Art
Scream.
[caption id=“attachment_1233” align=“aligncenter” width=“210”]
Dam your judgements.
To hell with your hate.
Your heaven is hell.
Fuck your faith.
Fuck your god.
Fuck you.
Fuck.
. . .
.[/caption]
Write Right Rite
Here is a method for writing right, made into a rite.
Schedule a time to write every day.
Make the time short, so that it is easy to commit to. For me, fifteen minutes is good.
Then, at that time, sit down and write.
If you don’t know what to write, think about what you want to write.
If you know what you want to write, think about what you want to say.
If the words don’t come, simply sit and stare at the blank page. For every one of those scheduled minutes.
When the words come, write them. Don’t edit. Don’t correct. Just pour them onto the page.
You can always go back and edit them before you hit the publish button. And in today’s digital age, you can even fix errors post-publication.
The idea is to get comfortable with writing at a regular time.
Get comfortable with creating.
Get comfortable with that glaringly white page.
Make the practice into a rite to help you write right.
WRONG
The assignment was at once simple and terrifying. Write a story.
“What type of story?” the boy asked.
“Any,” said the teacher.
“What do I write about?” he pondered out loud.
“Whatever you would like,” she responded.
With that, the barriers to creativity were shattered.
He found some looseleaf sheets of paper. Ones that had the red line indicating the margin, with blue lines dividing the vast white space of the page.
He found his favorite pen. At his point, he preferred blue ink.
Then the depth of the challenge dug into his young heart. Without rules, with no restraints, what would he write? He wanted to write something that mattered. Something that readers could learn from. Words that would make a difference. A story of significance.
Nothing came.
The vast wasteland of white space laughed at him.
Days passed. He took to reading his comic books for consolation. Those stories were great, but he wanted something deeper. He had been on a journey with Bruce Banner. He saw the challenge of the Hulk, and he drew inspiration from it.
The name hit him as hard as the Hulk would.
He took out one of the sheets and titled it, “The Abomination.”
It was a word that he had heard once. The rhythm of the letters spoke to him. This would tell the reader that this story was important.
The words came. The story unfolded. A scientist was driven. He felt that the best way to create peace was to wield a power that would overwhelm all that opposed it. When he showed others his formula, they laughed at him. He used it on himself, and he changed. He grew to a massive size. His strength was beyond any man. He could destroy tanks with a swipe of his arm. Nuclear bombs didn’t faze him. He went from country to country, destroying all of their weaponry.
Instead of garnering peace, he inspired fear. Armies gathered to defeat him. They failed. Nations fought him. They perished. He had become the unbeatable foe. His anger destroyed all. It left him as the sole surviver of humanity, isolated on what remained of his planet. He had found peace, at he price of everything else.
Now this was a story. There was meaning. Words that had substance. Sentences that moved him, as a writer and as a reader. Unbridled creativity poured from his heart, through his pen, onto the page. His passion for writing was unleashed. His ability to tell a story that made a difference, had been set free.
He signed his his name at the end, and handed in the assignment just before the deadline.
He waited for a grade. None came. Others had received their stories back with red letters scrawled on them. Mostly “C’s,” with a few “B’s” and a rare “A.” Plusses and minuses accentuated their fate.
He saw his mother in the hall. She had been called in.
After the students had left, the teacher spoke with his mother, in front of him. She held up the story, looked at him, and declared that there was something “wrong.” Not with the story. With him. The teacher said that he needed “help.” No discussion of why. No reason was stated. The deepest wounds are often caused without reason.
The word reverberated to his core.
It chilled his bones.
It froze his heart.
“WRONG.”
His creativity had been judged, juried and executed in one word.
He stopped writing. His stories were isolated on a planet the size of his heart. A planet that no one visited, including himself.
His pen had been drained of ink, and was lost. Paper was folded into airplanes or used as spitballs. The battlefield of stories had been defeated by five simple letters.
Five decades later, different letters arrived.
These bring healing in place of destruction.
Hope instead of hate.
Peace in place of war.
“Time.”
Time heals. Pain becomes an illusion. New perspectives are seen. Pens are found. Scars evolve into armor. Ink is replenished. Passion is unfettered. Creativity is born anew. Words flow into stories and the hero’s journeys continue.
Thank you dear reader, for joining my on my journeys. I hope my words make a positive difference in your life.
You, yes, you…
…do you value your privacy?
I do.
Quite frankly, there are things that I love that I don’t want anyone to know about. I don’t want you to know how I dance to Katy Perry’s music. Or how I cry when I sing along to “The One That Got Away” with her. Or how she lights up my heart with “Firework.”
It’s none of your business.
But the NSA wants to know. They want to know everything. This isn’t right. I don’t want to be spied on. I want to be free. Free to express myself. Free to express my art. Free to live my life.
From first hand experience, I know how painful it is to have others observe you with a judgmental eye. And if your actions, style, voice and art are a bit too different from their personal preferences, ridicule follows. And it hurts. It is a hurt that kills creativity. A hurt that wounds an artistic soul.
On February 11th, there is a movement. A movement to let our voices be heard. Let congress know that the NSA has went to far. If you care about freedom, add your voice. If enough of us speak from our hearts, they can’t ignore us.
Visit TheDayWeFightBack.org for more information on how to take action.
World War Three started...
…when the priests insisted
on their innocence.
Although bloody and long,
the world is now free
of organized religion.
Is magic an art?
Is magic an art? Some of the world’s finest performers and creators discuss magic as an art form.
Deshi Basara!
I heard about Hans Zimmer’s request to record a chant for the Dark Knight Rises movie. The premise was that Hans wanted to create a chant with thousands of voices layered on thousands more—all chanting in unison:
Deshi!
Basara!
Deshi! Deshi!
Basara! Basara!
I think Hans and Nolan have created real art with their movies. So as I practiced the chant, I put all of my energy, my passion, my heart into it. I invested all that I was into those words. For a moment, I was the chant.
And then the moment became a memory, en experience filed away in a cerebral drawer, in a distant mental cabinet.
Many months later, I was sitting in the theatre of lights and shadows, viewing the film. As the lights and shadows danced on the screen, the mental cabinet shook.
The memory flooded back into my consciousness. The energy of the chant flowed through my body.
As I watched our protagonist fight his fears, I joined him in his journey.
As his courage and determination grew, so did mine.
As he jumped, I leaped.
We were one in facing fear head on.
The experience was visceral. It was personal. It was transformational.
I felt it in my body, in my bones, in my heart. It was like no other cinematic experience that I have ever felt.
Beyond that moment, I now have powerful words to fuel an inner fire; a mantra to fight fears with; a chant to crush any challenge:
Deshi Basara!
Deshi Basara!
Deh-Shay Bah-Sah-Rah!
Gearbox Comic
At Jeff Goldsmith’s movie Q&A tonight, I had the pleasure of meeting Mark Steger.
Mark is amazing. If you saw Tool’s Schism video, Mark is unforgetable. His body is from another reality, and he moves with a precision only matched by Tool’s music.
Mark is working on a online comic named Gearbox. Check it out here.
