Mashups
-An exclusive excerpt from Allen’s new book-
The next time you’re at a fast food drive-through, notice how the vast menu offerings all seem to be made from the same few ingredients, just recombined and renamed. There’s the same trend in music–with songs that are an indistinguishable fusion of country, pop, rap, and jazz. The musical categories are blurring as everyone does everything. Partially.
The grocery aisles fare no better. We have cereals named after candy bars named after energy drinks named after movie stars. It’s no longer clear whether you’re buying pancakes with candy flavors or a candy bar that’s pancake flavor. Probably because it’s all artificially made from the same giant mashup factory.
Movies are following the same mashup script. They try to appeal to everyone by being a little bit of everything. Studios and scripts fuse their characters together into shows that are part adventure, part romance, part parody, part drama, part horror, part comedy. Nothing looks real. No emotion is believable. Every twist is expected. It’s a frenetic mess, jerking the viewer between ever-changing moods and genres every few minutes with all the skill of a fifteen-year-old learning to drive a stick shift.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t need a little bit of everything in everything. We need something that matters.
My hope for change isn’t with those in control now. They seem content to keep filling the pipeline with more of the same. My hope is with you and like-minded kindred spirits who God is raising up to create from a renewed mind, heart, and imagination.
Unfortunately, something has exponentially accelerated this downward descent. Ironically, it’s being heralded as the greatest creative breakthrough of all time.
As you might suspect, it’s having the opposite effect.
(From The Creativity Glitch: How to Stop Being Stuck, Find Your Groove, & Create with God. Copyright © 2026 Allen Arnold.)
This reading was crafted to encourage your pursuit of story and creativity with God. Your donation makes this crowd-funded initiative possible. You can support it via PAYPAL (or by check to Allen Arnold at PO Box 62841, Colorado Springs, CO 80962).
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