It's about myth embodiment, not brand-building
There’s a moment in every creative life when you realise you’re not just making work, you’re making meaning. Not just sharing thoughts or skills or aesthetics, but crafting something deeper: a symbolic world. A personal myth. And when you recognise that, the shape of your output changes. The content isn’t just content. The work isn’t just the work. Everything becomes part of a larger story—a myth in motion—and you’re the one performing it.
I don’t mean “myth” as a fiction or illusion. I mean myth in the archetypal sense. A narrative structure that holds emotional, cultural, and symbolic power. Something we recognise, even if we don’t understand why. Something we feel before we articulate. Myths carry the weight of longing. They resolve tensions, give shape to chaos, and allow us to see ourselves reflected in someone else’s journey… or even in our own, more clearly. They give artists a way not just to express something, but to embody something.
In Iconicism, I write about how iconic figures are forged at the intersection of myth, media repetition, and cultural need. People don’t become icons merely by being talented or visible; they become icons when they begin to represent something bigger than themselves. And what they represent is often a myth: a symbolic story that helps a society metabolise its anxieties, contradictions, and desires.
Douglas Holt calls these identity myths, stories that function as emotional solutions to cultural tensions. A cowboy figure who restores freedom in the face of bureaucratic suffocation. A rebel star who gives people permission to rage against conformity. A wholesome leader who makes people feel stable during times of cultural fracture. These myths aren’t just created by institutions or ad agencies; they’re co-produced by audiences who are hungry for meaning.
It’s not just famous people or corporations who perform myths. Every artist, every thinker, every creative who shows up online is also in the business of myth-making, whether consciously or not. You’re already performing a myth. You already have one. The question is: are you enhancing it, or just letting it happen? Or better yet, are you even conscious of it? Because if you’re not, it may be the missing link between you and your audience truly connecting.
We live in a culture where people are encouraged to think of their public presence in terms of “brand.” Clean. Reproducible. Palatable. But branding is static. Myth is alive. It breathes and changes and deepens over time. It allows contradiction. It allows evolution. Your myth isn’t a prison, it’s a throughline. It’s the symbolic language that connects all your work. It doesn’t have to explain everything. It just has to hold it.
I think a lot of creative burnout comes from misunderstanding this. From trying to separate the parts of you that want to write, or paint, or design, or speak, from the parts of you that have to post and package and promote. But those things don’t have to be in conflict. In fact, when your myth is strong enough, they start to harmonise.
The work expresses the myth. The content performs it. They work in asynchronous motion to perpetually feed back into one another, creating a multitude of myth repetition.
Your body of work is where the myth takes shape, where it’s carved, explored and expanded. But your content is where it becomes legible to others. Where it travels. Where it enters culture. The caption, the podcast, the story you tell about how the work came to be—all of that is part of the mythology. It’s in the personal reflections, it’s in the mistakes. One of my myths is intricately wound up with my chronic illness, which seemingly had nothing to do with my actual ‘brand’ of being a writer. Yet sharing the story of my illness, surgery, and recovery has drawn people deeper into my myth. My origin story, if you like. I didn’t orchestrate this. I just did what I do best as a writer: I crafted the story, I told it through content. And over time, it began to influence how people viewed my work. It started to hold more meaning and purpose because I dared to dream and write and try hard even when my body and I were at odds.
You don’t need to have it figured out. You just need to start seeing the pattern. You just need to start sharing more of you. You are the myth; your work is not separate or ‘other’. Your work does not exist without you. Most of us already have recurring themes in our output—cycles, obsessions, images we can’t stop returning to. That’s the myth, trying to announce itself. It might be the story of exile and return. Or the search for beauty in a violent world. Or the refusal to be erased. It might be the myth of becoming—of growing teeth, of shedding skin, of daring to want more. These aren’t just artistic flourishes. They’re the raw material of your symbolic world. The more deliberately you engage with them, the more magnetic your work becomes.
Myths give structure to chaos. That’s what audiences are looking for. Not a perfect product, but a resonant world. Something to believe in. Something to feel part of. The more mythically coherent your work and your content become, the more people sense the invitation. Not just to consume, but to witness. To feel. To follow the thread.
This is what the best artists and thinkers do. They don’t just produce great work—they enrich their own mythology. They give their myth room to grow, room to rupture, room to reassemble. They don’t flatten their story for the algorithm. They amplify the contradictions. They use content not just to promote, but to deepen the spell.
So if you’re feeling scattered, if you’re struggling to make sense of your output, if the work and the content feel at odds, don’t try to fix your brand. Trace the myth. It’s already there. The story beneath the story. The meaning beneath the mechanics. Not a performance, a pattern. Not a persona, a presence. Not a brand, a myth.
July’s Creative Machina workshop is all about myth-making through content.
I’ll guide you through the theory of myths and archetypes, show you how they live inside your work and your presence, and lead a practical workshop session to help you trace your own personal myth. We’ll finish with an open Q&A.
If you’re craving a deep dive and want clarity on how to show up more cohesively online, this one’s for you.
Thursday, July 18, 11 AM AEST here on Substack. Replay will be available.
Available to paid Substack subscribers only. Paid subscribers also get access to last month’s masterclass and ongoing support in the private chat space.