Stage Presences

Persona grata is always a positive and rewarding and sometimes financially beneficial to an artist.

An artist, no matter what category, must sell themselves to an audience to be recognized, thus a stage presence is necessary to not only sell your work but your value.

Some of the earliest painters worked the hierarchy of the nobles for grants to create. Now art and craft fairs dot the landscape offering imagination and artisan with a value to recover cost of materials and time to continue the creative journey.

Have you ever watched a play? A presentation of words and songs and everyone on the stage is moving and making a moment to remember. The same is true with a rock concert or a dance or even an orchestration event.

While an orchestra sits still in there black uniforms, the conductor keeps the audience amused until all can stand to get their applause. A singer on a stool with a guitar must keep the crowd interested before the sound of laugher and bottles clinking drown out the message.

Politicians work-the-room very well. Pointing out people of importance or acknowledging those who are paying attention.

So artist, get off your holier-than-though and welcome people to your art. Learn to interact with the common folk who are just venturing by to see what there is to see. Make a connection and that ‘stage presence’ will turn into dollars filling your wallet.

Break out of your shell and give it a try.

Conform Or Die

  We are born to conform.

  Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms. Norms are implicit, specific rules, shared by a group of individuals that guide their interactions with others. This tendency to conform occurs in small groups and/or society as a whole, and may result from subtle unconscious influences, or direct and overt social pressure. Conformity can occur in the presence of others, or when an individual is alone.

  People often conform from a desire for security within a group; typically a group of a similar age, culture, religion, or educational status. This is often referred to as groupthink: a pattern of thought characterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics, which ignores realistic appraisal of other courses of action. Unwillingness to conform carries the risk of social rejection.

  Although peer pressure may manifest negatively, conformity can be regarded as either good or bad. Driving on the correct side of the road could be seen as beneficial conformity. With the right environmental influence, conforming, in early childhood years, allows one to learn and thus, adopt the appropriate behaviors necessary to interact and develop correctly within one’s society. Conformity influences formation and maintenance of social norms, and helps societies function smoothly and predictably via the self-elimination of behaviors seen as contrary to unwritten rules. In this sense it can be perceived as a positive force that prevents acts that are perceptually disruptive or dangerous.

  As conformity is a group phenomenon, factors such as group size, unanimity, cohesion, status, prior commitment and public opinion help determine the level of conformity an individual displays.

  I live in a rather conservative town. I was brought up in the middle-class neighborhood and was taught to follow the rules. My schooling taught me how to be orderly in class, stand to pledge allegiance without taking the oath, pray before eating, stand in line arranged by the alphabet, speak only when spoken to, wear pajamas, wear the same clothing as everyone else, go to church on Sunday and be taught faith and conform. The same lessons my brother learned were passed down to me like cloning education.

  Those who did not follow the pattern were ostracized and called names and disciplined. They became the rebels, the free spirits, the poets and the beatniks who would later be idolized by the conformist as false prophets. Those would not conform were shunned and labeled as misfits.

  The other side of breaking out of the mold is the ‘freedom of thought’. Idealist, creative’s, visionaries and those who think out-of-the-box of conformity enlighten the fringes.

  Was Jesus a conformist? Are his followers? What would we listen to if music were all the same? What about artwork? Every museum would look like every other museum. Every play and television show and dance is the same because someone had not come up with something different. How dull would that be?

  Your green hair will wash out and turn grey but the tattoos will be with your for life. Symbols of non-conformity will come and go, like the fashion of the absurd, but the value of thinking, contemplating, imaging is far beyond daydreams.

  Be an original. Sign your name to it. Be one-of-a-kind and then go back to watching the media wasteland of copy and repeat.

  And listen to your children. They haven’t been taught not to think...yet.

What is your passion?

We all have them. Passion is that something that gives you that emotional ‘rush’. It may not be your job or your family or even your secret lover, but everyone has a passion. That something that takes you to your ‘happy place’.

One of my soapbox issues is to remind people to make time for their passion. The passion might be animals or knitting or baking or tinkering on cars or rooting for some team or playing an instrument or singing in the shower or running.

No matter all the accolades or titles or money or the size of you house or your wallet, it is the passion that fuels your existence.

Some people don’t realize what there passion is until you point out that they enjoy gardening every summer or having cocktail parties or writing letters to friends. If you are a good friend, help fuel the passion of others and it will reward you 100 times.

Some people will have all the excuses. “I don’t have the time for…” or “Maybe someday I’ll….”or “I not sure it is my passion?” Help them along the way.

Have you tried writing? Have you tried painting? Have you thought about taking a dance class? Have you tried…. There are all sorts of hobbies to try and fail at but the effort was made. Stretch your humdrum into more than selfies or listing your grandchildren’s silly antics or what you ate at the restaurant.

If you enjoy singing in the shower, try singing in the church choir or the local community center. If not singing, take up the ukulele or piano or Jew’s harp. You may not play at the Metropolitan Opera but you may make some good times and some new friends.

At the same time, you may have something to say. You want to express yourself or your ideas or thoughts but don’t know how. You might read a children’s book to put your grand daughter to sleep and think, “I could do better than this”.

Hand or an antique typewriter or a word processor can do writing. There are books and websites and editorial software to assist. It may turn into a Blog or a family Christmas card or a best selling book, but it is your passion.

I personally have too many passions. I also have the time to bath myself in any of them at any given time. Come join me.

How Are YOU Wasting Your Time?

24 hours a day is all you get. How much of that time is wasted?

“I just don’t have enough time to waste!” “There is never enough time!” “If I only had more time!”…..

Multi-purpose our time doing nothing with full concentration or attention and it doesn’t give the clock any more minutes. There are ‘time-management’ courses, if you only had the time.

Time was people took the time for priorities. Time spent doing nothing was not wasted.

Chores took time. Work took time. Sleep took time. Eating took time. Bathing (if necessary) took time.

There was time in the morning for the newspaper. In the evening there was time for the radio shows. There was never enough time to do your homework.

Television came along and we couldn’t take our eyes off of it. That was until it turned off every night leaving a blank screen until morning. Then we just stared into space wondering what to do until the moving images returned.

Vacations are the time we set aside for visits and travel and family time, yet much of that time is traveling, eating, sleeping, stress, confusion, frustration, long lines, misdirection’s and flat tires. Getting back to work and its organized time is a relief.

Taking time off is not wasted. It should be enjoyed. It should be appreciated. It should be relished because it is your time.

I find myself spending time looking out the window or looking at a tree, sometimes for hours. I notice the change in light and actions around me that most of us ignore in our rush to spend our time in some useful purpose.

I find this time very useful and stimulating. It gives time to relax and enjoy life. Experience what we dream of lying on a beach towel or sitting on the peak of a mountain. These are those cherished moments when you are alone with yourself to “take it all in”. Without electronic distractions and the panic of wanted to be noticed or appreciated or worried something might happen and you will miss it, one can think, ponder, meditate, pray, have that time to be yourself without the fear of not conforming.

Dancers know this time. Musicians know this time. Writers know this time. Weavers know this time. Painters know this time. It is your time.

It don’t cost nuthing but a little time.

Making It Sizzle

A few years ago I bought a drum kit.

Why?

Every boy needs a drum to bang on. At least that is my philosophy of life.

The back-story is I’ve always loved percussion. Those woodwinds and brass and strings in the orchestra were OK but those guys in the back put the punch in classical long hair music. They’d sit down or stand around most of the time but when they started banging on kettledrums and crashing cymbals everyone sat up and paid attention.

So I was in a guitar shop I often frequent and noticed a stack of drum shells. I asked the manager if he was selling drums too and he said they were his son’s and he was trying to get rid of them. We bartered a deal and now I was the proud owner of a drum kit w/ cymbals.

I’m not a trained musician but I can tinker away on guitar, bass, piano but I know nothing about drums. I’d admire the drummer in many rock bands keeping the beat together and even filled in for a song or two but I’m left handed and drum kits are set up differently than is natural for me to play. Ask Ringo.

So here was all these drum things and I had to assemble them and put them somewhere. One drum was missing a head and there were pieces that didn’t seem to fit anywhere. Since I didn’t want to look foolish to my drummer friends, I went to YouTube. A couple hours of Googling and found I had to get a key, just like a car, to start my drumming experience with my new purchase.

So several trips to the local music shops and some hands on trail and error sessions and I had an assembled drum kit and it took up a rightly amount of space.

After many months of cleaning and clearing out I’d made some space upstairs that would be perfect for a studio. So all the drums and cymbals and stands and throne were carted upstairs and reassembled. I was ready to rock…. well not so fast.

I had lots of records and had seen a fair amount of bands and even played in a few to recognize the sound of cymbals. I’d seen a drummer or two with these things in their cymbals that made them ring and wanted to find out what that was.

Again the Internet helped me find what put the “sizzle” in the cymbal. In my research there were chains and necklaces lay on the cymbal but that seems very cluttered and cumbersome. Then I read something about rivets.

I went to the hardware store and even bought a box of rivet but couldn’t figure out how they could work on a cymbal. More research and digging and a few videos and I found the answer to my rivet conundrum.

Checking all the local music stores for ‘sizzle’ cymbals went nowhere and no one carried the rivets I was looking for. More research and digging and found the rivets were made in Turkey and could be ordered online. Still more researching and I found Bosphorus cymbals (seems many cymbals are made in Turkey) and ordered two packs of 8 ‘cymbal rivets’. At the same time I started getting worried.

From all the stories of cymbals I read, there was the horror of a cracked cymbal. I even watched how to drill a cymbal and put the rivets in but worried I’d do it wrong and kill the cymbal. Solution: buy another cymbal.

I matched the Paiste ride cymbal with another and marked the 3” deep from the edge for the holes to be drilled. I found the correct drill bit size to allow the rivet to bounce and purchased a metal drill bit the same size. Still there was that bugging image of me drilling into this piece of well-worked metal probably hammered by some Jihadist and it cracking under the pressure.

So the project sat ready to perform with the fear of failure.

Finally yesterday I took the bait and brought out the cymbal and drill and took the challenge. Place the drill bit in the correct marking and hit the power and pressed down. The drill bit started skipping back and forth as expected and just kept at it until the shavings started to pile up and the hole was done. No cracks so onto the next hole and the next hole and the next hole and the next hole and the next hole.

That went so well and I had another bag of rivets I pulled a china cymbal to repeat the process.

A ‘to-do’ now done I’ll reassemble the kit on its new rug to bang away through the winter months. And that is how you get things done…. with a sizzle.

Show Tunes

Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals.

Growing up in the 50s-60s, show tunes were ridiculed by my generation. The hip, cool kids made fun of the musicals because they were old fashioned and it was time for the rock and roll.

I remember “Oklahoma”, “The King and I”, “Fiddler On The Roof”, “Camelot” and “Carousel” were popular in the record bins. All the high schools were doing scenes from one of them regularly.

The musical just seemed like a play where everyone sang the lines then jumped and danced around. They were usually a love story with one star and a bunch of wannabes. It was fluff.

On second look, the musical and their show tunes are an important factor in performance entertainment. It has it all and I didn’t notice.

While all stage presentations are to tell stories, the musical has a variety of methods to accomplish the task.

Slow pacing, singing in German and stories no one remembers or understands holds Opera back. Symphonies are stoic with classical music hundred of years old and formal wear by seated actors except for the guy with his back to the audience and swings his arms. Plays have actors who walk around and shout at each other, then the scene changes during intermission and they go back at it again.

Musicals were sort of between a novel or a play and a hopped up opera. A musical can take a simple story, add some color and singing, throw in a dash of dancing and the audience will be entertained. The show tunes were little ditties written by pop jingle tin-pan alley writers that were short and sweet and simple to remember.

Seems any book or movie can be transposed into a musical. Cartoon characters, biblical stories, animals, gangs, newspaper boys, strippers, cowboys, nannies, horror, and a plethora more subjects have become Broadway hits.

The musical with its catchy show tunes, choruses, dancing, costume changes, sets, lighting, sound are as much of a rock show as a brief entertainment excursion. Actors and singers can become celebrities’ overnight and movie, television and stage celebrities can hold on to their career a bit longer doing a musical.

If you can’t get to New York or Chicago to see the original, don’t worry. The musical and cast will come to you. Movies have been made about popular musicals and vice versa.

So now that rock and roll has lost its edge and pop music is itself a commercial, the music is not a bad selection for singers, dancers, performers being supported by writers, riggers, artist, designers, directors, gaffers, agents and an industry trying to bring the unknown into the spotlight.     

Not sure a musical could be made from “Schinler’s List” or “The Exorcist” but you never know.

How To Be Creative

Creativity 101: I got nothing.

I do have some ideas of what ‘creativity’ is and how we use it.

My hypothesis is that we all are born to be creative. Like breathing, the moment we are born we start feeling for our surroundings in search of food and shelter. We just came out of a very warm and soft environment to this shocking world of noise and light.

Once our survival skills are rewarded by medical professionals and hopefully parents, we can start exploring this new world we’ve been dropped into. We are naturally curious so we listen and look and touch and taste and try to make some meaning for this thing called “Life”.

Without asking for classes, we start to communicate what we are learning. We begin to make sounds that some day may become beautiful arias or thoughtful oracles. With minimal motor skills we scratch in the sand or mark on walls with simple patterns relating what we have seen and experienced so far.

We are being creative.

As we grow older a stick may become a saber or spear or a tool for scratching in the dirt. A cardboard box may become a fort or a dollhouse or a space ship. Whatever our imagination tells us we can be creative with it.

We are using creativity to expand our consciousness.

We are taught letters and numbers and words bringing us new horizons of wonders. We are shown science and history and math which all can be used in a new creative exploration.

Somewhere along the way we are told we must be responsible for this entire creativeness is too much fun and “Life” isn’t about having fun.

Some will retire to a dull world of accounting or sales but even then there are the choir singers and the square dancers and quilters and knitters who are being creative without thinking about it.

Some will continue to follow the fun and become artist, painters, dancers, musicians, authors, playwrights, actors, singers all trying to express their experience of “Life” to others.

Social media has allowed every individual to become a moviemaker and critic. Everyone has a camera now to record a sunset or beach vacation or a family member to present to the entire world. Keyboards click away our ideas, thoughts, fantasies, fears and dreams.

We are being creative.

Even though we might think we are not creative because we cannot play the piano, we can plug into a song that might make us dance or sing along. We might not believe we can draw a straight line but find skill in woodworking or pottery or fiber design.

We are being creative without even thinking about it.

Enjoy.