It’s extremely entertaining to walk through Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Home Depot and Lowes hardware store and listen to people dream, “We want to build this onto our garage. I would love to paint on something other than a canvas. If I superglue this tiny piece to that object…can you imagine how people will react to my Thanksgiving center piece.”
Through Public Television, HGTV and the Cooking Channel, once shy yet incredibly creative souls like Bob Ross have located reason to reach through the flat screen and give a passerby hope in the field of expression.
Chef Gordon Ramsey has done more for having dinner at home with the family than the millions spent yearly teaching kids the importance of eating properly in public school.
I’m not an expert in the business of putting art on display. My job is to be the silent wolf who patiently watches a wish slip from the curves of privacy onto the lips of sharing. Shaped are the ideas of bringing creative flow to the edge of the waters so pure but because the majority of us don’t practice art…the delivery seems unnatural to the muddied corners of the circles we keep.
It took nearly 18 years to open my songwriting musical life to my wife. It’s always been there! I still have cassette tapes of the high school band in 1977 and faded colored pictures of a solo adventure with a three string poor mans guitar cuddling up to my arm pit at the age of six or seven.
At 48 the volume became too loud to hear anything else. By giving myself permission to explore, the mountains seemed to fade until the day a door refused to open; I can still feel the pressure of my heart taking a sledge hammer and wreaking havoc on the rib cage…it was time to share the dream with the person wearing the ring.
It's all too easy to go squeaky clean silent when around those we choose to love. I bet if we learned to share our creative secrets mroe there would be less divorce.
A few weeks ago I spent time with a fellow martial artist at a new gym; he was brilliantly excited about getting the opportunity to practice each lesson taught in a place built especially for raised heart rates and walls that could withstand the beating from vocal chords trained to release powerful bursts of energy. The student of Kenpo asked, “Where do you find the confidence to display your forms in a place where those who don’t do martial arts tend to point laugh and stare?”
I was shocked, my fears weren’t alone, “Confidence? I’m horrified to break out in a black belt form in front of people that have no clue what I’m doing. I feel like a white belt in a world oversaturated by Simon Cowell wanna be’s. I never let go of the fear. The only reason why you saw this was because if I stop doing the forms the inner lining of my core energy will disappear leaving each dream with no reason to want to leave my house.”
It’s not difficult to be an artist or someone who’s creative. Difficulty sets in when the rest of you decides it’s bored.
Practice makes better practice. Mistakes are required to fine tune the thin lines that make up the eyes of the world you’ve been introduced to. But nothing silences a person faster than an expert.
Instantly the human mind turns off the seemingly experienced. I’ve always believed the world’s greatest hitter in baseball Ted Williams couldn’t teach his DNA clone how to put a ball over the wall. Sure it’s a memorible experience to learn for a while but sudden quick twists in the hands of time reveals to the student billions of doors of other opportunities because its hatefully more difficult to please the instructor than it is to have fun.
2002 one belt shy of becoming a black belt in Karate due to the economic conditions my Sensei elected to leave the circle. A green belt stood up and said, “I’ll teach us from here.” Now you know how I got into Tae Kwon Do. My reasons for departure in 2010 has nothing to do with the Master and everything to do with the student wanting a stronger spiritual martial arts life. It is the foot, fist, way…and my journey at the point of testing for 3rd degree is to seek the message and not the destruction. They don’t award students with higher belts for seeking a path that changes another human’s life. The expert no longer believed in the vision handed to me.
I love making mistakes! A true artist learns how to better hide them on a canvas. In time, those who study the display can easily see why the yellow paint in the corner was spread into place…to seize control of the wandering imagination so that you didn’t recognize the facial hair on the balding man, it didn’t seem out of line with the story a painting shares.
During a crazy stupid day of writing daily pages I spilled ink on the books I keep…it took the shape of the perfect wine glass. Rather than scream, holler and pitch a fit the size of Alaska, the imagination was instantly intrigued by the presence of something I’d never seen; Mont Blanc ink from an ugly thin bottle had the capability of moving me in a way that words couldn’t explain.
This unexpected act from the universe arrived three days after I had experienced a horrible reading at a major book store where the writing artists present were restless with their thoughts and vowed to be published or to give it all up now. Before Nook, Kindle and the popularity of the World Wide Web…we had writing circles of poets, songwriters, long form storytellers and people who wandered in because it’s pretty damn cool to be snoopy sometimes.
I’d say nearly 90% of those who attended were closet writers that trusted no one not even themselves. The act of displaying their creation was a painful chore but through some invisible chord it had become their vow to publish or go silent. We sat inside the rows of books watching as potential clients walked by but rarely if ever did anyone purchase the subjects they where writing.
Its important to know that I never acted as the expert nor do I when students from Broadcasting schools arrive to learn more. Before anything begins I find no fear in sharing with them, “It’s my goal to point out the reality of what you seek…it will become your decision to stay or leave.”
Art is borrowed. From building, planting, painting, writing, speaking to dancing…it arrives in the middle of a whistle and keeps stealing your breath until one morning you wake up and there’s silence. What many don’t realize is that creative flow is grown in circles. Rather than generate the energy to formulate a block…listen to the heart that beat so loudly when something new arrived. Its not that it became tired of making mistakes or feared the next judge in line fully capable of inviting more tears than the last.
Art is borrowed. Live it for a while then shake hands and let it go. Trust me…it will return more educated about the world to which you live within.
That’s not an expert sharing those views…if you look down at my aging feet…we’re wearing the same shoes.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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