“Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson

Genius is never calculated. It is idiosyncratic, and moves in fits and starts – never a straight line.

My day of reckoning on the journey to “genius” hit a fork in the road, demanding a decision to decide my future path. I wrestled with which direction to take, perceiving one as destiny versus the other a calculate end. Each path its own rugged journey, but both options possible. My desire, tinged with the fear of not being able to feed my child, ignited dreams of successfully switching crafts, driven by an intuitive and insightful creative imagination. I never saw that 10,000 hours meant another lifetime of practice; believing my skills, although latent, would take me to the next level, despite the truth saying something different.

Instantaneous reflection sums up all that I came to be at that point: weighing options for the sake of security.

This biblical moment of choosing – changing a life path – demanded humility and acceptance of my true self within that moment. All that I was, and all that I was capable of being from years of practice whirled in wild imaginations of becoming something new. Leaning toward efficiency and the least resistant path, my delusions of grandeur fueled my ego, believing I could command any task. The appeal of the fast track to success led me to make regretted phone calls; to not realize my inconsistency; and “give randomness and ambiguity the appearance of order, structure and uniformity.” My choice quickly revealed the pedestrian nature of my new vocation.

When the paycheck becomes more important than the dream, the intuitive becomes stunted.

Artistry too easily caters to the price tag of fame, forcing the genius impulse to breed ideas outside of main street. Its idiosyncrasy becomes compromised because its first stroke, like the first thought to action, is an inchoate creative act illusively tied to prescribed financial ends. Success becomes the product sold in the galleried marketplace, not a boundless understanding of things tossed about in the imagination. The product driven genius then becomes a pseudo intelligence, channeled only to find the right path money dictated necessary.

The rhetoric of rugged individualism requires that pervasive mediocrity exists.

Managing competition inherently relies on people never reaching success, but feeling they can if compliant, reinforcing the pseudo-genius. Market forces use an American Dream “success” story to perpetuate a delusion that people buy to feel their brilliance. This contrived success masks the mediocrity. Subliminal selfish ends compromise first thoughts, which feed the stroke of the pen, brush or hand that sets out to interpret the scale of form and function. All creative acts become a competitive act.

There are no mechanisms in America where society nurtures and celebrates creative impulses for their own sake.

Artists become a happenstance – classified as some special being sitting outside the mundane, and challenging norms because they have courageously denied participating in the day-to-day ‘systems’ – or have found a means within that system which appears to extend their creativity. In this society of product driven ends, materialism forces the artist to hide in cubicles, day in and day out, until their job salaries provide enough to get them back to their real work.

The starving artist illusion, worn like a mantle, feeds the pseudo genius, who waits for the singular moment of discovery by the service of wealthy patrons.

Money coerces decisions at the crossroad. Immediately strategizing to give value to an end product, logos churns conflicted thoughts. As a well-bred daughter to my parent’s mission of robust independence and self-reliance, my creative intelligence conflicted with their conformist interpretation of working toward the golden ring. Their narrative conjured a strategy to achieve the “right” end, exemplified by possessions, such as the right house, right car and perfected dress; promoting the ‘Horatio Alger’ myth of meritocracy – man against man for position and material success.

“Mediocrity’s shallow soul finds refuge in insincere moral platitudes – such things as ‘appropriateness’ and ‘respectfulness’, ‘politeness’ and ‘civility’ – and it is by nature deferential and obsequious, and places much emphasis on status.”

Under the light of competition, strategic moves to win, become a valued monetized action, derailing the creative purpose for truth in form and function. Operating under this motive “to win” denies any imagination to internalize how structures move within time and space, negating exploration and constraining real reflection. The preoccupation with making money, and considering what that money can buy, feeds the glory and fear of star power. With this mindset, the best end is a selfish manipulated end, which always means people lose.

Calculated materialism deadens artistry, and a mediocre reality with its preconceived notion of virtuosity deadens genius.

Superficial people co-opt mediocrity to make themselves powerful. Keeping the middle ground as a cultural norm means people get just enough to satisfy their base needs, prohibiting any motive to challenge the system of power. Position and influence measures the utility and synchronicity of being, wrapped by self-serving competition, which motivates the artist’s drive to sell their craft. Art, no longer an expression of truth, becomes a commodity, pitting idea against idea like a drag race, defining those who have “it” with those “who don’t.” The price tag defines the “it” piece. The artist becomes a shoe salesman in hipster clothing.

Innovation demands our hours in the chairs consist of learning, re-learning, and surviving the cycle of success and failure.

With the multitude of people on this earth, and the different players in any given game, the best, at best, is only a fleeting moment of time. There is always someone else in the wings, or another perspective of brilliance to shine forward and capture the pockets of big donors. Playing to the benefactor curtails the freedom to think. We are too busy playing the financial catch-up game to sustain our best true selves. This game nurtures the American soul, and is nurtured by big donors, tethering all ends to our philosophy of materialism.

To rise above the tide of mediocre expectations, and its self-fulfilled prophecies, depends on accepting the obstacles to creative truth, and turning them over to something forward moving – not being afraid to stand outside the mediocre masses.

Clear vision challenges aimlessness. Fierce curiosity distracts and sidelines comfort zones. We must believe in the third eye that counters righteous indignation against the cacophony of voices, pushing and pulling the truth, over and over again, to justify their watered down norms of thinking and being, and settling to the lowest common denominator.

The artist’s truth, isolated to the fringes, rises above the fray of mediocrity when it can feel a deep connection to love and nature, and exist without the need for power.

Art gives the abstract ideas of past, present and possible futures, real constructs. This creative imagination, inherent in the birth of its being, cannot be bought. Society needs to nurture the sentient artist rather than force it to the confines of materialism and the will of wealthy often political patrons.

We must know who we are, to rise against this tide, and trust the process of becoming.

I want to be like Ann Richards when I grow up.

Seeing the path before envisioning a completed dream.

Possibilities continually cling to secret thoughts
Narrating the poet’s script.
Desire slowly yearning for a space to show itself as
The now waits to live a second chance,
Inspired by remembrance of once being something.

The window opens and closes.

Hope searches into the vista,
Patiently breathing new air into the baggage of old skins.
Eyes materializing one truth, while
The id questions the unseen truth
Hoping the authentic self finds its sea legs.

Humanism struggles to balance the automated heart with the visceral conscience.

Walking through fear’s river of senses,
The moving moments create waves yearning for tangibility.
Practicing to stop thoughts without falling asleep.
The wind picks up the pen to the page like a brush on a canvas;
transitioning to give meaning to changing landscapes.

Whatever the platform, the eye opens to execute a hard-copy of unmitigated thoughts to the senses.

Sailing on the  paved road,
Signs pass by witnessing
The present moving to a distant past.
Memories intoxicate the imagination
Motivating the idiosyncratic stroke to be in absolute rhythm.
Only afterwards can the soul be reinvented.

A predator is a predator, no matter how much they are loved.

Time passes quickly, and before you know it a lot of water has rolled underneath the bridges that link the variant experiences in one’s life.

Before I moved into this current chapter of my life, I built a family with a man I barely knew. We were both in the rock and roll world – he always having managed bands, and me, always struggling to find my place and sound in way too many gigs that didn’t pay off.

We met at a meeting of friends on a Thursday night. The dark paneled rooms allowed the images of those people to stand for themselves. Against the wall’s dark chocolate canvas, whites and colors popped out in different ways, while those in black clothing could only be known by reading their faces to distinguish any personality. John’s creative aura beamed despite his posture showing the process of withdrawal still in play. The edges of his tattered leathered clothes revealed a life lived; yet his sad eyes let me know his need to still recover from the long journey of surviving hell.

Our life styles didn’t mix right off the bat, but that didn’t stop the connection. One day, after a trip upstate, I eyed a board of pictures – while gazing the faces on John’s life, a view of my future flashed before my eyes, and the gods showed me the path that would unfold. Fear inspired tears, which moved me to recoil, yet destiny’s course was already in play. Divinity drew me back in, and I could not turn my head to avoid the future.

We became parents – creating a being that has the best of both of us, and perhaps a bit of our creative demons. Our little beauty, in her divine feisty spirit, gave us both the reason to go on at that moment in our recovering lives. She represented – she represents – universal love. Her birth, a sign from our higher power, bound us, even though we eventually drifted apart.

John’s parenting differed from mine. He, like the endless child, devoted himself to creating a toy-chest, where playtime norms countered all the conservative rules of good parenting – he lived life as if anything was possible because one must allow their creative imagination to soar.

He took his daughter on motorcycle rides, while she sat on the front tank. He exposed her to early Lollapalooza shows, rocking it out in her mini leather jacket and docs. She slept in his tattoo parlor on 12^th and A, like a cat in the window. Whenever they were together, the nights ended watching movies on the couch, late into the night until they both fell asleep. He created a world, where all she could imagine could come alive either on the canvas, in the poem or with the impromptu verse of her dialogue. This Dad gave his little girl a world her mother was afraid to live.

Where John gave Cassie everything I could not, I gave Cassie what John could not. We were the opposite sides to a single coin: both styles of creativity necessary for an artist to make ground and be something extraordinary. In the shadow of his death, she rises like a phoenix, working through times of doubt or fear, knowing his spirit still loves and guides from the other side of her earthly dimension. Although sometimes she feels alone, she is never alone. His spirit, in constant flight, always watches over us.

We are not all genius’ in the parameters of what society dictates as genius, but we are genius in our individual ways, each and every one of us, having the power to give something of ourselves to others – to sacrifice our time and energy to help others live to their fullest potential. John gave that time and energy to his family. His love of service, his love of children, and his love of the life he imagined leaves a legacy for us to carry forward in our own endeavors as we walk our earth’s journey. It is in this mindset that we should seize the day and live the life imagined.

Carpe Diem.

 

 

 

I was on a ship sailing in the Caribbean looking for the way to Antigua to have a drink. The only way to get there was to sail the boat. Sailing open lanes, where there is no hard-fast direction or a singular path, afforded abandoning some other special important event that really meant nothing to inner salvation. I didn’t know I hated or feared life until I was on this boat, sailing to Antigua.

When we stopped in Jamaica, I decided to go into town and have a look around. The cacophonous streets filled with volumes of voices – different tones singing a city’s song of discordant rhythms i couldn’t get a pulse on. I looked around the sea of black faces that seemed covered in a veil of smoke, surrounding the scenes of women coveting chickens, and men cowering on the corner with cigarettes and sweating words. I kept walking in the dinginess – kept going forward to see what I could see – looking for something I wasn’t really sure about. I knew I had to get off the boat – to venture somewhere beyond that drink in Antigua – I had to go into the dragons mouth and see for myself the raw power of the netherworld – the world I dreaded yet wanted to watch with one eye open squinting from the corner of my oblivion.

As a rush of fear overtook me, I quickly turned back toward the boat. Running back to the safe shoreline, the distinction between the land and the sea – between the tremulous groundswell of a city made of quicksand, and the sea-lane that provided isolated safety, the distinctions became clearer. The water seemed to envelope the pain beneath my stance on the boat, while the land seemed to want to show it in all its disgust. Fear made me run faster – afraid that if I stopped a hand would grab me and pull me back toward the dark oblivion. If I paused, too easily the city’s tempting seductions would hit with an unstoppable force, which would change all who I am forever.

My greatest fear – betrayal – the void created by its forced entry – propels me to always turn away – to cower into those safe holes that shield pain – a safe haven to protect my everything – fear of the external lusts, and in the process negating my lust to protect some idea of purity.

When I reached the boat my heart was racing. I told Xavier that I had not found the store I was looking for. I never really explained the store, what it was about, or what I was looking for.

The trance force of the Jamaican islands asseverated the very essence of my fear, my obsession, my self-centered desires, a black hole of total abandon, of total self-indulgent being. To shop in the store of delight only meant death in the end, and warranted me to continue on the sea lanes toward freedom from compulsion……….

 

vocation: having a strong feeling for a particular career or occupation
beloved: dearly loved

When I first heard a writer on a TEDx clip express concern for her “beloved vocation,” my inner antennae shot a derisive gaze at the screen. Then instantly, I felt terrified that no longer would the chance to have a beloved profession prevail before the end of my years. I wondered which of my many professions from the past was – or could be in the future – beloved.

Teaching in an elite New York City high school, the apex of my academic efforts, leaves me feeling off the beam. Now that I have completed my seventh year at this school, and a total of 20 years in the ed profession, I find myself still not feeling like this job is the “everything” of who I am, or the end road. A constant redefinition of interests and goals makes me feel like I’m living on a seesaw – up and down – still deciding what I want to be when I grow up!

The students in my classes are, for the most part, are the best and the brightest of what the city offers. Each day at work is routine. I prepare singular self-contained lessons each day. I grade papers; keep track of those grades; make and administer tests; and then report to my administrator any problems, concerns or damage control. I thought this profession would give me the opportunity to inspire students, but through their eyes, I am only the task-master, becoming my own worst teacher.

I hoped to develop a vocation where I could be of service; sort of returning to the scene of the crime, and making amends for childhood rebellions. By teaching history, I hoped to not only help develop academic skills, but also offer a political forum as a means to help negotiate decision-making. I wanted collegiality among my peers, and to work in a collaborative environment, with laissez-faire support from administrators. Although idealistic, the political nature of education in and of itself bogs this  desired spirit. The thick bureaucratic ‘operational maneuverings’ leave little inspiration for me to act.

To continue up the learning ladder, I need a model to aspire to – a constructive framework. There’s only one system of operation here, and if you don’t fall into that line, your not a team player. Stifled creativity.  So I become preoccupied with figuring how much money I will make in retirement, which is at least a decade away.

I’ve lost the “beloved” notion of teaching as a noble profession. Basically, my boss told me I could only be effective, and if lucky, would visit highly effective. All my endeavors to meet my classroom goals break down in productivity reports based on student assessments. These elements make up how the system measures my effectiveness. The remnants of negative reinforcement leadership.

TEDx spots have always promoted the successes of innovators that seem to be part of collaborative work groups, in ideal work environments. It’s not in my work environment.

Twenty four years ago I was a new mother who occasionally substituted in elementary schools, while supporting my music career. I knew how to change diapers, play a pretty solid bass guitar, have sex and cook simple meals. I barely had time to write anything longer than a journal entry, poem/lyric or shopping list. My limited conversations discussed music, philosophy, living clean and local gossip. Despite a rocky marriage, I lived truthfully to my interests.

In my frustrated poverty-stricken haze of early motherhood, I thought going back to school was the means to some greater end. After losing the last gig because the female lead singer wanted an all male back-up, I entered the teaching profession hoping to change things. My illusions believed this manifest destiny would lead me to a higher ground outside of the paycheck utility. I traded creating, collaborating and performing music for the “noble” profession.

My self-doubt  all to often fears that this once edgy creative alpha player abandoned the creative drive because she really had no drive to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, I revel in watching my children grow and create their own world. I like having a job. However, through attrition, my self-confidence has deteriorated. I have reached a point where fear of  my mediocrity consumes me. The small possibility that this thinking is delusional feeds an energy to continue forward.  This narrow idealism holds to the small possibility, that at any point, recreation of my  creative imagination can once again flow easily through my veins.

Watching TED Talks expose me to achievers who have found a working creative imagination in their everyday vocation. Their stories of how successes and failures helped shaped their accomplishments bear witness to how a passion for learning, questioning, and discipline keeps these men and women on a course to rarely compromise. I need more hours in the chair to do the job that doesn’t yearn to be somewhere else, and brings together all of my life’s experiences into a single craft that exemplifies my fullest potential. To protect a “beloved vocation.”