I’ve always been a creator. Not necessarily by profession, but by compulsion, drawn to giving form to thoughts, feelings, and inner visions. Over the years, I’ve come to understand that, for me, the act of creating sits across three distinct but interrelated domains:
Inner Expression – The raw, personal impulse to make something that reflects my inner world.
Shared Inner Expression – The desire to craft something others can experience, so they too might feel, see, or understand what I do.
Means to an End – Creating for functional reasons, typically driven by external demands, often in service of a client, a brief, or a professional outcome.
These domains don’t always overlap, though they can. But this reflection isn’t about reconciling them; it’s about the power to create, and how that power has evolved—especially now, in the age of AI.
1 - The Joy of Creating for Its Own Sake
At the heart of inner expression is joy. Not the joy of completion or applause, but the quiet satisfaction of being in the flow; of crafting something for no one but myself. Whether it’s recording a song, mixing a track, framing a photograph, or tweaking the lighting, these moments, even when the final output never sees the light of day, are meaningful in themselves.
In fact, I’ve re-recorded and remixed some songs of mine over and over for years. Not because I’m chasing perfection, but because the process itself is fulfilling. These acts of performance and refinement are more like rituals; an ongoing dialogue between self and sound. I don’t need an audience for it to matter.
2 - Creating for Others: The Need for Fidelity
Then there’s the second domain: shared expression. This is where the act of creating becomes communicative. It’s no longer just about what I feel. It’s about whether someone else can feel it too.
Here, quality becomes essential. It’s not enough to make something; it has to translate. The challenge is fidelity: how closely does the output match the internal vision? In these moments, I’m open to collaboration. I don’t need to be the one who “makes” it, as long as I get to be the one who knows when it’s right.
That’s why I’ve worked with producers and engineers who help bring my ideas to life. My satisfaction doesn’t come from laying every chord or adjusting every level. It comes from seeing the essence of the idea captured and made tangible. That’s true for music, and it’s equally true for a well-produced explainer video, a refined piece of thought leadership, or a workshop that lands just right with its audience.
3 - Creation as Craft: When It’s a Means to an End
The third domain, creating as a means to an end, is one I’ve come to value deeply over time. This is where creativity meets function. The work is shaped by constraints, time, budget, stakeholders, or business outcomes, and yet, within those constraints lies an opportunity for precision, clarity, and meaningful impact.
In my consulting work, this often involves designing learning solutions that enhance technical capabilities or leadership excellence; not just providing content, but creating immersive experiences that guide people from awareness to action. It also includes shaping strategy documents and presentations that help leaders clearly see their priorities and confidently align others behind them with energy.
It also shows up in the language of influence; emails, messages, and communications that don’t just inform, but educate, subtly shifting a perspective, inviting a decision, or opening space for a new possibility. These aren’t just words; they’re instruments of change, designed with intention.
And still, the sound and visual dimensions remain. Sometimes it’s a voiceover that brings a leadership message to life. Sometimes it’s a visual layout that turns abstract strategy into a navigable path. Or a keynote track, mixed just right, that underscores an idea I want to land in a room. These creative expressions, whether musical, visual, or strategic, are all part of the same engine: using creation to help people feel, understand, and move.
This kind of work may not always carry my artistic fingerprint, but it absolutely carries my intent. And when it resonates, when it works, that too is deeply satisfying.
Enter AI: A New Creative Era
This is where AI tools have profoundly expanded my creative life. With tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Suno, and Replit, I’ve gained an entirely new way to explore, refine, and share the ideas that have lived in me for years; sometimes decades.
For example, I have a collection of over 50 songs I wrote more than 10 years ago. I’ve always wanted to reimagine and share them, but my limitations, technical, financial, and time, often got in the way. I worked with a producer friend in Nigeria to reimagine nine of them, and another in Malaysia for three more. But recently, I tried something new: I used Suno, an AI music generation tool, to explore alternative arrangements and versions of the songs I hadn’t yet revisited.
To my surprise, these AI-generated covers helped me clarify what I liked, what I didn’t, and what the music could be. It was no longer a vague sound in my head or a frustrated MIDI demo; it was a concrete audio sketch that would help me guide vocalists and musicians more clearly and more creatively.
And it’s not just music or writing. With Gemini, I can quickly test narratives, prototype strategy blueprints, or visualize a multi-stage learning journey. Using Replit with its AI-powered vibe programming, I’ve rapidly built interactive tools and micro-platforms—things I used to only imagine but never had the capacity to realize.
Even in writing, AI acts as a thought partner, taking half-formed fragments and helping me shape them into essays, scripts, or client-facing communications. Not because AI writes for me, but because it helps me say what I mean with more clarity and less friction.
From Tools to Creative Partners
I remember how excited I felt when I first discovered chord-based accompaniment on Yamaha or Casio keyboards. With a single key or triad, I could trigger a band behind me, bass, drums, and harmonies. It felt magical.
That’s how these AI tools feel now. Except this time, they don’t just help me make sound, they help me make sense. From strategic roadmaps to song demos, coaching tools to culture frameworks, what once took weeks of grinding now takes days of creative flow.
What’s changed isn’t just the quality of what I can produce; it’s the intimacy with which my ideas can travel from my mind to someone else’s ears, eyes, or actions. The barrier of skill, time, or explanation is lower now. My ability to express and connect is higher.
Creation is Still Personal
Of course, anyone can prompt a tool and generate something. But for me, it’s never just about output. It’s about intention. The magic lies in the connection between what I’m trying to create and what the tool helps me achieve. The more aligned the output is with my vision, the more empowered I feel, not as a technician, but as a creator.
That’s the real gift of this age: not just the ability to create faster, but the ability to create truer; to finally bring forth expressions that otherwise may have remained trapped inside or never fully realized.
An Invitation
If you’ve ever wrestled with the distance between your ideas and your ability to express them, I invite you to explore what’s now possible.
I built my new dehumobickersteth.com site using Replit along with a few developmental solutions that I plan to introduce in the coming months. Also, on this truthbenaked.com site, I have projects enabled by Suno and the link below leads to a playlist of a few of my songs re-produced and performed with Suno, each one a step closer to the inner world I’ve long wanted to share. They’re not final, but they’re real. And most importantly, they are my expressions.
