephant or even a dolphin and you can train them to move that thing around. And they can make some designs on paper or canvas or whatever it is.

Zoos are raising money for their facilities by doing this sort of thing and selling some of these at hundreds and thousands of dollars. So you can buy artwork from an animal artist at a zoo. Well, there's a particular pig out there that's pretty famous for for doing artwork that's like this.

And I want you to think about this through the from a pig's point of view, maybe is a pig or people. Pardon my phone there. Is this artwork more the result of pig or people? Let's think about this. The paint.

Where did the paint come from? Pig or the people? It came from the people. Or how about the colors of the paint? Did the pig choose those? No. How about the tools that the pig used to paint that? The brush?

No, that came from people, too. How about the canvas? No, that came from people. And even the design. Well, I guess that would be the one factor that maybe the kid, the pig contributed. But is that much of a design?

Is that an abstract thing or is that representing anything? It's just that this pig has been trained to swing his head back and forth with that paintbrush in his mouth. So how creative is that really?

We call it artwork because we're humans. We like to read that into it. But I think that's not much of an artwork type of thing. But there's something even more specific towards the art direction that animals can do.

What about animals that can actually draw? Is that a thing? Well, let's take a look. Again, videos that you can look up online and I highly recommend doing this. If you go to India, you can see elephants that have been trained to hold a paintbrush in their trunk.

They're not just painting. These elephants are drawing. And so here's one of their drawings that's along the way. And that is very obviously an elephant that this elephant is drawing. It's an amazing, amazing thing.

I'd love to have one of these, actually. So is the elephant an artist then? Does this qualify as artwork from an elephant? Well, the elephant, again, looks to us like an artist because we recognize what that elephant is drawing.

OK, and here's some other examples of some finished artwork. They can even letter on there. The name of that elephant is Sudha, I guess. And then there's a tree with some flowers on it. Beautiful for what they are.

And yet that wasn't made by a human. It was made by an elephant. But let's think about that. This looks like artwork to us. We're used to seeing this. It means something visually to us. But these images are actually meaningless to the elephant.

They don't know what that is. They've been instructed line by line, probably through a reward or punishment system. I don't want to think about the punishment so much, but hopefully more reward. You draw this line at this spot in this way, you get a reward.

And this is the culmination of that training. So it's really not the skill of artwork and creative ability. It's more of the ability to hold a brush in their trunk and to repeat something that they've been trained to do.

They've been trained to copy. And it's not so much an artistic process. So these symbols right here don't look like much to most of us, probably. That's actually the word artist in Chinese. And I could learn how to make those symbols.

But does that mean that I would know what the language is or what that really means? No, that would just be something I could repeat. And I have the ability to eventually learn what that is. But animals aren't the same.

So that art that the elephant is supposedly producing is an amazing thing to watch. But it's just something that they've been repeating over and over and over again. It's not really art as we think about it.

From another web article that I found called elephants that paint birds that make music. Do animals have an aesthetic sense? It says, like the Bowerbirds decorated home, paintings by elephants, seals, dogs and ravens and other species have no recognizable connections to depictions of reality and hence no symbolism.

They are art to us in the sense of modern art, abstract expressionism. But we are far from knowing whether they are art to artists. And this is a secular source. Both those quotes that I quoted to you are not Christians.

Those are secular people admitting that these animals doing these images that are amazing again are probably not the art that we read into them and how we appreciate them. These things seem entertaining and innocent.

But think about it. What are they ultimately trying to do with these animals that are painting? And they're trying to read into what they're doing, where our creative abilities came from. They're trying to erase the creator out of existence and ultimately deprive him of the credit for his creation.

They're trying to take that away from him and explain it through an evolutionary process that's impersonal and all that. Romans chapter one reminds us that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

Those things are an unrighteous act of suppressing the truth that God is our creator. And how awful is that for God the creator to not get credit for his creativity? Here's a Truth Jabs cartoon that I made not so long ago.

In the world today we have a lot of people talking about identity issues and that sort of difficulty. Well, we've got an evolutionary identity disorder. Seeing oneself as a relative of the animal kingdom instead of a distinctly separate and special creation of God created in his image.

So let's end this massive identity crisis. You are not an animal. Jesus offers salvation to no animal, only to the human race. Each human, we are one family, is very unique and special and different from the animal kingdom.

So the book of Genesis is very handy in helping us to identify who we are as people. And it's something that I want to tell people about and to help them get a grasp on and have a firm foundation for who they are and where creativity came from.

It's from God and it's for his glory. So think about our creator, that he's the one that deserves our worship and us giving him credit for it. I'm going to read some verses here. Look at these wonderful creations of his as I do that.

How many are your works, Lord? In wisdom you made them all. The earth is full of your creatures. But God made the earth by his power. He founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. God is the source of all creativity. Human creativity is unique and special. And it's something that we're responsible for and how we use it and what we do with it.

And sadly, a lot of people, think about this, the whole idea of evolution and those processes that people are trying to use or think of and invent to explain away our creator God, that's man misusing his creative abilities.

In unrighteousness to ultimately deprive our creator of his credit, the credit that he deserves. So why do people have the abilities that we do? Look at Genesis chapter 1 verses 27 and 28. So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them, very important. And then verse 28, and God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

God has given man tools to carry this out. The dominion that we're supposed to have to rule over God's creation, this earth that we were put on to live and inhabit and to take care of, God has given us the ability to do all those things.

And I think the creativity that we have as humans that's unique from any animal, any other creation that God has made, think about all the different compositions that we can make and the complexity that's in the artwork and the structures that we build, the expression, imagination, the message, the meaning, humor, originality, purpose, function, invention.

All of those things far surpass anything else that God has created on this earth. So I'm not going to claim that I have the most outstanding creative abilities, but I want to kind of talk about the creative world that I live in and how I create.

And again, hopefully some of the creative people that you know would benefit from this information and maybe you're a teacher. There's some things that I have in here for you, some good and bad experiences that I've had.

But when people find out that I'm a cartoonist or an illustrator, right away, parents in particular, will start asking certain questions. What tools do you use? What computer do you have? What art apps do you use?

And so to answer that question very quickly, and this is kind of funny because this is where I'm sitting right now in front of my computer screen that you're watching from my camera that's on the top of that monitor that I have my hand on there.

My artwork these days isn't so much on pen and paper. It's done digitally on a Wacom Cintiq. It's a graphics tablet that has a screen on it that allows me to draw right on the screen with that special pencil that they have.

And I wear that white glove on my hand, not because I'm a Michael Jackson fan so much, but because it protects the screen from my hand oils and it helps my hand glide across the screen. So I draw on the screen there.

So everything that you've seen, all my cartoons and stuff, it's made on this particular piece of equipment. And I am of the Macintosh or Apple persuasion for my computers. A lot of creative people are.

And I tend to use Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop a lot. And for those of you that want to use a program like that, but you don't have the money for it, there's another one called GIMP. You can go to GIMP .com, I believe, and download a program that's like Photoshop.

It's different, but it's free. And you can do a lot of Photoshop type stuff in GIMP. So you can ask me about that later if you want. Now, creativity is something that the hand gets a lot of credit for, but it's actually something that happens in the brain, in the mind.

So this is where creativity takes place. And let's go to scripture and back that up. Exodus 35, 31, 32. And he has filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom and understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze.

I love that the Bible talks about artists and creation of the things that people make, that God is the one that gave us those skills. Exodus 35, 35, a couple of verses later. He has filled them with the skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linens and weavers and all kinds of skilled workers and designers.

So creative people that God has made to make things to glorify him. I love those verses. So what we do with it happens here. What we do with our creativity also takes place in our mind. And the Bible calls that our heart.

Well, that's not the heart that we're dealing with here. So let's picture it this way. It's not our cardio heart. It's the heart, our mind, our will. That's where we handle our creativity and we're responsible with what we do with it there.

Alright, so Proverbs talks about it. It says, guard your heart with all diligence. It's very important that we guard our young artists. Well, whoever we are, guard what goes in, because there's output too.

For from it flow the springs of life. That input that your children are getting from their school or television or movies or books or whatever online, even art courses and things like that. That stuff needs to be clean and something that won't have baggage in it that gives them problems later because that stuff comes out.

So guard your children, guard them. So here's a cartoon that I produced not so long ago, and I was able to actually present this down in Florida, not in Orlando, at the Christian Educators Conference, and I got a lot of response from this particular cartoon.

The first image, it's a biblical image. You can find Matthew 7 15 talks about a wolf in sheep's clothing. And so a warning then, a warning now. And so something that looks innocent like Mickey Mouse these days isn't so innocent anymore.

And there's a lot of bad ideas that's being injected into our children's minds through these seemingly innocent things. So parents protect your children. It's so, so important. And if you find this cartoon online, please share it.

Here's another cartoon that I made to express the difference in worldviews and the pressure that Christians are under. We're seen as very, very different. If we're thinking biblically, the world has been so brainwashed and they don't even recognize the brainwashed condition that they're in.

And they think we're the ones that are brainwashed. Well, hopefully our brainwashing is a cleansing washing, not a dirtying up of our minds with clutter and stuff from the world. All right, so our brains contain this gift of creativity that God has given, I think, to each one of us.

Some of us use it more than others, but all of us have creativity at some level or level of ability. So the amount of creativity that you have, you're probably familiar with Spider-Man, and there's a certain saying that's associated with him.

With great power comes great responsibility, right? So there he is, the hero saving someone. Well, where did that saying come from? Where's the foundation? Luke 12, 48. Everyone to whom much was given of him, much will be required.

And from him to whom they entrusted much, they will be demanded the more. So the Bible says that clearly. God's given to us things that we're required to be careful with how we do with them and we're responsible for doing great things with them for the kingdom of God and for God's glory.

So let's talk about some of my early day experiences again, and hopefully this will be encouraging to parents and teachers, particularly. There's me in the beginning of my art career. I was drawing at a very, very young age.

And if you don't know which one I am, take a look at the screen there. I am this guy right there. Yeah, the ears gave me a lot of, got a lot of comments in my growing up years about my ears. Anyway, that's me in first grade, 1970, long time ago.

There's some of my original artwork. I was drawing dinosaurs and monsters even way back then. And, you know, I'm still doing that to this day. I love those things. And, you know, back in those days, my teachers weren't so excited about my drawings of dinosaurs and monsters.

And I would get comments like, why can't you do something more constructive? Which is kind of sad to think about that they couldn't warm up to it. It's not some of the stuff that you see today. There's nothing occultish about it.

It's a silly dinosaur monster type scenes that little boys in particular, I think, tend to like more than girls. But that was fun stuff for me. I like, I love doing it. I didn't listen to my teachers' criticisms.

And I'm glad I didn't because these days I'm still drawing dinosaurs and monsters. Well, more dinosaurs these days. But here's some of the books that I illustrated over my career time at Answers in Genesis.

A lot of dinosaurs and monsters for the glory of God. And I wish I could show some of my teachers this type of subject matter that I'm still doing to this day. So criticism is something that I've endured a lot of in the years of my drawing career.

And I think all artists will deal with criticism at some level. There's good criticism and there's bad criticism. So I want to talk about that. And the bad criticism, I think, has the potential to do damage to creative, young creative people.

In fact, I think they can be creative killers in a large way. One thing I would recommend not doing so much is trying to inflict your own personal opinions into someone's artwork. I find a lot of times that someone will try to reject an idea of mine not working with me, and they want something else.

And so they'll say, well, I think this is better. You should do that. And I'm not looking for criticism. I mean, if the idea is bad, I'll throw it away. But I want you to help me with this one. Don't inflict your personal opinion on something so much.

I want you to know what you think, but help me with this instead of rejecting it and preferring something you want. So as parents, that can be kind of tough sometimes. Flavors and opinions are something that can get in the way.

If something's wrong, then tell the young student that. But if it's a preference, if it's a flavor, if it's a taste, try to withhold and help the young one to come up with their own sense of taste and flavor and all of that.

I hope that's clear. You can ask me about that later. If you get a lot of that kind of input as a creative person or as an instructor, you're trying to do a lot of that kind of guidance, not working with the young creative person.

They will get this feeling that you're against them and not working for them, and they don't want to hear from you so much if that's going to be the case. And children, think about this. They all start out with a lot of creative abilities and excitement about that.

And I think it's a lot of that critical comments that kind of wears that down. And after a while, there's just a few kids that are kind of left and the rest have moved on to other things that aren't so creative because of that criticism component.