---
title: Where you don't find creativity
description: Creativity is found in the will to do hard, beautiful work. Not in a hip arts district.
---

This band sought creativity in Berlin, a city with an enormous arts culture and low cost of living. Some would call it a creative mecca.

> Still, it seemed that everyone we met was creative-minded and drawn to Berlin for the same reasons we were: to pursue their art. Except that very few of them seemed to have any coming exhibitions or book launches or gigs. “I spent a lot of time talking about the arts over beer or coffee, or at 4 a.m. over a mirror,” Pat ruminated recently, “but I didn’t see a whole lot actually being created.” I found it difficult to disagree with him.

> In the end, the city’s lifestyle, with all its distractions, outweighed our aspirations and our will to succeed. Three months in the creative mecca taught me an important lesson about creativity: It’s not something you will find in a place.

Read the whole piece at the New York Times Magazine site: [*In Berlin You Never Have to Stop*](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/in-berlin-you-never-have-to-stop.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0&pagewanted=all).

Creativity is found in the will to do hard, beautiful work. Not a hip arts district.

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