New Beginings

I randomly started reading The Artists Way about four months ago, I was trying to kill some time one Sunday evening before I had to go into work, I decided to stop and have a drink at Starbucks and read a Book that I knew I had in the trunk of my car. I opened my trunk and saw the book laying there and I decided it was a sign. Having been frustrated at work I thought it might be a good exercise for me to get my creative juices flowing. Little did I know what would come!

I heard about this book when I went to Seattle, WA for Bumbershoot 2007 ...Not only was there lots of cool music, there was lots of cool art from the silk screen posters at Flatstock to the performing art of PDL's Portable Confession Unit. Since that was in September and it is now March of 2008 I had to Google Portable Confession Unit and read about it again...

The Following is an article that was in the Seattle Times... A moment with artist Greg Lundgren

Pretend you have a social life. You don't have to bowl alone, buy single-size popcorn or hike solo in bear country. Coming up with a team for pickup ball is never a problem for you, nor is finding a fourth for bridge. Best of all, you can count on heart-to-heart conversations with close friends. If this doesn't sound like you, you might find solace for the empty space left by the absence of good conversations with a friendship simulation brought to you by the three-man Seattle artist team known as PDL (Jason Puccinelli, Greg Lundgren and Jed Dunkerley). At Bumbershoot, PDL will man three "confessional units." Anyone can say anything and get advice. Lundgren talks about PDL's latest project and the reasons why anyone would confess to an artist. On the need for portable confessional units: People need an outlet for their fears, guilts and frustrations. We offer that. It isn't a prank. We're serious. On the lack of such outlets in Seattle: It's hard to share. Maybe it's a habit we didn't develop. Lack of sharing leads to what we call "toxic thought syndrome." We'd like to place our portable confessional units in shopping centers, playgrounds, airports and businesses. They're Porta-Potties for the soul. On the reason why such talks aren't better left to therapists, rabbis and priests: Why go to a trained professional when there are artists around, eager to listen? We won't judge, no matter what. Kurt Vonnegut once said that an artist's job is to make people like life more than they did before. That's what we're trying to do. On confessionals, which are part of the Catholic Church: None of us was raised Catholic. We learned what we know about confession at the movies. -- Regina Hackett

The reason I included the article is because it explains it much better than I ever could...this project intrigued me for nervous reasons.

1. Who would confess to complete strangers?
2. What types of things would they be confessing?
3. What would I confess?
4. Why did I want to confess?

I thought long and hard about that one. Then it struck me Vie lost my creativity. So when it was my turn I walked into the booth and the voice asked what I would like to confess, I nervously said I have lost my creativity. (I figured that the listener a member of PDL was probably a creative type as well and would quite possibly understand where I was coming from...and he did) he asked my a few questions like:

1. What do I do for fun?
2. Is my job creative?
3. Where do I get my inspiration?
4. Do I surround myself with creative people?
5. Do I do any thing for myself that is creative?

And then told me many of his friends as well as himself have experienced the same thing. I told him that my job is semi creative but doesn’t allow me to be super creative or as creative as I would like to be, and that I often feel like an InDesign monkey and the going to work knowing that any one that knows the computer program could get my job and that you don’t really need any creative skills. I don’t have an answer to the question about what I do in my free time, because I don’t really do anything fun or creative in my free time, it is spent doing house work or non fun stuff.

Then he also recommended The Artists Way as a way to aid in finding my creative self. So I came home in September and bought the book, I read a few pages in the days after it came but then for some reason I put it in my car and promptly forgot about it until that cold December evening.

At first I was a little worried about it because it started off semi religious. Even though I believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit I don’t really like talking about it with others. So that worried me that it was going to be a religious journey.

I was pretty good about writing, then things fell apart the reading said that was normal, it talked about how just as you are about to make a break through you skip a day, because you do not want to admit or come to terms wit whatever the issue is.

My initial reason for starting this is that I feel like I have lost my ambition. I think that the loss of my ambition is how I lost my creative self in the first place. I imagine this is the case because I don't take time anymore to be specifically creative. in school I had to be creative everyday because I knew that I wouldn’t pass my class or my instructors would have me work and rework a project until it was good, but sometimes you can over work something and you begin to not enjoy it anymore. I think that finding that fine line is the thing I struggle with the most; I just get tired of it and quit, that is what I did the first time. So here goes!