Royce Ave

 

Featured image: Royce Ave

When I was six, I lived on a street named Royce Ave. My family had a small red house with a front porch and a garden in the back of strawberries. There was a little white fence around our yard. One of my most memorable memories of the house on Royce Ave was the sidewalk that went from one end of the block to the other end and around the backside to where our little red house was.

I learned to roller skate when I was six and those magical wheels on my feet took me lickety split down to my friend Sally’s house and back. I didn’t have a bike back then. For the longest time I couldn’t go beyond Sally’s house and Sally’s mom always knew when I was coming. Pretty soon my roller-skating territory went to the end of the block and back. The sidewalk wasn’t all smooth back then – there was a huge bump in the sidewalk where the one block heaved. I had to be careful and sort of hop over the bump. I learned that the hard way when I fell and really scratched up my knees and broke my nose. There were no knee pads or helmets back then.
The glory of moving quickly and getting down to Sally’s house and eventually around the entire block, and the liberty and freedom I felt was wonderful.

The Individual: America's Heart & Soul

 Featured image: Soulful Jazz Singer

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”

“Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you can not help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

"I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care about money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. I claim credit for nothing. A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future."  Albert Einstein

The Individual: Americas Heart & Soul

Individualism, the rights of people, all people is a sovereign right in the United States.  The creative process belongs to a single individual creator. 

We all learn from others that have created before us.  We are taught how to think and how to create from those who have come before us. We exchange and intermingle our creative ideas with theirs.

No one can teach another how to be themself or how to think for themselves.  Even with all of the exchanges that have happened, it is still only the individual that can do that.  Otherwise, they are not unique and authentic. They would be working with another’s spirit and another’s soul, not their own. 

It is also extremely difficult if one is using the thinking of another to see individuals, unique, authentic individuals and their inalienable individual rights. Hence, my extreme caution when I see another that is not thinking for themselves but using the thoughts and thinking of another.  

Sometimes it is hard to find one’s unique self and soul.  But,  thinking on your own and not thinking the way that another thinks is what it takes. That’s why it is hard.  Sometimes, it is also hard to see America because so many people are using the thoughts, spirits, and energies of others and not their own. 

The Spider Web

 Featured image: The Spider Web

In the corner of the porch attached to the cabin there is a huge gloriously, delicately designed spider web. The web’s design is only visible because the sun is high, lighting its delicate threads.

It’s interesting to think of webs that are created in real life. It is hard like the spider web when it isn’t highlighted by the direct sunlight to avoid them. We become trapped by them, like the spider’s captives. Wonderfully, most of the time we can free ourselves and try not to fall in to the same trap again.

Art Triggers Potential

 Featured image: Sunset at the Lake

Art is beneficial to the heart, mind and soul. How does this “beneficial-ness” happen? There are many perspectives on how beneficial-ness is accomplished. I wrote about two in my musing when I said that it was “a hope for a reward or fear of being different.” Is beneficial-ness created in hopes of a monetary reward, a social reward, or is beneficial-ness created by simple wonderful creativity and imagination?

I believe the latter. Intentions and objectives benefit many including the viewers of art and the artists themselves.

Art should be an unconstrained essence and happiness. Art is slowly losing this value. Art triggers all of our naturalness. Art is capable of touching all of our spirits, selves and souls, because of its diversities only if it remains unconstrained (controlled, governed).

Art triggers human potential in all of us but only if it remains unconstrained.

The Words I Say Everyday

 

Featured image: It's a Keeper

The words I say as I think to myself every day – every time I start a painting, every time I begin a musing – I am about individuality, and dreams and possibility.

Of course, when I paint and say these words to myself - my work doesn't always agree with me. But I try and I learn every time I create.

I Am

 

Featured image: Her Song - She Has Always Sang To The Tune Of A Different Drummer

 

I am a poet, philosopher, artist, 

Always, intimate, always searching

Always ragged around the edges

Always, alive, always passionate.

Process vs Product

 Featured image: Poppies and Roses

In your art, are you process or product oriented?  How you answer that question makes a big big difference in what you create.

Process involves you and who you are.

Product involves what others think you are and your need to have them think positively about you.

Process changes, evolves and grows.

Product changes with popularity.

Process involves independence.

Product does not.