What I Want

I haven’t written much in a while. At first I was distracted by a heavy work load, personal and family issues that weighed heavily on me and I was not interested in sharing in a public forum, and finally by the election, which was all consuming around my house. With the election of Obama and some of my personal issues being resolved, one way or another, I feel the urge to return to my keyboard.

But what to write about? When I first started this blog the idea was to write about advertising and marketing and use it as a business link. But writing about those subjects really doesn’t interest me as much as just writing about human nature in general, be it art, politics or just the absurdity of life. My blog got very political and very personal. 

I was questioning the point of doing this at all. Aside from a vanity project what was my point in keeping this blog going?

I was giving this entire issue some thought last week while taking Rt 60 across Florida on my way to Tampa. I was going to direct a TV spot with NFL great Roger Craig. I had not shot a commercial in almost 2 years and this should have excited me greatly but it was feeling like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do. What was I doing with my life? Why was I still doing something that I didn’t really love anymore? How would I write about the experience?

I have to backtrack for a moment. As a young man I never saw myself having a career in advertising. Though I went to art school initially as an advertising major I had no interest in the subject and saw it as merely a way to get into Pratt. I also had no concept of what a career as an artist really meant. As soon as I got to Pratt and started to learn a few things about what these career paths meant and about myself and my talent I switched my major to painting. I chose painting because I had never painted before and it seemed hard. I was used to getting away with things in high school (and my first year of college at the University of Miami was a joke) because I was smart and also because I had a gift – I could draw anything. I saw myself as a cartoonist because my cartoons made people laugh and they were easy to do. So now I’m at Pratt and I meet
I then I meet some teachers who are really artists and don’t mind telling you if your work sucks.  And then their was Bonnard, Vuillard, Degas, Corbet and Monet – all blowing my mind. And there are students with serious talent and I am intimidated as all hell and I decide to really challenge myself and see if I have the goods to be a real artist.

And I was. At first I copied others. I copied the masters and I copied my friends. It was a way to learn fast. My teachers recognized my talent and encouraged me. As I became more confident I became brash and arrogant. And lazy. Eventually I reverted to my old tricks and began to coast on my reputation. Also, I was doing a lot of drugs (weren’t we all) and that didn’t help me. The drugs dulled my ambition. And the other thing that caused me to stifle my ambitions was sex. I was determined to sleep with every girl at school and I tried my best to fulfill at least that part of my ambition. But I digress…

I made it through and headed into the art world but found it to be dissapointing. Talent would not carry you through. You needed driving ambition and the ability to market yourself. Talent was secondary. So I became distracted again and wound up going in another path. That story reads like a novel and I don”t want to get too off track now so maybe I’ll get into that at another time. The point is that I was an artist not making art and needing to make money so… I became an illustrator. That was a job I really detested and so I drifted to graphic design and finally into film and TV commercial production. Yes, there I was in advertising – the one career I never thought I would enter in a million years!

But there was money in it… very big money and eventually I got into all aspects of the game. It was never by design or even desire. I just went with the flow and I fell easily into the life.

When I left New York in 2005 I was leaving not only my home town but a way of life. That I drifted into a marketing position was not surprising – just not want I had hoped for. I would have been happier teaching art or working as a bartender to be honest. The work was challenging but more for having to deal with office politics than the work itself.

So now here I am driving to Tampa to meet Roger Craig and like the song in Chorus Line: “I felt nothing!” I had to ask myself what it is that interests me. Well, art does and always has. So does food – I love to cook. So does a lot of stuff. But what gets my blood boiling? And why am I writing?

I am a decent writer and have written copy for dozens of TV and radio spots, brochures, newspaper ads, websites and articles. I’ve even witten screenplays – 4 of them – and a TV series. But the blog is something else. It’s really the only thing in the last 4 years I consider to truly represent me. Therefore I feel the need to bring it into a sharper focus.

I had a thought pop into my little brain while I was behind the wheel and I scribbled down these words in my notebook: “Absurdity” and “Injustice.”

From now on I am going to change the nature of this blog. Instead of writing about others I want to write about myself. I am of a mind to try to limit my scope in the hopes that by doing so I will become: A- a better, more diciplined writer; B- attract a better crowd of readers – actually a more consistent crowd of readers; and C- find my voice. To me this seems like a nearly impossible task but a worthy one – especially that last part. By writing about my life instead about observations of events I feel like I can learn from the past and truly grow and maybe – just maybe – I can find out what it is I really want to do when I grow up.

We’ll see hope it goes.