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2.25.2013

The Man Behind the Mask


I'm a loner caught in a noisy world. When the kids are at school and Tish is working I don't seek out others to chew through the daytime hours with. The phone doesn't ring and no one knocks on the door. I'm could spend days alone without seeing a soul if circumstances allowed. I write and muse and pet the dogs until the time comes to do errands, rescue the kids from school, think up meals, and sort through all the other family hustle that come to the fore. Again, late at night, when the house is sleeping along with the rest of the western hemisphere, I go down to my workshop and tap images in silver and create flutes until 3am.

The contrast between my quiet work and the bustle of our family life is huge. Three kids need food, hurt feelings need mending, homework overseen, 3 dogs clamor for their share of the rowdy, and so forth all swirling around in constant tornadic activity.

As any artist will tell you, it is very hard to turn creativity on and off. I can't get up in the morning and automatically be ready to write or draw or sift through ideas. All too often I spend the day in anticipation of when I must go out to get groceries or haul someone to the doctor or whatever else my calendar will foist on me. So I get my coffee, read the news, and suddenly find that I have 90 minutes before this, a possible hour after that, and maybe 15 minutes waiting between one thing and the next.

Ready...set... create! Write that brilliant chapter that binds a sub atomic concept together with human spirituality. Think up a plot structure for your sitcom pilot - and don't forget you need 3 jokes per page. Weave together a interesting blog that gives my readers something to mull over. Can't quite pull it off between loading the dishwasher and peeling pee soaked sheets off a bed? Why on Earth not? No wonder I find more peace in the fluteshop at night where my work is more with my hands than my thoughts.

Who I am is my imagination. It is my core. If I can't find the peace of mind to let my imagination flow, I am rudderless - my career and my sanity will grind to a halt. Do I protect and defend myself from this at all costs? Do I let it in and take what comes? Can I balance them better without collateral damage at either end?

For all my artist readers - how do you balance creative life with busy reality?

2.24.2013

The Bobblehead Family at Home

Me & Grammo Immortalized in Bobble
Let me kick off this new chapter with a bit of a domestic update.

Tio is a basketball champ. We're still struggling with his lack of dedication to academics. He's a bright and curious kid. He was asking about the value of morality/integrity yesterday ("I know you believe there should be a ban on all assault weapons, Grampy. Would you sell them for Ruger's if they paid you a million dollars?"). That's fairly deep water for an 8th grader.

Kit still wants to be a girl. I dyed his hair blonde last week and he buys all his clothes in the girl's department. He worries about what will happen to him when he hits puberty ("will I be gay or just still want to be a girl?"). None of us knows but we're facing it open eyed and open minded. Won't be long until we find out.

Speaking of clothes... Doc got a gift card at Christmas and spent it entirely online buying clothes. A 7 year old buying clothes. Seriously? We shopped for shirts and skinny jeans and socks - yep, socks, you heard right. One of the shirts even had a tie with it. I recall at that age when I had any cash I wanted G.I. Joe, Hot Wheels, candy and more toys. I left clothing to my parents.

While they all get along better than they ever have they fight and make up like normal siblings which keeps the place at a constant dull roar. Kit flirts with the idea of being vegetarian but loves pork too much to make it stick. Doc is a constant blithering chatterbox and Tio skypes with his girlfriend all night. As l said, all normal stuff.

As for the adults in the mix? Tish (Grammo, and my reason for living, to the uninitiated) is 63 and retiring from full time work next week. She plans to set up dog training classes from home. Buddy, the boy's dad, has a new girlfriend who has 2 small kids of her own adding a whole new element into our lives.

That should be enough to get us started. As for me...

2.21.2013

The Jack of Arts

Welcome back to my world. It's been almost 5 months since I died and was reborn after stage 3 lymphoma. Without recanting the tick tock about how cancer changes a life and takes it on a ride you never forget, suffice it to say that it did and it has.

The first 2 years of my blog were about raising grandsons in a hectic house full of people, dogs and high energy. I'm returning with a wider lens on the lives we lead here. This time through the eyes of the artist rather than the guardian-grandparent.

I've spent my life in creative endeavors - making flutes, writing novels and screenplays, creating stop-motion animation shorts, playing music, and living through my imagination. My life has been a mosaic of creative choices that include raising my family and directing my business, to writing books, studying music, astronomy, cartoon art, quantum physics, metal chasing & raising, right down to flying an airplane and entering local elected politics (a misunderstood art form if ever there was one). I took on all of these things and more by choice and blended them into the way I want to lead a life, not through peer pressure, or being boxed in by bad decisions, or even convenience.

As luck would have it, my wife and partner of almost 30 years travels her own individual path as well so we understand the need to adapt to changing circumstances and life choices. We are both lousy consumers. We don't follow trends and fashions, don't feel we need the latest car, bigger house, or fancy gadgets, and when we make a bad choice, we step back and correct it rather than follow it to disaster.

I suppose it's much easier to look at the world from a parental, political, or even simply a male/female perspective. But that wouldn't be me. I'd rather show you life through a flawed artist's eyes. We'll talk of grandsons, art & music, family, physics, dogs, town life and all the other thoughts & ideas that whirl around my imagination. Those that have read my blog will recall that I didn't focus on the mundaneries of family life, such as the dinner menu or the cute faces children pull. I tried to bring some solid substance into my posts, some realism that would leave you with something to think about and sometimes leave us a bit exposed. The same holds here. I don't intend to regale cookie recipies and talk about how good the coffee is this morning. That's why I took a break - to gather up and refresh rather than just repeat and report on the nothings that make up most of our days.

Life is a strange and glorious trip. Ride with me for a while and share your thoughts and responses along the way.