#sparkchamber 073123 — Daniel Drake
What is better than a stack of pancakes? This seemingly rhetorical question has an actual answer! Pancakes created by today’s #sparkchamber guest, pancake wizard Daniel Drake. In his own words:
“I’m a 33-year-old lanky, neurodivergent nerd from St. Louis, Missouri, who went viral in 2013 for making pancake art designs as a fry cook at my day job in a greasy spoon diner. That catapulted me to a peculiar C-list fame as “the world’s first professional pancake artist.” Since then, I’ve gone on to invent and patent a novel strategy game system that doubles as an oracle — which I regularly tell fortunes with — and I now find myself wading into the waters of restaurateur life as I attempt to purchase the diner where I got my pancake art start. I am a musician, an author, a philosopher, and occultist, but more than anything I am trying my best to stay human.
“I grew up with a lot of complicated trauma; my parents were not a good fit for one another and got divorced before I can remember, which led to being ping-ponged around various living situations with various adults as custody battles came and went. My older brother resented me for soaking up the affection he’d been taught to expect, and I learned early on that it was not virtuous to have boundaries, and that I had very little control over my life. As a result, I turned inward and became extremely curious and imaginative, creating universes for my Lego heroes and stuffed animals to inhabit. As I got older, those narratives latched on to video games and D&D, places where I could immerse myself completely in another world.
“The time I spent in fantasy ended up being the most valuable part of my education, and planted so many seeds that eventually led me to where I am today. If not for the subtle linguistic choices of the people who made the Final Fantasy series, my strange card game may not have succeeded; if not for my struggling sense of virtue, I may never have started to serve pancake art to diner guests. If I’d taken a more traditional collegiate path, I’d be in a totally different, and possibly less interesting, place.
“I find I’m inspired most by cleverness. I adore deceptive simplicity; I am endlessly fascinated by the incredible creativity of a deck of cards, or a chess set, and I’m delighted when someone manages to pack hours or even years of joy into the tiniest little boxes. Games are very good at this. I’m thrilled to find increasingly elaborate ways to transform the humble pancake into something elevated and divine [not that it really needed help becoming divine], and I’m deeply moved by the stories of other human beings who found their place and excelled within it. I love giving other people the chance to influence my creative process, and I love inspiring people to recognize their own inherent power and responsibility as creators.
“I also find that I am constantly struggling against my own obsession with cleverness. I have a compulsive habit of making my creative projects too ambitious, too complex, unnecessarily elaborate and time consuming and therefore difficult to market. I have had to learn to balance this urge in order to find success in life — while never letting that part of myself go away completely. I believe that I will one day find my context.
“What I want most dearly is to make the world more lovely while I am still in it. I find I feel I am living most meaningfully when I can witness directly the impact my work has on someone, by seeing their face light up, and hearing their words of affirmation. Perhaps that is soothing a deep wound from my childhood, but it is now what I live for.”
We hear there will be a crowdfunding effort to help Daniel purchase the diner where his pancake art first started. Stay tuned! We’ll give you the link as soon as we know it.
1.] Where do ideas come from?
Some people call it “source,” some people call it “God,” sometimes I think it’s something to do with the quantum realm, but more than anything it’s just luck
2.] What is the itch you are scratching?
I want to live a meaningful life and I feel that I am living a meaningful life most strongly when I can see that my work moves people and transforms them in the same way that I am transformed by the work of others. I love participating in the dance.
3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?
I work constantly and obsessively assuming I am free to let the work be done organically. Nothing kills my flow faster than an obligation which does not excite me. I tap into flow when I am animated by an inspired idea and given the support or the space I need to pursue it without distraction. When I make a pancake art request I bring myself to flow as I work on that request [assuming the batter is the right consistency and I’m not fighting the lighting or fatigue from a night of insomnia]; but if someone asks me to “re-make” an image I’ve already made, I find it immensely more difficult to tap into flow because it no longer feels like an interesting and novel challenge. With the rest of my creative process, I can never know when a new game design or musical idea will strike, so I try to always have recording systems available and when I feel inspired, I simply let myself shift focus to follow that inspiration. It can be awfully chaotic and sometimes quite draining/unproductive, but in the long run it has served me greatly.
4.] How do you know when you are done?
It depends on the project; it’s usually when I’m sick of looking at it!
