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Creator
2004-10-12 12:14:22
I come before you as a fool,
Such a fool, such a fool
I come before you as a fool
But listen….
From the limitless light comes the limited light
Light within Time.
Time limits all with her bounds
Time herself is the limit
We come from beyond time, before time, outside of time
Where did you come from?
What are you?
Who are you?
I am the light.
I am the source
The Source is within all
The source is all
Constantly pouring forth
Creation continues
The Creator always creates
Not once, not once!
Forever! Always! Eternal! Everlasting! Infinite! Unending! Creation continues.
You and he, and she and we. All of us, all of us!
We are creators. We create and re-create.
So the process of creation continues
In our acts of creation we become one with the creator,
The Source of all
We remember who we are
Not a body, not a name, not a face, not a thought, not a mood, not this, not this!
Not a role, nor a rank, not a title, not any part, but the whole.
The creator, the creator, the creator,
The source, the source, the source
No separation, no division, all one, all one
To tell you this, is not enough, not enough
Mere words, hallow, hallow
Point, point, point. Point, point, Point, point.
Where where?
Within, within!
If it doesn’t begin there, then it does not begin!
Create! Create and know. You are the creator, the one and only, the only One.
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To Be Human
2004-10-08 13:12:11
To be human is laughing, and the capacity to laugh
To be human is crying, and the capacity to cry
To be human is remembering, and the capacity to remember
To be human is to have a name, and the capacity to name.
To be human is to hunger,
To be human is to thirst,
To be human is having expectations and the capacity to have expectations
To be human is suffering disappointments
and the capacity to suffer disappointments.
To be human is making effort and the capacity to make effort.
To be human is planning and the capacity to plan.
And if you do them all well, then you might be great.
Plan well
Make effort well
Suffer dissapointments well
Have expectations well
Thirst well
Hunger well
Name well
Remember well
Cry well
Laugh well. -
Intuition
2004-09-30 13:48:01
What is it that I am trying to do with music videos? It seems like such a strange art form, such an odd way to self-express. I can feel that I am using my intuition with the attention that I give to the music. I study the music and feel it becoming motion inside of me. The music moves my subtle senses. I study the music itself as I study nothing else. My attention becomes focused to a single point. Music is gentler than the softest breeze. It stirs the winds of the mind.
Intuition is like a very delicate form of touch that presses upon the faint and subtle forces all around us. It takes extreme sensitivity to notice these forces. Our delicate form of touch first detects these forces. Then it takes effort to translate these subtle forces into a more easily detectable force, to speak what is unspoken.
Art is the process of translating subtle force into obvious force.
Being sensitive can be exhausting. There is so much information that demands a portion of our attention. Out attention is limited by time and space. When you become sensitive to the subtle forces they fill your space and take up your time.
This applies to that act of music video creation thusly. Music is the subtle force and visual material is the obvious force. Visual Material is the medium of expression for the more subtle force of the music.
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Art
2004-09-27 18:08:49
Here is my idea about art.
Art has three elements: Experience, Expression and Craftmanship.
Art begins inside of the would-be artist. It is the experience. The emotion that moves the poet. The inner-vision that appears in the mind's eye. The music of the spheres that reverberates in the heart of the musician.
From that inner, private experience comes the next stage, expression. This is the process of pushes that idea out of the inner space into the common space we all share. This is the process of translating that inner experience into a manifest form.
All tools of expression fall short. The poet is trapped by words that fail. The musician works with sounds that cannot approach the beauty of the inner tones. The painter battles with pigments that cannot approach the glory of his inner vision.
This is the artistic struggle. The inner world is most intense, more wondrous, more magnificent that the common space we all inhabit.
So much of would-be art never crosses the threshold between the inner space and the common space. So much never get expressed.
Now a few lucky individual have a talent at expressing their inner experience. But it is a skill as well as a talent. Anyone with a talent can become skilled at doing it. Even those with little talent can learn the skill of it.
This is one of the important ways that we learn how to create anything.
The third element of art is craftsmanship. This is making anything well. This is the final stage. It is the stage that is the most trainable. It is the nitty-gritty get your hands dirty part of the work. The concrete phase of creation produces the actual finished product.
Being a skilled craftsman is only part of being a great artist.
Everyone has inner experience and almost everyone will learn at least a bit of craft. Learning how to express well is the rare lesson.
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Nan Desu Kan 8
2004-09-24 16:20:32
I want to tell you all about the great weekend I just had. This weekend was the anime convention, Nan Desu Kan 8. It would have been a great weekend full of fun, but it turned out to be even better than I would have dreamed. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I went this year with Tommy, his little brother Joseph, Mark and Chris.
I got out of work a little bit early on Friday to attend the convention. The traffic was terrible. It took me half an hour to go a few miles down I-25 to pick up Chris from his work. The rest of the drive was like that as we moved to I-70. Finally we reached the Holiday Inn DIA. I am always thrilled by the charge of excitement that fills the air on Friday. There is so much unbridled happiness in the air.
I was lucky enough to find my friends who were in line and was able to join them, cutting down what could have been an hour long wait.
Then I set out to make full use of my digital camera. I put that baby to work. I spent a lot of the convention walking the halls, looking for people in costume to photograph. In the end I finished up with about 300 pictures.
I plan to upload these on a friend’s account online.
Of course I saw a bunch of great anime. There were some especially imaginative shows.
The sleeping arrangements were abysmal. We had 5 people in a two-person room. We had two small beds. I don’t know if they were queen or super-single, but they were small. And almost everyone in the room snores. It was two rough nights.
There are two big events at the convention. First there is the Costume Contest and second there is the Anime Music Video contest. Because I look differently from about 99% of all anime characters I have never been drawn to participate in that contest. So for the first year I submitted a few of my anime music videos to the AMV Contest. The judges select from all the music videos that are submitted and show about 30 of them. This first cut of videos gets shown on Saturday afternoon. Then the winners of the contest are announced in a ceremony on Sunday. The judges pick four winners and the audience picks one winner for the Audience Favorite Award.
We get a little voting slip for the showing on Saturday that shows a list of all the videos. Now the first year my friends submitted videos their submissions did not even get shown. They didn’t even make the first cut. So I was really just hoping that at least one of my videos would get shown. Making the first cut would have been a thrill for me. So when we get the list of videos my heart soared. The third video on the list was mine. I was going to get shown. I had made the first cut!
Then my friends point out that not only was one of my videos there, all three of my videos that I submitted were on the list. All three were good enough to be shown to the audience. I felt so happy.
That was nothing compared to how I was about to feel when I saw my video there on the big screen. I was sitting there in the darkened theater surrounded by a huge crowd of people. The room was packed. I heard the first note ring out and I could barely breath. I felt more joy than I have ever felt at any creative endeavor. It was the best emotional payoff for one of my creative works. I was trebling, I couldn’t move. I felt as if I was being moved by the transcendent. I thought, “This must be how a playwright must feel on the opening night of the first performance of his show.” The audience loved it. They laughed at all the right places. I felt a huge swell of motherly pride. It was beautiful.
After that I started to wonder if maybe I would go on to be one of the winners of the competition. Not just to get shown but to be called one of the best in the show. But no, I thought. Enjoy this, be thankful for this great experience. And I was.
The next day was the award ceremony was held were the winners got announced. The first video won the special award for Best Video Game music video. I wasn’t even in the running for that award. Then the first of the four main awards was announced. Wynette, the head judge of the competition noted the technical mastery of the creator. Then she asked if he was in attendance. He wasn’t so we moved on to show his winning videos. They were beautiful and showed a great technical ability. Then she announced the next winners. It was a creative team and when she asked if they were present, they were.
At that point I thought it was all over. I felt genuinely thankful for what I had experienced the previous day. They showed the second set of videos and they were gorgeous. Then she announced the next winner. “Our next award goes to Alex Trullinger. Is he here?” My hand shot up like a gun. I squeezed out of my seat and walked proudly to the front.
She asked if I can anything to say and she offered me the mike. I had been thinking of a speech to give, when I fist sit down at the awards. I had been given one. I say that because most of my best ideas don’t come from me. They come through me. Afterwards I would have the thought that all of our talents and all of our ideas are not ours. They don’t belong to us. They are gifts. The only was we can repay this generosity is to use these gifts.
To the crowd I said, “I just want to say thank you. It was an incredible thrill just to see my videos presented yesterday. In this life, you have got to do what you love. That is what really matters.” Then a friend of mine who was sitting in the front row gave me a bit of playful teasing as though he was getting all choked up. Without missing a beat I said, “Thank you Rob.” To which the whole crowd laughed. Then I continued, “Everyone is a creator of something. It may take you fifty years or even a lifetime to figure out what you can create, what you can do, but do what YOU want to do in this life. If anybody else tells you differently, then FUCK ‘EM!” Which met with roars of approval from the audience.
JOURNAL: storyteller (Alexander T)
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