Why Art.

Why art.

There are times when I sit down to write, and… nothing comes out.

The day to day of life has me spinning so out of control that I can’t even get a handle on an outside thought. Sometimes too much happens within a day or week to even process it all, and I’m just left feeling, well, nothing.

I’ve stood silent and empty in front of my own home as it burned to the ground. I’ve stood over the dead bodies of loved ones as I know I’m supposed to say good bye, and yet I can’t even begin to channel the emotions I know I’m supposed to be feeling. I’ve closed off from bitter disappointment and walked tepidly through success I wasn’t sure I was ready to enjoy or celebrate yet.

Then I’ll sit down alone to watch a movie or listen to a song or read a book, and the flood gates will open. I’ll be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of that other world that I’ve been exposed to. Like two strings that will vibrate together when the same note is struck, something deep within me will reverberate back whatever that art just expressed and I’ll fall to my knees in tears.

Sometimes life is just too fast, or confusing, or big or awful or wonderful or amazing to process it all at once. Yet in art we can find these slices of condensed life and we can digest that. That sliver of raw emotion and insight can knock over a set of dominos that has been building in us work day by work day, errand by errand, difficult week by difficult week until they roll over each other in a numbing row of freezing waves that crash against our psyche and stretch into gray months that seem to have no meaning.

Then in that one moment of clarity, we will see our hearts, and it will shatter us in the sweetest release of anguish and the bitterest tears of bliss.

And that is why, even if we don’t become celebrities or stars or some other lauded notion of what success might be, we can create. We can touch others. As long as we give of nothing less than our absolute everything. For to hold back is to be disingenuous to ourselves and to anyone that we might share it with.

So art.

Art to make sense of your world. Art to help someone else make sense of theirs. And you might never even know how or where or to what magnitude you ripple against another person’s soul, but as long as you gave with all you were capable, then you did as much as a human being could do.

Losses of 2016

I’ve heard a lot of discussion about all of the celebrities that have died this year. And it almost fills like 2016 has geared up to finish off as many as possible before the end. (We lost Debbie Reynolds and Richard Adams yesterday. For those that weren’t aware yet.)

Honestly, most celebrity passings wouldn’t matter a fig to me. One, we have too many. In the age of Youtube and Reality Show ‘celebrities’, the word has lost much of its original meaning.

This year, we lost many ICONS. People that were ground breaking, challenging, and daring. People who were of significant importance to our development as artists and people.

David Bowie wasn’t just a musician some of us liked. He pushed boundaries and constantly reinvented himself. He was of personal significance to me, because he taught me you don’t have to be just one person, you don’t have to follow just one path. This might help explain my career and even me as a person now.

Prince challenged the perceptions of sexuality, right down to the Male/Female symbol he used repeatedly in Purple Rain, and which he jazzed up when he made a similar symbol his name to protest the abuses of the music industry. He challenged the perception of sexy, with his androgynous and often gender fluid look and style. If you recall, some of the racy photos inside his covers got you to look at him in ways that many heterosexuals were likely uncomfortable with, leaving them with some questions of themselves.

Leia, was not the damsel in distress. She takes the guns away from ‘the boys’ and starts shooting back. She’s coming up with ways to solve the immediate issue while everyone else is panicking. She is quite inspirational to the character that would eventually lead me to writing Lilith’s Redemption.

Some hipsters and curmudgeons have tried to slam you for feeling a sense of loss in the passing of all of these great people. If someone has made you laugh, or cry or feel deeply, then they mattered to you.
Some of these artists have gotten us through difficult times in our own lives. Many of the songs from George Michael, Prince and Bowie have been songs that I listened to in times of great distress and great celebration throughout my life.

These aren’t just names and faces that flashed across the screen for many of us. They meant something to us personally. Yes, we never met them. But they affected us. They challenged us. They changed us.

 Don’t give any credence to someone mocking your mourning. They are attacking their own frustrations at witnessing something meaningful to you that they are not a part of you. Their angst has nothing to do with you.

And blast their songs. Read their books. Watch their movies. Celebrate them all over again, and share that joy with others who are ready to share it.

This was not easy to go back through, but I compiled a list of all of the celebrities that passed away that had some meaning to me. Feel free to add your own or any that I’ve missed.

Laugh louder, smile brighter, sing more sweetly today. Spend time with people who matter to you, and celebrate others who matter to you who are gone now.

We will cast these broken pieces of 2016 like ashes into the air and watch it blow away into the dark storm clouds of yesterday. We will step into the sunlight of a brand new day. But not alone, and not without experience. We will take all of their color and light and life with us into that tomorrow. We the dreamers of the dreams.

Rest in Peace, You are still Remember and Loved:

Abe Vigoda – Tessio from Godfather

Pat Harrington

Edgar Mitchell – Legendary astronaut

David Bowie

Prince

Maurice White – Earth, Wind and Fire

Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane

Lenny from Motorhead

Joe Alaskey – Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck

Vanity – Protégé of Prince, star of Vanity 6, and major crush of mine from The Last Dragon

George Gaynes – from Police Academy and Punky Brewster

Harper Lee – Author of To Kill a Mockingbird

Umberto Eco – Author of In The Name of the Rose

Tony Burton – Apollo’s trainer throughout the Rocky movies (and later Rocky’s trainer)

Nancy Reagan

Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides)

Frank Sinatra Jr.

Phife Dawg (Tribe Called Quest)

Garry Shandling (I used to love his show when I was a kid)

Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall)

Patty Duke (Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker)

Erik Bauersfeld – Admiral Ackbar (It’s a Trap!)

Kenny Baker (R2-D2)

Merle Haggard

David Gest

Doris Roberts

Chyna

Michelle McNamara (My heart goes out to you, Patton Oswalt…)

Billy Paul

Afeni Shakur (Tupac’s Mother, and activist in her own right)

Jane Little (who is now Guiness Record Holder as world’s longest serving symphony player, who was also under 5’ tall and played upright bass)

Morley Safer (Investigative Journalist and a large part of why we learned about the atrocities of the Vietnam War)

Alan Young (from Mr. Ed)

Muhammad Ali

Kimbo Slice (If you don’t know who he was, there’s no explaining him now)

Theresa Saldana (not just a successful actor, but also an advocate for victims of sexual assault)

Anton Yelchin (Chekov from the reboot series)

Ralph Stanley (legendary bluegrass musician, also famous for the music in O Brother Where Art Thou?)

Alvin Toffler (Modern prophet. Author of Future Shock)

Elie Wiesel (legendary writer, Aushwitz survivor, professor and political activist. I applied for his scholarship, but never got it)

Noel Neill (original Lois Lane on film)

Garry Marshall (Writer/Director of Happy Days, Odd Couple, Laverne and Shirley and Mork and Mindy)

Miss Cleo (there will be no explaining her to young people)

Gene fucking Wilder

Jerry Heller (who helped bring NWA to mainstream audiences)

Lady Chablis

Alexis Arquette

Greta Zimmer Friedman (The nurse in the iconic post WW2 picture, kissing the sailor)

Edward Albee (Playwrite: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

WP Kinsella (Author: Field of Dreams)

Arnold Palmer

Tommy Ford (Tommy, from Martin)

Steve Dillon (Preacher)

Leonard Cohen (Hallelujah…)

Florence Henderson

Alan Thicke

Ron Glass

John Glenn

Zsa Zsa Gabor

George Michael

Richard Adams (Author: Watership Down)

Carrie Fischer

Debbie Reynolds