The age-old pizza question: What exactly is this elusive "art" you speak of?

So what is art, and why have I given my life to her slavery and keeping? And what on earth is a pizza question?

Hmm, good questions. They require an expedition into my memories and into my soul to answer. Please put on your spacesuit plus any protective gear you deem necessary, and welcome to the deepest recesses of my mind and heart. *flicks on cave light on helmet and gazes around with a twinge of trepidation*

Bottom line, art equals work to me. How productive I am in my art is directly proportionate to how much food winds up on my dinner table, or how sweet my digs will be. I speak of it light-heartedly, but when your fate hangs in the hands of this internal kid who runs around making things and singing all day, it can be nail-bitingly worrisome. I had a recording professor in college say that some months you'll be rolling in green. Then, just when you think things are peachy keen, you'll be sucking up that legendary top Rawman, and scrounging in the couch for loose change. Yes, it can be that bad, or worse, if you don't put out the art.

I've held on to my financial sanity with white knuckles more than a few times, and I've sacrificed many things to make music, but I am not a martyr either. i've worked a desk job that had nothing to do with my dream, but I put it to use. For a few years I worked for an airline, helping passengers, learning the ins and outs of the air travel industry. It gave me free flight benefits, and I used them to network. I performed around the country, wherever I could land a gig. my goal was just to get my voice in their heads, just to get my sound out there, as we say in the industry.

I have friends who make music full-time, and now that my chance has come, I'm putting my artistic talent to work on myself and my own life. Life, to me, is a blank canvace, I am the paintbrush, art is the paint, and God is the artist. I am not, nor would I ever wish to be the source of my art. I have a gift, and a calling to use that gift, and if I stand idle and do not allow God to steer me across the canvace of life, then what good is life?

It's that simple. That is why I am devoting these twelve weeks to molding myself into a really good paintbrush for God to grab and guide.

Okay, now on to that scarey looking question lurking in the corner, the mysterious gentleman everyone is attracted to, but no fair maid wants to court...

What is art?

There, I asked it!

For many of us art is a passion, a hobby, a job, a lifestyle...
why can't it be all of those and more? *Yes, I am a proponent of the socratic method, thanks for asking.) *grin*

to me, the best way I can describe my art is as my calling. Five years ago, I was singing a solo in Handel's Messiah, when an incredible feeling stole over me. I felt like I was hovering in the back of my own head, hearing and feeling myself singing, but I was no more in control than a leaf in a hurricane. Time froze around me; the only thing I could hear was the music, and the only thing I could feel was the ebb and flow of my breath. I was nothing more than a witness to the music I was performing. God had me in the palm of His mighty hand, and the music just moved through me. It was an incredible feeling, the right feeling. I knew I was in the right place, doing what I was put on Earth to do, and the sensation was so all-consuming that it left no room for doubt or fear.

It still feels that way today. Yes, I've had doubts and frustrations. I've thought I'm not good enough, I've been rejected and frustrated, but I've kept at it. I'd rather live my dream and live as an artist following her heart than turn from the calling God gave me and give up. Okay, there are nights I think I must be crazy to do this job, but it's really not even a choice for me. I have to be an artist; I can't do anything else. Like I have to eat, sleep, drink water, I
have to create, and I have to do it to live--to make my living doing it, to live off of it as I live off the blood in my own flesh.

Try explaining this to people who haven't been bitten by the bug... I've never had success with that one. It's a sure-fire way to get yourself labeled "loser," "troubled emotional dreamer," and/or "nuts." Life is choices, but some you can't change, even if you wanted to, which i don't. In as much as He created me, God made me a musician, an artist. Hard as people have tried to pull me away with persuasion and reason, I can't separate myself from that which I am formed of. Believe me, I've tried a time or two, and suffered for it. Just because a lot of musicians/artists turn to drugs for inspiration, we now have a stigma that proclaims us all hangers-on to the edges of society. We cling to the fringe, and worst of all, we then turn this vision in on ourselves. Sure, we do tend to be a little more flamboyant, and yes, some drink and do drugs or sex, or whatever earthly fun attracts that kid inside that is responsible for spouting out the art... but in the end, leave the labels at the door. You are an artist, and if you work at it hard enough and know you must create, then the social pitfalls attached to your profession choice are things you learn to live with and just disregard after a while. Okay, so it's harder to do that when you're being pin-holed by well-meaning family at the Thanksgiving dinner table, or when you note the shrewd gaze of the spit-'n-polish business snoot averting his eyes from your harp case as you board the train. But trust me, like art, ignoring the criticism just gets easier with practice. (Yeah, tell yourself that one when you're lugging that harp onto the stage at a wedding for the surgeon and the attorney...) But that's for another blog post. :-d



Here's an exerpt of the journal entry I wrote about that night singing
the Messiah years ago:

I belong here, in this moment, in this music. The questing fingers of petty cares and monumental woes cannot touch me here in the center of my freedom.

I stand still and quiet, my breathing slow, strong and steady. The calm of knowing the stage is my work and my life washes over me like a tide, and soothes every nerve, every thought, every heartbeat. Some hitherto dormant part of my soul awakens in the space inside me, and steps majestically forward to claim her righteous place in my being. That part of my soul comes to life only when I set foot on the stage, but each time I meet her is more memorable than the last. She is a part of me that slumbers through the laughter and strife of every other part of my life, and in her lies my true solace, the one outlet to perfection in this world for me. I love that part of me that stays so well-hidden that even I don't know her secrets or her desire until the moment she arises. Each time I feel her close her hungry, loving hands around the rest of my pensive heart, I know I am safe and ready to perform, and all the fear or worry of the days leading up to a big performance melts away like ice, revealing a spring ready to be beheld in all its glory.

Here there is no ego, no self-doubt, and no room for wishful thinking. I am what I am, no more and no less, and I cannot deceive myself into believing I am anything else. Every night on stage is different, and every moment is a new evaluation of self, song and
audience reaction. Tonight, I feel beautiful, strong, and at peace, and in everything I do, I reflect those feelings into the hearts of my audience. They become everything I am, and in turn, I take upon me the reign of the kingdom of their emotions, playing upon their hearts like fiddles, feeding them like my subjects, and serving them like a slave.

The heat of the stage lights warms my skin, and the organ thunders around me, mellow, deep, like the purr of some mighty lion at play. The musicians behind me stand as still as statues, poised, ready to sing when I step back. The conductor's tuxedo jacket rustles when he raises his baton, and time flickers to a stop as I wait for the next downbeat.

The baton moves, the organ echoing around the church falls silent, and I open my mouth. Breathe into the phrase, and notes fall from my lips rich as gold and strong as diamonds. The music courses through my body thicker than blood and life itself. I belong to the music, a willing captive of the song pouring from my lungs. Somehow, I am singing, and there is nothing I'd rather do.

I am transformed by the act of singing. I am a fertile field planted with seeds of desires, misgivings, hopes, and expectations. The seeds stir in me, quiver in the air I draw through my body, and blossom on my lips to be given back to the audience from whence they came. God gives them roses, and lilies, and the boundless beautiful vivid things of life that only music can grow. They receive their roses graciously; they drink thirstily from the waters of the song; they bathe themselves in my voice and the cry of the organ, letting the music wash them clean of mundane and painful things. They are nourished by the food of the field, they rejoyce with me in the harvest. They grow. They in turn feed me--I surrender myself to them and to the music, and vanish into the song, eveanescing into the whole of the meaning of my life. I am music.

End of exerpt

Well, in retrospect (reading it five years later unedited), that's poetic, but true. Usually I don't think of it that way. Usually it's a show or a paycheck or a recording session. It's work to me, just like anyone with a desk job, a nurse, or a teacher. Usually I'm wrapped up in the moment and in the music too much to reflect on it like that and delve into that mystical exchange between the audience and myself. But occasionally, like that night, I know the power of what I do, and I am awed by it.

I was called to spend my life making music. I don't just sing or play, I produce, I help others create. More than anything, I love seeing the vision sitting tied up in someone's soul, and giving them the tools to set it free. Is this all too poetic for you? Come in the studio with me sometime when someone brings a song they've written to the table. Yes, I still have to consider the market and the charts and profit... but to me, that's part of art.

Everything I am, everything I do is creative. I sing, I play and compose, I write, I live Yoga, I cook, I model, I sculpt, I live.

Living is art. I guess that's where this whole thing starts. Life is composed of events, notes of a symphony, strokes of a brush, prisms, colors expanding and contracting around you. Some of them are yours to conduct in this symphony, to coordinate and guide. Others are yours to play, your solos, your harmonies, they feel alive in your hands, are at your command. Others move around you, and you are their witness, the audience to their performance. Some pass you by and you don't even know they were there. Some are so brilliantly exquisite that we are brought to our knees with sheer admiration and respect. Looking up at those moments in awe, we can honestly reflect on how beautiful or painfully miraculous life is. Others hurt, burn, ache, destroy, transform. Still others uplift, blossom into joyous strains we carry inside us for ever. Others just lead to the big moments, but that makes them no less special. Art is the appreciation and the expression of these, from one human being to another. Or at least, that's kind of my definition of art, from my vantage point at this moment. Things may change. but for now...

Whether you're reading this for fun, for motivation or for inspiration, or whatever, I hope you find what you need here. No, scratch that. I hope you find what you need within yourself, and that you then take that knowledge and apply it. Use it, become what you've been waiting to be. No one will live your dreams for you. No one has for me, and I'd feel cheated if they had done so. Some of my dreams crash-landed, and I would have saved myself a lot of injury if I hadn't been riding them, but I wouldn't have missed them for the world.

That's the artist's way: living life for the blues and the reds, the fortissimos and the pianissimos, the catharsis and the fall-asleep-out-of-bordom pages. Today, I'm starting the artist's Way by just living, that's creation, that's art, and it's enough.

Oh yeah *catching breath from the last torrent of words* To answer your burning question: what is a pizza question? It is a term devised by one of my favorite teachers--an honors english teacher I studied with in my senior year. Simply, a pizza question is a question that, when asked, requires the immediate consumption of the largest pizza available. Eat the entire pizza while debating/answering the question, and if there is still more to discuss, then you, my friend, have met the infamous pizza question.

So? What's your pizza question concerning art? Try discussing it with those around you (preferably over a really good pizza). Are you the main character of your life, or does someone else rule you with an iron fist against your will? What role does art take in your life? How do you perceive art? and who directs your life? You? God? Something or someone else? What are you waiting for? Go eat!!! That's where I am going after writing all of this!