Sound & Fury
-An exclusive excerpt from Allen’s new book-
You may be wondering if the doctor with the biometric watch was overstating the patient’s problem—or if I’m doing so now. That’s a fair question. From working with countless creative folks over many decades, I assure you I’m not.
If this glitch is infecting our creativity at a large scale, as I believe it is, then surely there’d be signs of it infecting mainstream entertainment.
And it is. Almost everywhere you look, there is a deficit of creativity.
Imagination and invention have given way to the flashy, formulaic, and forgettable. We see this trend in schools, universities, movies, music, sports, design, and even churches. While stunning works of brilliance occasionally break out, we are in an overall cycle of repetitive sameness across almost every form of creativity. The majority of new movies, music, and art are predictable and passionless. More indoctrination than imagination.
You’d think we’d be reaching new heights from all that’s come before…but instead we’re dabbling with remakes and hoping special effects, AI, and reboots of past hits will save the day. The sensory cues give the illusion that what we’re about to experience has meaning, yet most new offerings lack originality and are hollow at their core. Bleak is hailed as beauty. Dark is seen as light. Recycled is called fresh. Yet rather than grieve this loss or try to fix what’s glitching, the Hollywood machine celebrates itself with its own award shows and churns out more works that matter less.
Rather than passively engage in media or entertainment that defies God and his ways, we can simply reject it while creating from a better place—one that isn’t tainted by the ways of de-creation. If there’s no echo of the eternal in what you’re doing, why do it?
As Shakespeare’s Macbeth famously observed, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Any creation, if untethered from the Creator, will be less than it could have been. We, if disconnected from the Creator, will always be less than we could be.
(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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