BlueVino

Resist1776.info

7/16/2013

With this article, I am going to attempt to dive into an issue that is so dear to me that it is my very foundation upon this Earth.  I know absolutely NOTHING in this world but art.  I have been this way my entire life, and have cared about little else.  Granted, as you may have guessed if you’ve read other articles by me, it HAS driven a lot of my views & opinions towards other issues.  Make no mistake, my heart & soul is nothing but art.

If you’ve heard the expression “Starving artists” then you’ve probably met someone who’s either (A: So involved in their art that they won’t do anything but their art, or the more recent model of artist (B: An artist who’s tried their whole life to work at various jobs, only to find that the job market has dwindled to such a lull that it’s become a struggle to even call themselves an artist as a HOBBY!!!  Why?  Because some art that artists would like to do require some equipment (not surprising to most) and said equipment cannot be purchased by said artist because they cannot find a job that pays enough for them to be able to buy more than rent & food, let alone equipment.

This isn’t some sob story of an individual.  This is the norm in the art world.  Believe it or not, there are a LOT of artists out there.  Many fit into category A as I described, others (including myself) fit into category B.

To give you a quick run down as to how my life as an artist went up to now:  Early on I wanted to be a comic book artist.  This slowly faded as I discovered that, even after college, you very well may end up being the dude who colors in the backgrounds to someone else’s comic book….forever.  That’s right.  Either somehow fund your own comic book company (like Image comics came to be) or wait for someone to DIE so a position comes available.  So I dropped that dream as a child.  Then I moved on to designing cars.  That dream ended in a similar nightmare that is:  you have to start with designing for a company you probably hate & hope to be picked up by a company that you wanted to work for in the first place (which will probably never happen… unless someone maybe dies).  Then I moved on to wanting to direct & write films.  That dream died when I learned that you need to be rich first.  And I DON’T mean just for college.  Yes, the college courses were expensive & I couldn’t get a scholarship because my state didn’t have any colleges in-state that granted a film directing degree, but even if I wanted to do independent films, I’d need some money to buy equipment, software, & probably pay people to help me make the films.  FYI:  I’m poor.  I have been poor my entire life.  At one point I had a full time job, but lived in a motel room eating grapes & cheap lunch-meat.  That’s it.  That’s all my $8/hr job could get me.  Moving on to more recent endeavors…

So, I decided to be a musician.  Did I have any training?  Not a lick.  Singing lessons?  Nope.  In fact, I didn’t even realize I could sing until the Doors mysteriously came on the radio one day when I randomly decided to flip through stations, namely one that was notoriously static filled… except for when that fateful Doors song played:  People Are Strange.  Static prior to the song playing & static immediately AFTER the song was finished.  From then on, I picked up the Doors’ music & realized that I had a different kind of singing voice:  Baritone.  From there, I found a mentor in LaSalle, IL who taught me the lesson of dedication to my art.  In a simple night when I performed & my harmonica’s got stolen at a bar, the next morning I informed my mentor that someone had taken them.  I said “I don’t know what to do, those were like $45 harmonicas.  I can’t afford to replace them.”  He said:

F**K EATING, MAN!  BUY A HARMONICA!  Because THAT’S how serious you need to be.

FULL ARTICLE HERE