Creature World’s Danny Cole began drawing the Creature in a dusty church basement in youth. He had his first public exhibition before graduating from high school. His work has since evolved from graffiti and paintings to include immersive art experiences, NFTs, clothing capsules, and adventures in virtual reality. All in an effort to bring us together in a shared version of a more divine reality.

Danny Cole: It’s really about I’m looking at this world that’s as real as day, what are the ways that I can communicate that world to you?

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to multi-hyphenate artist Danny Cole. Danny is the 22-year-old artist and director of the renowned art project Creature World, which utilizes an array of creative mediums to bring a dream world to life. Danny’s primary outputs span fine art, web3, innovation, immersive exhibitions and the creation of physical goods. At the age of 18, Danny decided to forgo college, moving to New York to create art and share his vision with the world. Since 2018, Creature World has become a staple of the countercultural underground art scene in New York City. What started with graffiti and paintings, quickly turned into sold-out live immersive art experiences, clothing collections, displays on Coachella’s main stage, shows alongside Beck and musical figureheads and work presented in the gallery of Shephard Fairy. When the pandemic halted live activations, Danny launched Creature World into the realm of NFTs with the release of their self-titled collection of 10,000 immersive digital artworks. it sold out in 13 minutes and solidified Danny as a leader in the web3 space. Currently, Danny is gearing up for the most ambitious and public projects of his life yet. Here’s Danny.

Danny: My name is Danny Cole, I live in New York City. I make a magical world real through just about every medium. And I do it because I would like the happiest place I can imagine to be a world that I can walk into, with all the people around me.

Amy: I'm already touched. That's a beautiful vision. And I love that you're sinking all of your energy and effort into that. Before we get into creature world. I really always like to go way back to the beginning. And I like to start at the beginning because I feel like there are clues and threads to be found that help to humanize and give context to the creative journey. And now in your case, this is 100% true, because I know creature worlds sort of was formed in your childhood imagination. And while I want to talk about the childhood version of creature world, I'd like to sort of even back up out of that and talk about young Danny Cole and what your childhood was like, what your conditions were like, and what you can tell me about how your imagination developed from that.

Danny Cole: So I grew up in a really small town in New Jersey population, about 5000. I went to preschool in the basement of a church. I lived upstairs from my father's business who sold baseball cards. And my mother was a teacher. The inception of creature world is this miracle. It is a whole lot of coincidences that if you removed even one component, I would not be sitting here right now and I would not be talking to you right now. First component is my nighttime routine. When I was in preschool, my nighttime routine was that I would climb into my bed, I would take my blanket and I would wrap it around me like a cocoon, I would put it behind my back and I'd kick my feet up so the blank be underneath my feet. And when I was in this cocoon, like state, I would close my eyes with all the energy of a child. And with nowhere else to go, my energy went towards, you could call it imagination you can call it tapping into something depending on what you believe. I would close my eyes and I would immediately these powerful powerful visions of stars all around me of myself floating in space. And in space around me, I would see all of these different objects and people from my life loading all around me. And I would have time there to look at each of these things and process how I felt about them. Until something I would spend a little bit more time on. And I would zoom right into it. And I would go to the place that it had come from, whether it was from my world or from another world. And every night, I would go on these adventures just like that, as a part of my routine, I would see something that would catch my eye, and then I would go there, to the world that came from. And then I'd wake up. And I would go to school. Now at this point, I'm in preschool, I am. In a very dusty preschool, I still have an asthma inhaler, as a result of it. And there were a few activities that they had for us at preschool. And this is Component number two. The main activity that I'm going to highlight here is finger painting. They had an easel, and a bunch of finger paints. And there was no assignment, it was just paint. And when I was first presented with that finger paint, I thought to myself, I'm gonna paint a picture of myself. So I painted a picture of myself. But you have to keep in mind that as a child, you only get so much time to reflect, you only get so much time to reflect and start to shape your view of your own identity. And for me, the majority of my time, where I was sitting, put, and developing an understanding of myself in the world around me was in this dreamscape was in space. So the picture that I painted of myself, was very informed by the place in which I learned that sense of self outer space at night.

Amy Devers: Your nighttime routine where you would go on these adventures, you sort of preface that by saying you could call it imagination? Or you could say you're tapping into something depending on what you believe. What do you believe?

Danny Cole: I think it's all real. I just spoke about this yesterday, and maybe this is going to be something I started to speak about more, but I learned that there are societies that have words for colors that we don't have words for. And we can look at Green, for example, are green and the spectrum that defines green. There are societies that divide that into two different colors. And, you know, we can call that color one, color two. And the idea that I to them would call color one and color two, the same color is unfathomable. But I can't recognize these as two different colors, I can't see the second color, because I was never given the words to describe it. And as a result, it is not something that I've dived into, it's not something that you've dived into. There's something that's right here, that people on the same planet are delving into that's invisible to me that I can't see. I've talked to so many people that have experienced magical, magical things, and I grew up on the internet. You know, I had a computer really young cuz I used to play music. And I made myself a little home recording studio, I started playing drums when I was five years old, and you know, to have a home recording studio. Well, you got to go to Staples and get a little laptop. And that was on the internet, really young. And when you're on the internet really young, it makes you certain that you are an atheist, and that anybody that's not is so much stupider than you. And I carried that until I realized that I was stupid to think that I knew any better than anyone else?

Amy: That's a pretty self aware place to get to at such a young age.

Danny: I'm not here really to talk about the idea of God, I don't know what God is. And I never think about it, because I don't really it's not, you know, it's just not me. But I think that, in this in this, you know, in this society that we are in, we talk about magic frequently through the lens of that word, God. And I believe that the realm of possibility in the realm of what exists extends so far beyond what we can really wrap our heads around that. I'm, you know, I'm aware that there's more, whatever it is, there's more. Yeah, but I love science.

Amy: There's room to there's room to love science. And there's also room to say that science hasn't answered all the questions. The mysteries of the universe, or something that I think we've only scratched the surface on. And I think you put you pointed out, you made it really clear in terms of talking about how green exists for some people in two completely different colors. Or maybe not completely different, but in two versions, and for us in one. So that means, I mean, it's clear in nature all the time, there are dogs that can hear frequencies that we can't hear. So there is a lot of reality embedded in our world that we don't have the tools to perceive. And I think what you're telling me is, these nighttime adventures for you are as real as anything else. Yeah, it's just a kind of heightened perception that you are able to tap into.

Danny: And I've had so many conversations with other people, especially other people that have grown up in wildly different cultures that have allowed for more expansive, or different territories have reality to be shared and spoken about. Yeah. And I have had my moments of talking to people being like, Well, can you specify, are you saying that this story happened to you in a dream? Are you saying that, you know, what are you saying, and they look at me, they're like, No, I'm telling you this happened? What don't you understand? And in my head, I can say, well, that that isn't possible. Until you make that connection, and you're like I understand what you're communicating to me. That picture myself that I painted in preschool, I developed a habit of painting that. I won't call these numbers, because I don't know if that habit is number two. And number three, we'll call it number three, I developed a habit of drawing that picture. And it was such a part of my muscle memory that as years went by, and I became detached from the memories of going to space, and I was no longer in the basement of that church. I kept on drawing this picture. I kept on drawing this, what started as a self portrait, but every time I drew it, it changed a little bit. And that happened very, very slowly. But these changes cemented bit by bit until the character I was drawing was no longer myself wasn't even something that I remembered to be myself. And furthermore, wasn't even something that I thought about. It was kind of just like, you put a piece of paper in front of me and I know what you do with the paper, you draw a picture on it. And this is the picture that I draw. And it served a number of purposes in my life. You know, this character that started to develop originally was something that I realized I could use to try to make friends and to try to be seen if I turned it into comics and the school was something I could use to distract myself if I just wanted to, like, be a world that I was excited by on a paper in front of it.

One day, I got a canvas, and some paint. It wasn't supposed to be something monumental. I got a canvas and some paint because I wasn't happy. And I was really used to the idea of, I can lose myself in inactivity, specifically in creation. I wasn't happy. So I was building circuit boards. I wasn't happy. So I was creating a home studio, I was picking up new instruments I was doing, you know, whatever, just an activity to get lost in.

Amy: why weren't you happy?

Danny: To keep it very open. I was just an incredibly misunderstood kid. And I think today, if I really put myself out there, by really, but like me, Danny out there, the fullest extent, I would be incredibly misunderstood still. But instead have taken the route of putting this creature out there for me. And the creature can't really be misunderstood. Because it isn't anything. It's whatever you look at it. And you see. And through that. I'm very understood, overwhelmingly understood, but I was a very misunderstood kid. And it made me really feel very alone.

Amy: I can relate. And I think it's also incredibly adaptive, and healthy, that you use your creative outlet to generate a kind of proxy for yourself that could navigate the world on your behalf. And both build connection and protect yourself at the same time.

Danny: Thank you. I appreciate that. I think that some of the best innovations in this world come out of necessity. And I'm not here to call my my buddy cartoon character, one of the best innovations, but it was really important innovation for me.

Amy: How and how old are you at Canvas time?

Danny: 17. I got a canvas, and I paint a picture. And I paint the only thing that I've ever drawn, and it makes you and it's just this slightly satisfactory experience. You know, I look at it, and I'm like, I I feel proud of this. I feel good. I'm gonna do this again. But it's not so monumental. But it was enough for me to get another canvas and I got another canvas and I started painting. And the second canvas I got was a lot bigger. And as a result, it took a lot longer to fill in colors. And as I was taking my time to fill in those colors that repetitive motion functioned, similar to a breathwork exercise or a chanting meditation. And I just watched the world around me and the canvas in front of me fade away until I was gone. I was completely gone. I disappeared, I was somewhere else. And I saw this infinite landscape that just went on forever. And standing across from me, kind of like looking in a mirror. There was the creature that I was painting. And I took a step towards it, and it took a step towards me. Step by step. We walked right up to each other we looked each other and baseAnd there was this shared understanding. I felt like I had gone home. And I snapped out of it. And there was a painting in front of me. And I felt like I'd been slapped in the face. And I was like, Where did this painting come? What is going on? Where did this painting come from? Because I wasn't here to paint it. But it's painted. And nobody else has been in my room. Before I can even think too much about that. I'm feeling that lingering sense that I was just home.

Amy: Yeah.

Danny: And I'm asking myself, Where do you remember this feeling? How do you know this feeling to be home? And it wasn't like I was putting it in those exact words. But it's when you're stopped in your tracks. And you're like, where do I know this scent from? Like, where did I smell this before? Where have I seen this before? Wherever, wherever I heard this before. Sort of like have I felt this

Amy: Soul deep nostalgia.

Danny: And all the sudden, everything comes rushing back to me. And I'm in my bed, and I'm in the stars. And I'm floating. And I know exactly who in my preschool class is floating next to me. And I know exactly what object from the middle of the ocean is floating, you know, to the right of me. And this is the grand coincidence. This is the tether that existed. That tied me back to where you could call birth.

Amy: or the cosmos.

Danny: One in the same, you know. And a friend of mine said to me, though, that we educate ourselves, Oh, my bad. That's gonna sound bad. A friend of mine said to me, that we condition ourselves out of divinity.

Amy: Oh, for sure. I am 100% certain of that. Please elaborate.

Danny: That we are born from Definity and that the world that we are born into, to function in it, we must be conditioned away from it. So to have this tether to such a young time in my life. There's a reason that we equate childhood with wonder. Whatever that is that we're born into, I got really close to it. And I started painting all the time. And having all the time led me to a place where I'm looking at all these paintings. And the wonder that they represent to me started painting in the first place because I didn't want to be lonely. And yet, I'm still alone with all this wonder. So I decided that the best use of my time would probably be to try to make things that could bring other people, this magical place alongside me. And there's a constant pursuit in my life to find the most effective way to do that.

Amy: So I love what you're saying. And I think it's so fascinating. And I I think that when we're born we kind of still remember divinity. And through the human experience, we are conditioned to forget it or to distance ourselves from it. Yeah. And the human experience is essentially a process of trying to get back, to remember that, to bring it into and fold it into our lives in a way that helps sort of salve our aching souls. And what I'm hearing from you is that you accessed it from a really young age, but then you nurtured it, and then you formed muscle memory around it, and you fought for it, and you kept it alive. In a world that's trying, for the most part, trying to tell you, you know, leave that to your imagine, that's imagination, that's not real. And so I think that's really, really powerful. And I think what's also, maybe most akin to that might be a psychedelic experience. And there's a lot of research going on now that, you know, talks about how psychedelics could sort of light up certain parts of the brain. And that this isn't just your imagination firing off, but it's actual perception. And you're gaining perception that's real and useful. And I think previous generations would have tried to medicate their isolation, through substance. And what I love about you and art as well, but I love about the way you're processing all this within your body and throughout your body of work is that you're actually putting a story and, and a concreteness to it, that helps other people relate and come along with you without having to go so far away from reality, that it's contained in brackets, like a psychedelic trip, right? So you're paving the path that makes this sort of transit easier to navigate.

Danny: Life is a trip I remember growing my first art show, and hoping so much that by putting people around paintings of another world, that they would be in that other world. And instead, they were in a room with paintings, and how disappointed by that I felt. And I thought, you know, I can't teleport people to the world in this painting. But I do have two hands. I got arms. I got a decently strong head on my shoulders. And I don't give up. And now, I said to you before we hopped on this call. It's really difficult to tell my story through output, because of how many things I have made.

Amy: Yeah, and just to tell our listeners in the last four years like your pro, prolific output is astounding. So

Danny: Thank you. I look at the last week and a week ago, I was in the desert. And I had taken these seven environments that I saw in this other world. And I made them into a sculpture that was 80 feet long. 20 feet tall. And 20 feet wide. And I put it in the middle of the desert.And I climbed on it from morning tonight. I made it out of vinyl and air blowers. And standing next to this environment 15 or so feet in the air maybe a little higher was a massive creature. I was standing 15 feet sitting down with the creature sitting down the top of its head was 15 feet. And that's just that was just a day for me. Sometimes you got to put your put yourself in your own shoes a few years back and allow yourself to experience the joy from a time that you had even less of an idea of what is possible that you know to be possible now.

Amy: Unpack that a little bit.

Danny: Okay. I at 1718 would not have thought I would be able to run and climb through the world in my dreams. I am now at 22. I know that it's possible now. Does that make it less fun? No, not at all. Does that make it less important? No, not at all. But there's an added degree when you introduce I didn't know that was possible. And it wasn't that long ago that I didn't know that was possible. You know, I remember like a year ago, a friend of mine said to me and he's not a person that I have particularly deep conversations with. So it like stood out a lot. He said Danny, please just take a minute. And look at what the life you get to live as look at what family has fostered around you. And please remember where you were a year ago. And I knew that he wasn't referring to the idea of like, Oh, look at the fact that your career has progressed. Who cares about a career, I don't care about a career. He was talking about the fact that I was dealing with such crippling anxiety that I would wind up in the hospital because I couldn't eat for a week, you know? And he was like, look at the joy around you. And it stood out. It stood out a lot to me that need for the comparison of looking at this through your own eyes from a point in time that you weren't familiar with the journey that brought you to this moment.

Danny Cole: You're highlighting something that I think is worth is worth really putting some focus and attention on because what the fuck is a career in general, I think a career is this sort of patriarchal, capitalistic way of like winning at life or succeeding by those rules. But you're talking about a journey of agency of personal agency, not of approval by society, but of overcoming your own crippling anxiety by using your own creativity and energy and effort to develop a world and a thing and physical reality that works for you. And in doing so, it's rippling out and becoming a model and example for others as well. But the real success embedded in this journey is your personal agency.

Danny: What I'll say is it's not about a career. But if you do something good enough, odds are, it's gonna be a career. Right? And time and time again, I look at the things in my life that you could most closely categorize as a failure. And I can justify them and justify why they were meaningful to me. But I know truly, that when something doesn't land well enough to be quote, unquote, a career that odds are, are my personal experience. I could have done it better.

Amy: It's about communication. That's an evolving art. I wonder if you could get a little bit granular with your creative process. I mean, we talked about this enormous environment. And yet, the conceptual development of that is something that's been in the works since you were a kid. I'm wondering about that space between an idea and a realization for you, because there is a lot of courage and vulnerability and self awareness that gets translated out through your material and virtual objects. And so, you know, you described the painting process as being one of you almost being transported to another dimension, and coming back and seeing this painting. I'm guessing it can't be like that for everything. So when you're consciously deploying your agency, what does that look like?

Danny: That's a really beautiful question. At this point in my life, I have learned the absolute importance of experimentation. When life starts to move so fast, you're not always going to get the time to clear your plate and go to space. There can't be anything unresolved, anything distracting you if you're going to like really disappear. So a lot more where I put my energy now is I think that you could make the best painting in the world, for example, by scribbling on a page, and asking yourself, What do I like about this? What don't I make that change? Now, what do I like about this? What don't? Make that change? You could even start with a scribble that you found, you could start with something that you saw on the sidewalk, you can start with a sign or you sign an image,

Amy: But is this how you work?

Danny: I mean, to an extent it is, I will frequently just kind of pick up a page and draw anything. And then allow that to be a baseline of is this like, what about this is where I want it to be what about this isn't and what you wind up with whatever idea you wind up with is going to be so far from where it began, that it's not going to be recognizable as the first scribble but there's a lot of different processes that I work with. Another one is actually still getting away. I went to Joshua Tree. And I turned my phone off before I got there and I didn't turn it back on until I left Joshua Tree A few days later. And I just had my sketchbook on me and a few pens in a few days, the ability to just not be pulled in every which direction that this world asks us to be pulled in. But instead just receive, open yourself up to be a vessel and receive. I wrote enough stories to be a full season of a TV show. I developed enough characters to populate an entire video game in a few days, because I wasn't being pulled. My attention wasn't being pulled by everything that's looking to grab it. Yeah, in this world. But you know what? That's, that's, that's the name of the game, because, guess who's looking for your attention? Me? You know, but I try to be respectful in the way that I ask for people's attention. I try not to open my mouth unless it's something I think is worth hearing. I also think that there's something really natural about disappearing cyclically. Where let's say you started a friendship. And you saw that person, every day from the moment that you discovered them. What about the week that you don't see them? It's like, oh, this is over, I guess. But what if you meet somebody, you really liked them, then you continue to live your life, and then you see them again. And then you continue to live your life. That's how a relationship is supposed to be. You know, and you can extrapolate that to, you know, you can extrapolate that to so many things that I've just spoken about, you could extrapolate about how that Getaway is supposed to be in waves, not supposed to be all the time, it's not supposed to be never. You can talk about how the actual way to exist as an artist, in my opinion, is in that format to.

Amy: I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. And it's reflected in nature and, and the seasons and how so many things go dormant for a while and then they have an extreme period of, of pushing up and growing and blossoming and then going dormant again, and I agree with you, I think you can try it that's transferable out to almost everything in life. It's in conflict, its intention, with the way that society and it attention and the attention economy operates because that's sort of constant. So it's on you to make your own cycles.

Danny: First of all, yes. I think a huge part of my process that I haven't touched on yet, is when I am developing an idea when I am opening myself up to receive an idea, I think we haven't really touched on the concept of, well, how is that idea being expressed. And this is really, really fundamental to the creature world process. Ideas come in the form of a story. They come in the form of here is a character, like a subject. Here is an environment, here's an action, this is what's going on here. They come in the form sometimes of like full sagas. From there, when I'm looking at a story, it's a matter of well what can I do to bring this to a person? And there's no one answer. I realized the way that I was describing an idea coming to life, almost made it seem like I was talking about an idea becoming a painting. But I'm not really a painter. I do make paintings. Sometimes I say I'm a painter, because I think it sounds cute. But it's really about I'm looking at this world that is as real as day. What are the ways that I could communicate that world to you, I can put it into a painting, I can make an immersive experience. I don't know why I'm having trouble talking, I can put it into a painting, I can make an immersive experience that you can physically step into, I can make an interactive art piece using technology that you're able to further immerse yourself into, I can actually write the story and share the written story. But I don't really do that. I animate them. So I can animate this into a short or into a show that ultimately is going to come out, I can put it into a playable video game, I can turn it into a toy that you're meant to play with. I can turn it into a piece of furniture that you are able to exist and I can turn it into a clothing. So you really can take this art and be inside of it. You can really be fully immersed in this artwork. And each of these different mediums have their own thing that makes them stand out clothing for example. Not only are you experiencing what it's like to be inside of the artwork, but also you are making it an extension of yourself and the way that you are being perceived or becoming the artwork and everyone else's eyes. Each of these mediums. There's an infinite amount of ways to bring an idea to be thought and I definitely do not limit myself to one because there's not really a universal medium, the closest thing to a universal medium, I would say, is music.

Amy: I agree and I, I celebrate your I celebrate your desire and your need to keep your output of expression as wide open as possible. In your decision making process, at what point do you decide what is the appropriate output?

Danny: What's going to be the most effective? If I have a whole story? Yeah, you got to tell that whole story, you know, that makes the most sense, probably to be a cartoon, like an animated cartoon, if I have a moment just a still moment that can speak for itself and can overcome you, that makes the most sense for that to be a painting, if I have something that I think is worthy of becoming an extension of the self, and existing in throughout your day, will perhaps that's best as an article of clothing, it's really like, it's a very logical way of thinking it's it's literally looking at something like a problem and asking yourself, what is the solution? I'm not just trying to apply creativity to something, right, I'm really asking what is the most effective, and some of the some of the solutions that we've come up with thus far have been outlandish, I wanted the ability to go inside of a painting. And I wanted that ability during the time when the world was closed down. So my friends, and I built a digital art experience where you could get a digital painting, and go inside of the painting, go inside of the world in the painting, and actually exist there and have free will. And what you did inside of that painting would update to reflect on the painting. That is like a real crazy medium right there. And you know what? It got mixed reviews. And I mean that from the sense of not like, what does some art critic have to say, I mean, that from the sense of you got mixed reviews from the people that I wanted to experience it. And each of these things, you kind of have to do that experimentation. Because also, I feel like making a bouncy house, for example, which is what I'm calling this inflatable, isn't really a common medium. That's just something where I was like, this is a way that we could put people inside of the world. That's not something that a lot of people do. And we did it and people did like it where you really do have to experiment. And it's not so much focused on like, is this liked? It's more focused on were we effective in our communication of what we cared to share.

Amy: How do you know if you were effective? What's the barometer reading look like for you?

Danny: When everything was live when I started out and almost everything was live. It was about the look on people's faces, that was how I can tell. But now I think it's more so it's more so actually just feeling the response. The ability to read any avenue of communication that can come back to me and gauge do I think this had the impact that I wanted to have. I remember somebody asked me when I was 18, what I would define as my metrics of success. And I gave him an answer. And he didn't like my answer. Because he was coming from a side of monetarily. And you know this and that. And it was a great exercise that he was trying to give to me. But the answer that I gave to him, in terms of being able to gauge impact, in this very abstract way is still kind of what comes quite naturally.

Amy: What is the impact you hope to have? I mean, in general, I know it's going to be fine tuned, refined for each expression, each output?

Danny: Ah, okay. It's all the same. It's, it's all the same to me. Very simply, there are two things that I'll say. If I can look at this creature,and see myself in it, project, my understanding of life, my experience of life onto it, and you can do the same. You can look at this creature, and connect to it, see yourself in it, this creature is a bridge. And I can look at you and see that you're feeling the same thing that I'm feeling. And I can humanize you. It can bring us closer together. I want to create tools that are able to bring people closer together. And I also want to make sure that I do my part in making our experience. With this miracle of life, as enjoyable as possible, as magical as possible. I want to give you the opportunity to have the best life that you can have. Because that's really all that we're here for us. That's all we can be sure of.

Amy: That's beautiful. And, you know, I sense that I, as you're telling me this and I'm looking you in the eye, I feel your sincerity, but I also sense it in your work. So I appreciate that. And I mean, I do believe in the butterfly effect. And I do believe that when you plant benevolence, it grows and that benevolence is specific to individuals. And that's what makes this kind of a beautiful symphonic experience. I would love to ask you I don't know. i You talked earlier about divinity. And I wonder if you could define divinity for us?

Danny: I speak about it as the universal divinity to me is when you are able to tap into something that we are hardwired to resonate with. I think that there is something to be discovered in what we are universally hardwired to resonate with. If you look at all of the unexplainable patterns in this world when you see a pattern there is probably a really interesting answer as to why that exists. You got to choose do I want to dig deeper or do I want to just experience it and for me remember coming to the conclusion a few years ago that there was never a time that I was experiencing love and joy, where I felt the need to dissect and question is this truly worth me experiencing? Is this truly necessary?

Amy: Right

Danny: It’s obviously necessary. I don't need to know why that is the meaning of life. If I've identified this as the meaning of life, I might as well just live by it. I'm not looking for answers.

Amy: That's the clearest best distillation of the human experience that I've ever heard. And I'm 100% aligned. So, I mean, you talked a little bit at the beginning about being an internet atheist, but also going to preschool in a church basement and

Danny: I'm Jewish, by the way.

Amy: Okay. Separate from organized religion and consciousness. I wonder if you can tell me about a past life?

Danny: I can tell you about a lot of worlds. I was at the door of this palace. And this very divine feminine presence opened the door for me. And her skin was white and shiny like porcelain. And in between the sections of her body, there were cracks of red with all of those cracks being perfectly smooth. And she opened the door for me. And she led me through the palace facing away from me, by my hand. And through this palace, she led me to a staircase and began to walk up the stairs. And when we got to the top of the stairs, we turned and She ushered me in front of her. And I looked at this room in this room a saw windows either windows or paintings over you want to describe them I saw moving pictures. It was kind of like a gallery where you can imagine, you know, these frames evenly spaced. And an each and every one of those frames. I saw people like me engaging with one another going about our lives. also saw in some of the further away frames, beings that didn't look like me, it looks very unfamiliar. I had this very distinct feeling this is what's behind it all. Wherever I am right now, this is what's behind it all. And I thought to myself, who is this woman. And I turned my head to look at her. And at the same time, she turned her head to look back at me. And she knew exactly what was going to happen in the moment our eyes met. The whole world started to skip and deconstruct and I'm looking at her face and the whole world is deconstructing. And I had to think about that memory so many times, because every time I recalled it, I would see her face in my memory. And then the world would deconstruct before I could really capture what her face looked like. But when you recall it 300 times each time, you can grab another detail and another detail until you can draw it out into a picture that roughly looks like her. Now is that a past life? Is that happening right now? Is that happening in the future? That story doesn't really in involve time, right? That's not really about is it a past life? It's more about? Is that where I am right now? I don't know. It's not what surroundings look like right now. But it happened.

Amy: Do you feel like you can access the wisdom of, of yourself from other lives? Past current future time, time not in being involved? But if other Danny Coles’ have lived other existences and picked up wisdom do you have access to it?

Danny: If there was another Danny Cole, you probably wouldn't look like me but to an extent, you're another Danny Cole.

Amy: We are all reflections of each other in some ways. So this Danny Cole, the one that I'm talking to, that's you know, the father of creature world? Do you have a vision of yourself when you're elderly?
Danny: When I was a kid, like, really young. And, and I was just like, you know, you never have to think past your early 20s cause you're not going to live for it, you know, and it wasn't even something that I would like thought about as like a stabbed thing. I was just like, hey, like, you're just not going to do this whole thing. Like, he's just not going to do the whole like life thing. Like I had never really thought too much about what it looked like to grow old. And now, I'm so obsessed with what I do, that I can only think about what is creature world in 60 years from now? What are we making and 60 years from now? I’m not thinking about you know, what is the most likely scenario, the most likely scenario is that I I'm still living at our studio, but I've done a lot more things and the studio looks very different. And maybe we have flying robots in there. And maybe we're nearing the revolution, where everybody rejects technology, and ushers in the newer form of technology that learn from our mistakes right now.

Amy: I'll go there. That's a beautiful future.

Danny: Yeah.

Amy: I mean, I feel like we've covered a lot of territory. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you want to before we wrap up.

Danny: I really want to make a TV show. I've been working on it for years now. I've been working on it since I was 19. The piece of advice that I got was I asked this dude from The Lion King, I asked him how would I make a TV show? A cartoon show? And he said to me, you make it. And I was like, that's really good advice. Thank you. And I've been following it. If you're listening, and you think that you have a meaningful way to guide me, in this process, I believe that making a cartoon show will be the most meaningful thing that I do with my life.

Amy: I'm so happy to share that and I really hope a connection comes from this

Danny: 100% Well, thank you so much for having me.

Amy: Thank you for sharing and for going, you know, all over the place. And for really, you know, your as philosopher as much as you are an artist, and I feel like you really brought that. So, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Danny: Thank you.

Amy: Hey, thanks so much for listening. For a transcript of this episode, and more about Danny, including images of his work, and a bonus Q&A - head to cleverpodcast.com. If you can think of 3 people who would be inspired by Clever - please tell them! It really helps us out when you share Clever with your friends. You can listen to Clever on any of the podcast apps - please do hit the Follow or subscribe button in your app of choice so our new episodes will turn up in your feed. We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter - you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. Please stay tuned for upcoming announcements and bonus content. You can subscribe to our newsletter at cleverpodcast.com to make sure you don’t miss anything. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers, with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven.

What is your earliest memory?

My earliest memory is deeply connected to my work and something I think and speak about a lot. I was floating in space and watching people from my life, asleep like me, floating around me. Our souls perhaps were together. Among the stars were objects from familiar and far away places. This was my playground.

How do you feel about democratic design?

Creativity is for everyone and I believe everyone should have access to the colors and designs that elevate our experience existing. However, it’s limiting to make anything one size fits all. As humans, we have so much shared and universal ground, but we feel even more attached to our differences as a result. We love to be us, and… Design is a form of identity, of expression. It’s a good thing the world is big enough that even an empire can leave enough room for an alternative.

What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?

The best advice I’ve ever received was to stop asking to be included and just do what I want to be included in. People are amazing but they aren’t superheroes when compared to each other. We are all capable.

How do you record your ideas?

Organization is the only way complex ideas become real. I utilize technology a lot in my process. I have workspaces where my ideas are just immortalized, and then workspaces to bring each idea into development.

What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?

I am falling back in love with drawing. The amazement of a picture becoming real and somehow being responsible never seems to fade. Every time is jarring and spectacular.

What book is on your nightstand?

I don’t learn best in a classroom and I don’t learn best from books. I use my books in a specific way. The books I own are similar to encyclopedias for me. I know what I’m looking for in them. Some are just reminders. I’ll overshare just about anything, but my inspiration is sacred. I’m not looking at art books, even if I own a few. I’m looking at the world.

Why is authenticity in design important?

Authenticity is how you make something that isn’t based on impossible assumptions. I’ll never know what you really want from me. I can try and try to speculate but I’ll never get it. To be yourself as a creator, you will know how to satisfy your amorphous desires. And with how similar we all are, trust that the satisfaction will be shared.

Favorite restaurant in your city?

The Bedford. They take care of me and my people. It’s a home away from home, even though it’s really close to home. You can frequently catch me in the back room enjoying some rare privacy in New York thanks to them being family to me.

What might we find on your desk right now?

I’ll be honest, when I was using my desk, it was almost perfectly empty. Just a candle on it and some writing utensils. But right now there is a water bottle, tortilla chips, hummus, a razor blade, band-aids, a charger… There’s not room for me to work at it. Because I hate it. And I am not doing a great job at working at it. I love my chair. It’s a 1960s Kevi chair. I hate my desk. It’s a folding table from a restaurant supply store and left over from a show we did. When I get a desk I love (and I know exactly which one it is), I will frequent it a lot more. I would tell you which one I want, but then when one pops up on the market, you may get it instead of me. I want you to have one, too. Just not instead of me yet. I’ve been waiting impatiently.

Who do you look up to and why?

I look up to just about everyone that knows how to do something that I don’t. It’s why I like to make things so secretly. So someone else can experience the same magical feeling of perplexity. To continue the belief that humans can be magic, so you could be, too.

What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?

My favorite project I have done is the clothing collection I’m working on right now. I’m seeing a level up across the board during this project. I like the creativity more, I like the collaboration more, I like the art, I like the process. I feel proud of it and I think it’s going to mean something to people. And because its perception is in the future, whatever I dream and want it to be to people is truly possible.

What are the last five songs you listened to?

Hog of the Foresaken by Michael Hurley
low tide at the dryin’ out facility by Lil Ugly Mane
Boils Up by Show Me the Body
Imigradan by Les Filles de Illighadad
What Will We Do with the Baby O

Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?

dannycole.co + instagram.com/dannycoleee + twitter.com/dannycoleee

The new Creature World website is coming very soon but right now is an adventure computer game

www.creature.world

Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.