Johnny's Spot

Playing Catch-up

2008-03-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

So I'm playing catch-up in a lot of areas of my life right now. I'm currently nearing the end of a much needed spring-break from school. We spent most of our week with Darci's family in North Carolina where I ate way too much gravy and spent just enough time in the sun for my newly buzzed head to get burnt and start to peel. I couldn't have asked for a better week.

Two weeks ago I went home to Ohio to partake in my college roommate's wedding. I got to see a lot of people I haven't seen or talked to in years and I got to spend some quality time with some of the most inspiring people in my life. And, BONUS, I came home with a new sword-cane and a large tin of the most amazing tea in the history of the world.

All these wonderful weekends in a row have made it extra hard to think about actually going back to school. Something I've been struggling with a little lately. I see so many people around me and so many potential opportunities continue to pass me by that I've started to wonder if I should jump back into "civilization". This whole struggle was made a little more difficult this weekend when I found out my closest friend and support within the program is not coming back to school. So, I guess that's where I'm at right now.

And to top everything off, I was grilling this afternoon and managed to singe a third of my eyelashes off. Don't ask.

Confession is good for the soul

2008-01-11T11:24:00.001-08:00

Hello, my name is Johnny and I am addicted to Honey Nut Cheerios.

Sometimes I get really scared when my wife makes me watch those ghost hunting shows on tv.

I get really depressed when the topic of politics comes up.

I get tense around trains.

I am addicted to buying books.

I haven't read all the books I own.

I haven't watched all the movies I own.

I have recommended books and movies that I've never read or watched.

Sometimes I go to the grocery store just for the free samples and never buy anything.

I have purposely tried to piss off other drivers.

I screen all my calls.

I have spent way too much time thinking about what super-power I would choose should I be granted one.

Nothing annoys me more than "small talk".

Except being patronized.

I sing to myself in places other than the shower.

I would rather make something on the grill myself than eat at a fancy restaraunt.

Sometimes boxers and sometimes briefs but never boxer-briefs.

If I haven't met you at least five times, I probably don't remember your name.

I am afraid being redundant.

I am addicted to Honey Nut Cheerios.

Rainy day rock-n-roll even when the Sun's out

2008-01-10T06:13:00.000-08:00

I've been plagued lately with those questions that seem to hunt you down as life gets on and starts to have its way with you. What exactly have I done? What exactly am I doing? How have I made a difference? How am I making the world a better place? and What have I done or created that will last beyond my own years? Essentially, What is my legacy?

They are hard questions to deal with as an artist, when your craft is so immediate, when your craft disappears the second it is birthed and can never be recreated, even by you.

I'm not sure. I don't know. I can't pretend to.

I'm kind of tired of having days of reflection and thought because lately they just turn into days of melancholy and fear.

That's just where I'm at. That's just what I'm facing. That's just what I'm trying to figure out.

AnOThER ONe

2008-01-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

So I've started an additional blog for the year. I plan on continuing this blog as often as I am here, but in addition I'll be adding "REFLECTIONS" which will be a page of my year in self portraits. I've put a link on this page so you can check it out. Have as much fun as I did.

More Than Words

2007-12-22T05:56:00.000-08:00

Words I like:
Smile, discombobulate, booty, savant, articulate, specificity, collaborate, extrapolate, individualize, streamline, home, lost, forest, seductive

Words I dislike:
Disappoint, discharge, owe, racist, malignant, nub, cute, milky, govern, judge, terminate, tutor, now, never

Words that are overused:
Awesome, like, love, passion, brilliant, genius, gentrification, maybe, whatever, extreme, some, spiritual

Words that aren’t used enough:
Thanks, hi, no

Daring Greatly

2007-12-15T04:47:00.001-08:00

Not merely to be an artist but to live daring greatly.
To have faith in something and constantly try to prove its fallicies. To stake your reputation on a risk that nobody else sees. To dare greatness in something trivial. To risk insignificance for a moment of laughter. To stare irrelevance in the face because noone else will. To fail for the sake of failing. To walk when everyone else is running. To laugh and cry in the same breath.
To devote your life to something that is constantly misunderstood and to not apologize for it.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat".

Theodore Roosevelt
"The Man In The Arena" Speech at the Sorbonne Paris, France April 23, 1910

Naked Freefalls and Toys

2007-10-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

This week was a tough one. Not only was I fighting a respiratory/sinus infection along with 25% of the State College population, I also felt like I was taking large strides backward in my work. They warned us in the beginning of the program about the “sixth week funk” and I guess I fell prey. I was getting discouraged early on in the week but by Friday I realized that I had probably learned more this week than any other week so far.
One of the things we talk about everyday in acting class is working off impulses on stage. Listening to your partner, being open and available to react, and taking everything personally is the formula for “Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances”. One of my Ah-hah! moments this week was realizing that what I thought were my impulses were actually nothing more than “ideas”. But impulse lies much deeper, beyond reason, beyond thought, and beyond any need to make sense or be interesting or understood or liked. It takes an enormous amount of trust and courage. It’s like jumping out of a plane not knowing how high you are or where you’re supposed to land, and realizing mid fall that not only did you forget your parachute but that you’re also completely naked. And then you land perfectly, or not, and discover that the reason you jumped in the first place was for the fall and not the landing. It’s terrifying, it’s revealing, it’s fast, and sometimes it’s cold.

I believe being an artist is a dangerously high calling.
Filled with responsibility and misunderstanding.

But an artist endures. As does his craft. Because they have to.
Just as impulse stirs beneath reason and ration, so does the need to create and find expression stir beneath consumption and recognition.
The danger, however, is taking yourself too seriously. I was reminded of this as I was putting some things away in my locker on Friday. First of all I’m a Graduate student with a locker. I haven’t had a locker since high school. Secondly I have no books in my locker. Instead I have mouthwash, a couple 3 feet long wooden sticks, rubber cement, twine, a model airplane, two tennis rackets, drawing supplies, a pair of crayola safety scissors, and a giant stuffed koala.
So, here’s to another week of naked freefalls and lockers filled with toys.

Quick catch up.

2007-09-19T20:23:00.000-07:00

So life has been crazy lately. We've moved to Pennsylvania and I've started the program at Penn State. One of my biggest challenges has been that our teachers keep telling us not to worry about "getting it" or "understanding" anything right now, but trust in the work trust in the process and trust that they will take care of us. I think what there asking for isn't our "trust" but instead our faith and that's hard to give so freely. But I believe in this work. I believe it's important. I believe it's necessary.

Some of the quotes from today's classes:
"Change in uncomfortable"
"Pain is inevitable, suffering isn't"
"The quality of your work depends on how fully you do what you're doing"

Rain

2007-08-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

This morning it rained. I woke up and before I opened my eyes I could hear the drops hitting the leaves just outside my window and the lazily rolling thunder somewhere far away and I could hear that the world was quiet and smell the newness and freshness the rain was bringing and I knew it was one of those early morning summer rains that you think will never end so you go back to sleep just to see if it will still be there when you wake up and then you do and it is so you go back to sleep and you try and you try again and again and every time you wake up it's still raining and you can still hear the thunder only now it’s a little closer and you can still smell the rain and you think that maybe it will never stop because that’s what kind of rain it is. And it was beautiful.

The web

2007-08-04T05:50:00.000-07:00

So the other night I was talking with a friend and I brought up a question that I have thought about for a long time. Here it is:
If I knew that whatever I was creating, drawing script song poem painting dance whatever, was going to be destroyed the instant it is finished, how would that change the creative process? Would I ever be able to finish it? Would it be worth doing?
I think for years I have fundamentally believed that there are two types of art or at least two types of artists. Those who create for themselves and those who create for an audience. I’m still not sure which kind I am. I understand that even if one creates for “oneself”, wow that sounds clinical, anyway I understand that even the artist becomes an audience. But what is the driving force that leads anyone to attempt any sort of artistic creation? Is it a need to be useful, to be praised, to eat, or just a means to some sort of other ends?

The morning after I had this discussion I was walking to the train and I walked right into a spider’s web. Great, just what I needed. I was not happy about getting this sticky hard to tell if I still have any on me cause if I do it’s going to tickle and drive me nuts thread all over myself. But as I walked through this web, I saw the spider out of the corner of my eye. Now, I don’t make a habit of being very sympathetic to spiders. But I felt like I almost needed to apologize to this guy. And then I sort of understood. Creating is a part of life. It’s a NECESSITY of life. The act of creating and re-creating is all around, funny enough, in something we call God’s creation. That spider probably took a good portion of the night to build that web. It was a beautiful web. But he built it last night because at some point yesterday it was destroyed. And he’ll build another one tonight because today, it will be destroyed again.

So, I’m making a pact with myself and you all are welcome to join in. I’m going to create something today. I have no idea what it will be or if it will be here tomorrow. I don’t know if it will be good or interesting. But I do know that by creating something , anything, I will be living actively in the knowledge that this is why God invented me. And there’s just no better way to spend a day.

A few of my would be favorite things. Today anyway.

2007-07-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

Things that would have made today a little easier:
A louder alarm clock. A faster morning train. An extra seat on said morning train. A nose guard to keep that fly out of my right nostril (bug was seriously pissing me off). A cool-pack for my lunch. Faster clocks at work. A wet-wipe at the art store (pastels are way more messy when they don’t match your shirt). A faster evening train. An extra seat on said evening train. A turnstile higher or lower than my crotch, either would be fine. A key that actually unlocks my front door. A nice long backrub. Okay, I know that one’s not a “thing” but it would still be nice.
Good night July twenty forth two thousand and seven. I don’t know if I will miss you. But at least we did this thing together.

Worth the wait

2007-07-24T05:39:00.000-07:00

Three words continue to come up in my career and life as an artist: preparation, persistence, and patience.
I am not by nature a patient person.
When I attended the School at Steppenwolf, we started the entire summer with this quote by Rilke:

…all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life: in understanding as in creating. There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!

The first time I read this quote I didn’t fully understand it’s wisdom. I loved it though, if for no other reason than it seemed to defuse the responsibility and pressure to be instantly fabulous. It wasn’t until two years later when SiNNERMAN put up it’s inaugural show that I started to appreciate this kind of patience.
We all worked terribly hard. Sometimes together. Sometimes not. But when we stopped trying to work together and started playing together and trusting each other we gave birth to something that had been conceived two summers ago. It took two years but our lives seasoned our play. And it was beautiful. I guess this whole patience thing isn’t so bad after all.

Living simple is risky

2007-07-23T05:37:00.000-07:00

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler" - Henry David Thoreau

I would just simply like to add.
Life is worth the risk!

On my Mark...

2007-07-22T16:01:00.001-07:00

Well, and so I begin again.
I spent last week with a group of artists that both challenge and inspire me. A good combination to have in any commune I guess. The week was full of so much laughter and life and heartache and un-rest that I think I will relive it as long as I have a stitch of memory in my brain. I will try hard.
I’m glad you’re here. I hope you stop by often. I hope you tell me so. However, the only thing I can promise is that when I do write it will be simple and honest. That’s my goal for life right now. I’m riding a ripple from the splash that is my life and when the water is calm again I hope I can look at the reflection and say “yes, that’s what I thought”.
I’m excited to start school. And by excited I mean terrified.
I’m going to be very close and at the same time very far from the things and the people I love. I hope I’m ready.
Get set. GO!