Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Tuning in while getting others to tune out...

Computers…big white towers with long grey chords that zip, zap and curve around the strangest corners, desktop, laptop, handheld, palm and under the front seat of your car because those four wheels need to keep going too.

Remember in high school when taking computer class required students to study punch cards and know more than general math? The only thing tiny during those days was a solar powered calculator. Oh look! If I put these numbers side by side and turn the electronic device upside down…it spells a word!


Computers were once the size of a city block and actors like Kurt Russell played with the future by starring in The Computer That Wore Tennis Shoes. The idea of American culture wrapping its wants and needs around something that thinks was so 2001 Space Odyssey. The Jettson’s and Star Trek featured awesome devices that could beam you up, down, around or generate food or Tribbles at the push of a button.


I wanted one of these things!


It wasn’t until the mid-1980’s that I realized giant booster rockets may push NASA scientists out and away from of our century old pollution makers but once up there…it’s ultimately the computer that keeps them moving forward. Computers operate cameras in the world of television and radio no longer plays with records or CD’s…before I speak, the computer gets to listen first.


With so much being performed by manmade devices that can easily crash…why can’t the brilliant minds of Apple and Microsoft methodize a memory collector that keeps wandering eyes from penetrating what you’re typing without making it look like you’re keeping a secret from the Mafia?


I suffer from a horrible disease called, “Stop looking over my shoulder!” In the old days, if you got too close to my stepfather Joe’s business, he’d haul off and wipe your nose completely off the mug shot.

Until Bill Gates crafted the PC, the idea of standing over someone while writing just didn’t happen. Mom would sit in the kitchen for hours typing away on that seriously old non-electric typewriter. Nobody in the family felt it was their daily mission to sneak a peak.


I changed when Tony Swearingine and a few radio station program directors walked onto my path of creative flow. I learned from one guy, “When you’re in my building and it affects what I’m trying to present to thousands of people who have the power to instantly change the dial, I will stand so close I become a second skin. Besides, if you truly were a professional you’d tune me out.”


Computers don’t make it easy for tune out or totally ignore. I expand my screen to 150% with number 18 font. A trick I learned while preparing for over 360 DARE graduation speeches where my aging eyes couldn’t be seen squinting at normal size twelve lettering. When I write, Paul Shadt on 969 The Kat can see my thoughts and he’s across the hall in a completely different room.


So what happens when other people’s visions suddenly become locked on your destination? What is the morally correct method of proper conduct? I went straight to my guru Anne Marie Sabbath whose business manners lean hard on making the obvious the obvious, “When you see someone approaching…click save and close the program.”


Wait! Talk about feeling like an idiot or someone who’s up to no good. The very second I rush to crank down the thought keeper…the message being sent is, “Ohhhhhh are you writing about me? Are you doing something that's going to hurt me? Must be top secret, curiosity always kills the cat.”


I’d love to see the numbers on our nations divorce rate based on the amount of trust completely destroyed because what’s being written has nothing to do with the one intruding.


I write books. My grammar and punctuation aren’t perfectly edited. I abide by the rules designed by Julia Cameron who says, “Your job is to write not edit. Get the words out of your head or take them silently to your coffin”


As a writer, one finds more editors on the support staff than physical minds that follow the storyline. Writing radio and television commercials is no different…this mind, body and soul helps others reach a destination of success not only for them but their clients and getting there requires not one but an entire team to stand behind me to edit, edit, edit a thirty or sixty second commercial.


To follow the measurements of play as set by Anne Marie I’m literally being unprofessional by not putting focus on tuning out the intruder. She goes on to say, “Divert the eyes of the visitor away from your screen and get them locked on you. Stand up and talk directly to them.”


I get it…give their imagination something to do other than nose around your place of mental play.


I spent nearly four years on the Barnes and Nobel writing tour discussing better methods to bring out the writer giving him or her not only an inner voice but face. The number one complaint from poets, short story creators, long form or motivation, “I instantly shut down when my spouse of family member walks into the room.”


Judgment…you don’t like it, they don’t like it and chances are your boss can’t stand it either. I honestly believe we’d be in space flying incredibly cool flying saucers today if computers screens weren’t so easy to read. But no…this constant attraction to looking over someone’s shoulder has silenced our will and way to exercise our full right to create.


I once had a horrible fear of writing in my daily journals at home so I took the books to work where a boss unlocked my desk and read them. I would’ve loved to have put a curse on the pages but remember the gold rule of Native American studies, “Black magic cannot be performed unless the curse has been endured by you first or you’ll never know what the person is going through.” Um…ok…gonna take the books back home. While jumping off a ferry on the Puget Sound near Victoria, BC the boarder patrol took my daily writing and spent an hour reading it. You’d question me too! I have long hair and look like a Montanan who happens to have a Carolina address….total terrorist here baby. My first published book sells more copies in India and Spain than America and it’s straight from my daily writing.


I don’t want to write, “Get over it!” I want you to be extremely creative on that computer screen while letting you know what's been set free no longer belongs to you the moment it becomes public. Peter Max was very firm in explaining to me, “It now rests in the hands of the world.”


arroecollins@clearchannel.com

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