There’s an excellent quote from Gandhi: Be The Change you Want to See in the World. Recently I decided to change this up for personal reasons, temporarily, to: Be the Change you want to See in I.
A little less selfless than Gandhi’s original intent, but bear with me. Want to change your life? Become something/someone bigger or better than you feel you are? Pretend that you’re that person already, and do what they would do. Muhammad Ali said: “To Be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.” And he did that: he talked like he was the best (“I am the Greatest!”), he trained like he was the best…pretty soon: He was the best! If you BEHAVE as if you are the best at something – you do the actions that the BEST would do – you will become the best. (All right, in all honesty, you might not become the BEST, but you’ll get better.) I want to be a writer, and make my living by creating stories. Right now I don’t. So what did I do? I thought about (and read about) the people who DO make their livings creatively. What’s one thing they all do? Create every single day. (I mean, like it’s their job!) So here’s my experiment: I fired myself from my “real job.” And I gave myself the job of creator. I’ve got about 6 months to live without a paying gig, before I’m in trouble. I’m creating every day – like it’s my job. And I’m selling it every day, hustling, like it’s my job. Because making up stories is one thing, but you’ve got to get those stories into the hands of someone who can do something about it. So that’s what I’m doing: BEING the change I want to see in myself. The hope is that if I do this long and hard enough, I’ll find someone else to pay me for it. And even if I don’t succeed in 6 months, I’ll probably be closer. This blog will chronicle that experiment. Welcome.
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I work at a theatre and this summer a production of RENT came thru by a great local company called Dream Out Loud. As part of their set design they had a graffiti wall: black base with whites, pinks, browns, green and blue slashes all over, and red AIDS ribbons added throughout the production. When they were moving out they had all this leftover paint from the Graf wall and didn’t want to take it all, so they asked if we wanted to keep it. I don’t know if WE did, but I did. They were all soft pastels: pink, green, yellow, blue. Tones and hues of those that are much softer and lighter than anything else I had. I got very excited and brought out one of my bigger canvases. I started with the yellow, with which I did this simple swirly swirl, tapering to a small pod near the center, almost like a rose bud. Then I filled in some other space with the green – another swirl complementing the yellow. Then a soft pink swirl around both of those. I took some deeper paints of the same colors: a brighter yellow, a dark blue, and added a few shadows and outlines for texture. I really liked it but wasn’t sure if it was done. I showed it to DMS and she said “Really? A vagina?”
So I wasn’t done. Essentially that first draft was what you see now, but with none of the black. Where the black is, about 50% of that was just white canvas. Another 25% was the original green, yellow or pink, which I blacked over. And the last 25% was the dark blue, which I really didn’t like once I’d added the black. All in all I love the start contrast of that black with the much softer colors. I think its rich. So that’s how you make something NOT a vagina. Add black. I mean, really? Vagina? You go there? Sure it’s a fun series of swirly shapes, and a vagina is ALSO a fun series of swirly shapes… But, really? My name is John and I do a lot of things:
- I wright plays (and sometimes direct them) - I paint and take photos - I write and record music - I bake like your mother's god. - I cook - I grow vegetables. - I craft and make puppets - I'm handy around the house (I once built a bed. A BED!) Frankly I'm a dog-gammed Reconnaissance Man. I'm a creator in Boston, trying my derndest to make a living with my art, because frankly I've never enjoyed doing anything else. This blog is going to talk about all those things I do, how and why I do them, what excites me and scares me, and what I'm doing next to make it work. I hope you'll check in. I hope you'll talk back to me. Maybe we can help or inspire each other. So question of the day: What inspired you today? Be well. JRex |