“Balloon with a View” This balloon launched with ours. |
“Amish Auto” |
For the Hungry Artist
“Balloon with a View” This balloon launched with ours. |
“Amish Auto” |
As creatives, we all have idiosyncrasies. I’d like to know your creative quirks that play into your art and creative process. And by ‘your art,’ I mean: getting the kids ready for bed, conducting a non-boring sales meeting at work, making a meal, or designing a dream from concept to fruition.We’re all artists.
I’ll start the ball rolling before you divulge your foibles.
On the cusp of writing this list, I’ll just say this: if you could see me, you’d describe the look on my face as chagrined. (I had to look ‘chagrined’ up to make sure I was using it correctly. Geek-factor.)
Weird music tastes. My 5 most recent iTunes downloads:
Enough of my quirks.
While training as an actor, our troupe garnered loads of great instruction from John Barton’s video series “Playing Shakespeare.” Actors such as Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, and Patrick Stewart played the text wonderfully, showing us newbies how it’s to be done. Our English accents would have to come later. (Much later. Even now, my English friends say my faccent (fake/accent) boasts a Mike Myers feel. Ah well.)
One thing I took away from Barton’s teaching is this: the word “time” is the most important word in Shakespeare. I’ve said that word differently for the past 15 years because of Barton’s instruction.
Time.
The word itself is weighted with permanence and sobriety. It is not a flippant word.
Time.
The word is a gift, or a curse, depending on one’s vantage point.
Time.
We must make time. We must guard this precious resource. We must take the time we have been given and use it doing what we love: creating.
Yes, we can come up with a great idea and have all the freedom in the world, but if we don’t make time, our creative process stops short for a week. A month. A few years. Then decades. Then…. a lifetime.
Make. Time.
Our mantra:
We have all the time we need and more. We will spend our time doing the things we were created to do. We will not settle for excuses. We will not blame our schedule, our friends, our families, our jobs. We will use our time to create and share our expressions. Our creativity is a God-given expression that brings vibrant life to ourselves and to those with whom we share our creativity.
In Steve Jobs’ much quoted 2005 Stanford Commencement speech:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
“Freedom” by Zenos Frudakis |
Zenos Frudakis’s vision for his sculpture “Freedom,” now roaming the streets of Philadelphia:
I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of struggling to break free. This sculpture is about the struggle for achievement of freedom through the creative process.
Defining ‘freedom’ would be a daunting task even for Webster… we’ll not even bother looking it up. Instead, we’ll ask ourselves a few questions in regards to the Frudakis sculpture.
I have to first want freedom in order to put in the word to get freedom. We must define creative freedom for ourselves, otherwise it’s someone else’s freedom… and that’s not freedom at all.
So if we all desire creative freedom, what is holding us back?
Leave a comment below and we’ll converse on it a bit.
I come alive.
Last week, an executive of a multi-million dollar company asked me for some ideas for his business. A new plan emerges from the brainstorming session.
I come alive.
I sit down to a blank computer screen to write a silly little story using a kit called The Writer’s Toolbox.
I come alive.
Are you the same way? Do you love coming up with new ideas, fresh perspectives, and that movie-plot twist on a hum-drum, same-story approach to life and business that put’s you on a thrill ride at Six Flags?
If you’re reading this you are. There’s a word for idea generation: ideation. (Spell check just told me that word doesn’t exist. You’re behind the times Mr. Spell Check.)
As creatives, ideation is the starting point, the spring board, the appetizer to sharing ourselves, via our creative expressions, with the world.
A bit of boldness: that unbirthed idea, the one that you have that just needs to be unearthed, may change the your home. Your community. Heck, it may change the entire world. That is why it is so imperative to get your idea out.
It must be shared.
What if…
It all starts with that idea. We’ll chat about part two and part three of this creative fuel process later this week. Hint: part two doesn’t involve fear. Just sayin’.
What change can you bring today with your gift of creativity? To your kids, your business, your spouse?
And a day turns into a month, then a year, then a decade, and before we know it, that nasty vow keeps us from our do-over. It took Rosanne Barr about 20 years.
Why not begin your do-over now–before this week turns into a month, then a year, then a ‘never?’
Time to make a new vow. . . and smash that other one to bits while singing “oh say can you see…”
One of the participants just ate 37 mini doughnuts. Thirty. Seven. Doughnuts. That’s where the “I’ll try” willpower gets us–nowhere.
As creatives, let’s harpoon the “I’ll try” from our vocabulary and our mindset.
I’ve had a number of readers mention the encouragement they get from these posts. Fine folks who’ve hung up the paintbrushes, the pen and paper, the auditions etc. As they say in High School Musical, “We’re All in this Together.” I’m so sorry I just wrote that last sentence. My apologies.
If I’m honest with myself, I have to spear the “I’ll try” every time I seek to ideate and create. That’s why I’m writing this right now. I will write. I will contribute. I will inspire.
No more “I’ll try.”
I will. I can. I have something to share. I can bring a change. My work comes to good.
A heck of a lot different than “I’ll try.”
Why do you think we like to say “I’ll try?” What’s your new mantra to replace your “I’ll try?”
To write, create, or ideate I’ll often need to get away. Do you ever feel this way?
So, off to the coffee shop I go. My favorite writing nook vacant, I now inhabit this space:
Luckily I’d already started a blog post about short attention span disorder (SASD). I don’t know if it exists in the medical books, but I know it exists whenever my creative juices get flowing. It’s as if our subconscious doesn’t want us to contribute and share our gifts and talents. Could this be true?
Not for us it’s not. Relinquish Your ADD/OCDemon. Say ‘yes’ to focus and ‘no’ to distraction.
What are we looking for in the distractions and false accomplishments anyway? The main reason we run from our ideas is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of looking foolish. Fear of risk.
A challenge:
1. Take ten minutes to write out that idea you’ve been working on for work, home, or school. Turn the iPhone off. No distractions.
Example: I want to think of a new way to start the meeting at work, the class at school, or the decorating project at home.
2. Write out at least three entirely different ways you could accomplish your idea. Write out the really dumb ideas too. Nothing is off limits.
3. Pick one from the three, do it, and drop me a note to tell me how it went!
What ideas do you have that you need to share today?
The ear, nose, and throat doctor-guy informed my talking parts that they got to get the vacation they wanted: two weeks of no talking while they rested and I learned to communicate with no phonation. It was odd being at the checkout in Wal-Mart, trying to communicate with the cashier that (using gestures and read-my-lips word-mouthing) “I’m not talking.” Like an English-speaking American in a foreign land, I was treated like a non-native right there in my local Wal-Mart. She proceeded to talk louder and slower, assuming I was deaf or didn’t speak Wal-Mart-ese.
As creatives, haven’t we all been there?
We’re standing at the checkout line in life with insights and ideas we want to share, yet we can’t seem to find our voice. We stumble around, make a few mistakes, and start to feel emotionally flooded. We don’t often know how to get our creations into the world.
Do I blog? Should I tweet more? What about making a video? I gotta get an agent…
Welcome to the land of Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed-land takes us on a journey similar to a roller coaster ride: quick thrills, getting nowhere, back to where we began, no real progress.
Too many choices often leads to no choice at all. I think the glory of all this social media stuff is that we have multiple ways to express our ideas, rants, and opinions. At times, our intense desire to express them amounts to sitting in front of a television as one show bleeds into another; we watch other people’s handiwork rather than creating our own.
If you’re reading this, you are a creative. You have something to express. The only way to so it is to dive in. Right now.
Make all the mistakes you want. And keep making them. Maybe your blog posts will stink. Maybe your next ten auditions will get you nothing but rejection. Maybe your painting will never be in a gallery.
But what if your writing didn’t stink, you got the job, and your art changed how someone saw the world? What if you moved forward? What if you got off that roller coaster and took a step in a new direction? What if your movement created momentum?
“Half of the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” Thank you Mr. Robert Frost.
What do you have to share with someone today? How are you going to express it?
The sky is not the limit.