The Creative Mind
Ah the creative mind. A tad crazy, a little dreamy, never satisfied, and always off to the next project before the last one was properly completed. I just finished chatting with a good friend of mine, Mark Hoffe, who is a brilliant writer and filmmaker, and president of Mad Mummer Media. I lived with him in Toronto when both of us (and our other roommate, Jordan) were in search of that ever-elusive artistic path. A few years later here we are, living out the dreams that we were in search of. It is funny how things just happen when you let yourself be. Painting like most of the arts, is rather solitary, but chatting with Mark always breaks that seclusion and makes me want to run with the wind and take in everything that I can all at once. He is jetting off to LA soon to work on a new feature. Like how cool is that? I haven’t travelled in quite a while, and I am starting to feel it. Stagnation is not my friend. In fact, I think it is my biggest fear. Not necessarily in the physical sense, but I need to feel like I am moving, dancing, singing, growing and living. My brain needs the fulfillment; my body needs the fulfillment; my soul needs the fulfillment. For me, that is my peace.
So I circle back to my opening statement and the nuances of the artistic mind. I have been toying around with starting a YouTube channel, but at the moment I really have no idea what the focus would be. My first episode would go like this: Me: “Um. Hi”. I would give a dorky little wave, crank up the tunes, nerves would set in, and I would stare at a blank canvas for a while, and that would be about it. I would probably break the internet with all of the booing. Pushing yourself though is such an important part of the process. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is what the artistic brain forces you to do. Sometimes faster than what you are ready for, but I guess that is the whole point. I am never fully satisfied, and I always want to get better, never letting the sensation of being satisfied truly settle in. If I have a frustrating session in the studio, it is the first thing I think of when I open my eyes and I am eager to get back in there. The same goes if I have a brilliant session. It is exhilarating living out the creativity and it has become my breath. I guess my whole point is this – never let yourself stagnate to the point of complacency and compromise your journey of self-discovery and growth. Live. Pure and simple. Just live.
