There comes a point in life when, as an artist, a musician, an improviser, as a creative human being, one has absorbed enough influence, enough inspiration from things, from styles, from tempos, from techniques, emulated others enough, that, when away from it all, the flow of ideas that come in a freedom of your personal progression, it becomes overwhelming and demands that it no longer be put off. Your calling. The inspiration of freedom, and the freedom of inspiration. It becomes the path, and there is none other like it. The knowledge one has acquired has enabled growth into unseen creative realms which begin to beckon so desperately—things, expressive situations, which aren’t yet present externally, given out into the world yet. Fusions within us of expressive commonality, experience and spirituality have begun to form a never-ending puzzle. A picture which can never become complete, that changes and grows. That can never really be solved. One’s life depends on this! The important process of realizing one’s full potential can never be overemphasized because it can never be a finished task, it is always an expanding process. One sees life around them, in such early developmental stages, boxed in along with so many of the widespread indulgencies and attentions, creative or not. As individuals we must give and release what it all means artistically for ourselves, and for no other reason except that it is what we have to do—a primordial calling to answer our imagination and creative fantasies—what are we seeing now, hearing now, feeling now. No one else needs to tell us what we should or shouldn’t do. Constantly experimenting in ways to challenge oneself further, past previous “ability,” finding the new passionate truths of the moment. We keep moving. One thing flows to the next. There is much energy. This is our “work,” and our life is our work. Yet one of the most challenging points to reach in life as an Artist, is the juncture where people around you, friends, colleagues, begin marketing and presenting themselves in ways much different from how you are feeling. So many are affected by amounts of attention, insecurity and popularity in their art, and worst of all, going far overboard emphasizing what other people say about them and their work to build on. A currency of words. Descriptions which are no longer accurate. Like a race of some sort to a summit where so many people unfortunately want to stay, feed, proclaim and identify (even though countless other flocks before them have also in that way). And now the juncture occurs (Rilke said some very eloquent things on this), because it is at this time that, as if seen way off in the distance, there is a peak of something calling and attracting from so far inside, and so far outside (the point of singularity deep within the body to that of what we feel is the extent reached by energy in the given universe) and want so much to go there, we have to go there, we can’t bear to be defined to one place. That would be too painful! This terrain is in fact much more internal than external now, our mind and soul have eloped and impregnated us, and like Nature outside of us, always changing and adapting. Most people would like to avoid the sense of loneliness which can come from the ongoing search as an Artist. But occasionally, for some, when they begin to really realize the power of what they are now originally deciding creatively, it becomes understood that no one else is thinking of doing this, and that it then deserves full attention. Because this is the calling to the path, again and again, so even if we pass it up, it comes again in a changed form for us to take it. There are always new paths! And this comes from patience and healthy diligence which in turn comes from experiences which support the roots of the convictions. Many of the greatest artists and composers from the ages before us—take Van Gogh for instance—became rather tragic cases of life emotionally, I think largely due to a burden of a near overabundance of creative gifts. I say “burden” and "overabundance" because they were so isolated with it. Contact with the outside world was a much different matter. One was much less able to spread what they were doing. And so, my point at this moment I suppose is that in this day and age, we should be grateful for the internet as a means to contact people with our work, our life. Because the life and work are one and the same at this point. To be able to share this, for the Artist, is the gift of life. A form of ever-changing presentation. A valve to a river. May 5, 2008