Creativity is a team sport

Editor's Note: This essay appeared in Cognoscenti's newsletter of ideas and opinions, delivered weekly on Sundays. To become a subscriber, sign up here.

A few months ago, when the snow was threatening to bury us all, my co-editor Sara asked if I wanted to go to a Guster concert in May. At the time, May seemed very far off. May seemed warm and inviting, a clear antidote to winter, so naturally, I said “yes.” I noted the date on my Google calendar and promptly forgot about it, too distracted by the news and chaos at home.

Then, as the date inched closer, we realized … Hey, wait a minute: Since we’re going, and since Guster has roots in Boston (the guys met as freshmen at Tufts in 1991), maybe we should see if they’re up for an interview? Long story short: We asked, they said OK.

We were curious to learn more about their creative process, but even more curious to understand how they’ve managed to stay friends and collaborators all these years. How many people do you know who met as teenagers, maintained the friendship into adulthood — through marriage, children and all the rest — and continued to work together, happily, into their 50s? The sort of consistent and productive collaboration the Guster guys have pulled off seemed remarkable, and we were eager to know how they’ve done it.

The piece we produced is here. We’d love for you to listen to the radio version and spend time with the written piece too. I think you’ll take something from it, whether you’ve been to a dozen Guster shows (as many of their fans have) or are only just now learning about the band.

In the meantime, I want to offer a peek behind the Cog curtain at our own approach to collaboration and creativity.

Sara and I have worked together, on and off, for about six years. (She began as a Cog contributor in 2020, and joined WBUR’s staff in 2022.) Kate Neale Cooper joined the team in 2023. We three collaborate on Cog’s editorial focus and essay ideas, on headlines and events, and we are constantly editing each others’ writing. It’s a team sport. But most of our time is spent on quiet, independent work, because every essay we publish is edited by only one of us. It’s just more efficient that way.

On occasion, however, we collaborate on bigger projects. Sara and I have produced pieces about the poet Kate Baer, your love letters to Boston and the Boston Marathon bombing. Usually we work to elevate and clarify our contributors’ ideas and words — that’s our core function — but the chance to dig in and flex our own storytelling muscles is part of what we love about this gig.

So, back to Guster. Sara and I went to the show at the Uptown Theater in Providence with an audio recorder and microphone in tow. We looked a little dorky, but nobody seemed to mind. We chatted with people waiting in the merch line, gathered sound from the crowd and recorded the show right from our seats. (The band knew we were coming and gave us permission to bring a recording device.)

A few days after the concert, we interviewed Adam Gardner, one of Guster’s original members, over Zoom. Then, with all that “tape” in hand, we set about pulling together our story.

I took the lead on the radio story, while Sara took charge of the piece you read on our website. (They’re sisters, but not twins; one is made for the ear, the other to be read.) We know each others’ taste and trust each others’ judgment. We remind ourselves not to be too precious. We know how our brains work together, and apart. (We occasionally have very terrible ideas, but never worry the other will think we’re dumb.) The freedom and trust we’ve built over years allows us to hand things back and forth without compromising the integrity of the work Cog publishes or our own creativity as individuals.

During our interview with Gardner, we talked a lot about how Guster has managed their partnership all these years. Their albums contain a melodic and harmonic throughline, as if the records are in conversation with one another, but music doesn’t feel static. And somehow, you can hear that the guys aren’t bored with each other. The band continually innovates — new sounds, new instruments, different producers — while staying authentic to who they’ve always been. That’s a whole lot more difficult than it sounds. It takes hard work.

Gardner reminded me how much creativity is an alchemy of curiosity, intimacy, trust and delight — and that a creative life is even more about engagement with the process of making things than the final result. (That said, a good outcome, that pays the bills, is grand — no doubt). Not all creative partnerships are meant to last as long as Guster's, or even as long as mine and Sara's. But being able to create a lifetime’s worth of work that feels meaningful, with some of your dearest friends? We should all be so lucky.