Risk and Reward
The ToeKnee Show
I heard a quote the other day... and it became an instant poster, one I made immediately, and now is used as my mouse pad.
"Be glad you are not a genius, it makes for a very lonely life"
I'm not sure if I can fully get it under my skin, this slogan's meaning, and let it sink down deep.
I love doing nothing. More than anything, active mental meditation while walking through nature, camping in the winter... riding horseback with a few friends... exploring the wild rides of deserts and oceans.
I do very few of these things, however... becasue of the risks inherent in leading a creative life, I have to keep moving in other realms.... and such as this pulls me forwards, moment to moment...
Instead, I am writing songs, now a few scripts in process... still finishing a dozen more paintings, and constantly moving forward creatively with each and every breath... most days, most hours, most minutes spent completely in total silence and alone... not communicating or interacting with anyone... isolated in the creative ride of spiritual path as creative expression...
It's not something I could change or decide about... it's just the way it has always been.
Meanwhile...show me concrete that needs to be worked or carpentry or tile work that needs to be done and I love working it out and finishing ti all the way through like art... solo.... but could never charge for those hours since those hours are geared to the artful approach... silly and hard to explain... and not easily understood by anyone but me.
These days, after hundreds of paintings, and a few thousand hours of video still waiting to be finished into DVDs, tv shows... movies...and after writing somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 pages of prose and poetry, and over 5000 songs... close to 15 self produced albums on which I play 90% of the music... I am starting to realize, maybe I should at least consider... as I get older, including some other folks... if for no other reason than passing it along...as well as the pragmatic reality of life, has got to include realizing that some of it should be turned into serious dollars or I will just be a gutter living bum.
Then there's the gradual shift towards hands on healing and ceremony again...something I have resisted, becasue years ago, though I was very good at these things, I never felt worthy at such minimal life expereince... what has been gained in the past 15 years has been that necessary expanded view... a beginning of such a view, anyway...
and I realize I should consider not holding back because of some sense of fear that the power of such work is too large a responsibility.
whatever we have which could benefit, we must pass along, must express, must not hold back.
Learning and practice is necessary, for sure...
I was glad I slowly ripened over time, I needed to grow further... 15 years later, it's starting to any be an interest to contribute in a wider range.
None of the creative process was geared for money or fame or reward...
so... it's no surprise I haven't any high rise offices or widely known production companies, or hand prints on the walk of fame, or huge catologue of officially released work.
But I do have the work complied to a degree, documented and prtected from the rain.
Living while creatively walking this path had been a tight rope act that blows my newly advanced pragmatic thinking-mind... in other words... more risk than you would believe...
and almost terrifies me to overview in retrospect.
somebody somewhere had to be watching out for me.
to still be in one piece.
I know enough about the risks and have met the many who haven't made it this far... to be able to say this.
Relying very little on material reward, I can't tell stories like Willie Nelson can, about selling a song for a bag of grocereis...I heard he had to buy that one back for a couple million 30 years later.
A bag of groceries that fed his family, eventually made others probably 10 million in royalties in all those years.. just a guess.
I never made those kinds of deals.
Folks never knew I could.
I always knew it.
I have a few gems, sitting idle, that no one has seen, heard or read...
It's a rather difficult thing to stomach the concept that if I werre to be hit by a flash flood right now, it would all be for naught.
I have watched, and noticed, that ... over the years, the various folks I have interacted with around me have profited if they listen close.
a few years back I helped invent-re-invent a direct marketing info-mercial... it made those folks millions upon millions.
and I wasn't astute enough to get my portion for the part played, in time...or to have an agreement on paper. though I documented it in other ways, getting my share would require a legal war, these days... and though I do have some residual trauma from surviving such ordeals of awareness... and several incredibly intense years of painful scars that will walk with me now, from here on out....
I was able to steady myself just enough and almost stand back up completely enough to recognise that it was good not to go to war over money... so far...I have come to understand is directly in opposition to the fuel for inspiration that helps me create all future art, music... and many other outcomes... beyond money.
Most of which, as I have already said, may not ever get seen by the real intended audiences, if a big tsunami hits...
I study survival and martial art and other skill in realms that most would not recognise as such art forms.
for example, If I ever did survival, it was really survival. Like the kind that happens in the mission district at 3 am on a moonless night, while gangs blast luxury cars windows up and down the streets around me... I was there... I survived that... I got a few hundred stories like this... absurd in their detail because I was alone in those deserts with no safety nets... none...
If I ever had to fire walk, it was real fire... if I had to survive in a situation, and the fact is that I survived, because I am alive today, I had to find those routes with no room for error... none... it was way beyond fear factor... and it makes me feel really crazy to have been there in that deep without any idea I was going to end up in such equations.
In fact... looking back on some of these just now, I wish I had been offered a way to "sell out" at such times... and I never could chastise anyone for saving their own asses in some creative negotiation with the devil, like Rober Johnson at those crossroads.
I don't seek out such risks.
and I have come to tell folks, "don't be me"... "dont' follow me"... "take the easier roads".
Needless to say, I also finally came to understand that everyone gets their versions of risk/reward equations and challenges to solve in their life. And each life has a certain number of close escapes which require instant flexibility with no fear...
or they'd be dead.
and as we know , folks die each and ever day.
in fact..
I ahve even come to believe that the flashback sequence on the road to dropping the body is a certain style of ride that could actually become a redemptive process, and a healing all in one. Most folks see it as the last movie and then drop into peace... but many, upon many, each and every day more, speak about making a choice, then recovery with no disease apaarent afterwards... baffling for the doctors... but when you hear the story, it was the request of the soul for "more time", or "another chance"
To me...
it's all the same as the creative process...
If you go into it with open eyes, and really interact with it, by the time you are finished you may see you survived the ride of death... and came back different from what you saw.
these expereinces... well...they come with the territory.
I guess I have been successful so far, because i have survived.
The heart stopped beating, but then it started again.
And I saw a movie.
But solo, is solo...
and no matter the art, music, or whatever else I leave behind... it will benefit others, not me... at least that is how it has been so far.
and we all know that , no matter the extensions we all seem to get,
nothing will last forever... not even us..
that is...
not forever in the physical.
all things eventually transform.
Some say all things change.
True.
But notice, they do not just change...
They transform..
as do we.
each and every day, different than the day before.
Either being born, or busy dying.
Notice I never described any of this as rebirth.
. ..Yet, if you study the equations of the process of creative growth, or creative life, or creative anything... such as painting, you are different at the end of the phase, than you were in the beginning.
And if you do a good job, everyone who sees what you create, hears what you create, breathes what you created, is also different, transformed by it.
the more you do it.. the better you get at it.. and some call it mastering the process.
but every master knows this:
Once you master it, you actually are just a little closer to beginning do it for REAL.
So... I do what I can to keep the ourtcomes safe.
But the tight roape, fire walk of it... is just part of it.
no other routes could be as successful.
and surely these efforts will bear fruit.
Will you someday be walking past one of my paintings in a museum of moderrn art?
Will this writing be posted next to it, or avaliable on a DVD?
Seems like adestiny of sorts, that is already 80% finishsed... because I am transcribing it all and digitizing it all as we speak.
..........
In my world, it will all be a failed process, unless it inspires you to reveal your bveauty through your creative process...
Which surely exists, becasue you are breathing and living , too.
The process of living, however, under these circumstances is beyond climbing mount everest.
but it's a walk in the park compared to some.
...........
I have come to understand that many of the early successes of our modern era, some of the people we see as role models, can't find it so easy as they get older to live with themselves... knowng what they compromised, becasue of overwhelming desire or fear, to get a quicker route or a safer route... when the heat got hot.
Those are the people we walk and live among.
And the ones we can reclaim if we inspire them to notice the good they still can create from reflected within.
in some cases, they may have helped us have a better world... in others, they have convinced/tricked a majority into believing along with them, that cheating your way forward is a better way towards success, as long as no one knows.
yet they know... they know... in their hearts they know... how they got wherever they got.
and why it was never really worth it.
I used to point such folks out, to others, 15... 20 years ago.
But I was pointing right back at myself.
going forward sneaking your way around the risk... you get to find your own scary ghosts and the house is haunted.
and resentment... follows all around...
and the worlds goes grayer.
It's not a path, or a rotue to envy.
and what folks who chose such routes need more than anything is compassion.
unless they feel that, they won't feel safe enough to notice you coul dhelp them.
yes you.
recognise the part of someone that;s worth belieivng in again, and watch it grow again.
try it and see.
it really works..
like a charm.
no matter the damage they left behind them, it all will fall away eventually,
but converting a path of darkness and emptiness to light and love, it's actually the best art of all to see... and experience.
there would be no stories to teach anyone, unless someone was there and survived to tell the tale.
This installment has no solutions.
Nor explanations.
I'm going to start presenting some of my catalogue.... finally... soon.
But it's not going to be hyped or targetted for a mass audience, like I thought it would be 15 years ago.
I am a believer that the fruit which is sweet will draw the partakers.
It's a way to rely on the innner glow.
and to get away from the expected result is the only way to give the process more spring, more fly power... such arrows fly farther...
when they are released with les sloppy tension..
I guess it's what a person develops if they survive enough..
just a premise.
the proof is always in the pudding.
.........
As far as my own creature comfort -needs and wants- I trrust my catalogue- It's going to build a certain amount of basic simple lifestyle.
comfort is not the goal.
it's the by-product.
yeah , that's what I want to say...
the objective is not to find, create or seek comfort... a comfortable life.
The real goal is to stop holding back... and let the audience /viewers decide what gets voted further, and to listen as they drink it in....
also known as;
Removing the cover from the lighted lamp...
...letting the folks who are seeking these kinds of flavors, be able to find them... getting out of the way.
Since it all came from God/Goddess anyway...
It behooves me to step out of the way of it's flow back to God/Goddess through you.
yeah.
I can't believe it... the spell check says there are not any mistakes here....
impossible. impossible. impossible...
www.ARTintoLIFE.com
http://www.zazzle.com/toekneestanger*
I heard a quote the other day... and it became an instant poster, one I made immediately, and now is used as my mouse pad.
"Be glad you are not a genius, it makes for a very lonely life"
I'm not sure if I can fully get it under my skin, this slogan's meaning, and let it sink down deep.
I love doing nothing. More than anything, active mental meditation while walking through nature, camping in the winter... riding horseback with a few friends... exploring the wild rides of deserts and oceans.
I do very few of these things, however... becasue of the risks inherent in leading a creative life, I have to keep moving in other realms.... and such as this pulls me forwards, moment to moment...
Instead, I am writing songs, now a few scripts in process... still finishing a dozen more paintings, and constantly moving forward creatively with each and every breath... most days, most hours, most minutes spent completely in total silence and alone... not communicating or interacting with anyone... isolated in the creative ride of spiritual path as creative expression...
It's not something I could change or decide about... it's just the way it has always been.
Meanwhile...show me concrete that needs to be worked or carpentry or tile work that needs to be done and I love working it out and finishing ti all the way through like art... solo.... but could never charge for those hours since those hours are geared to the artful approach... silly and hard to explain... and not easily understood by anyone but me.
These days, after hundreds of paintings, and a few thousand hours of video still waiting to be finished into DVDs, tv shows... movies...and after writing somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 pages of prose and poetry, and over 5000 songs... close to 15 self produced albums on which I play 90% of the music... I am starting to realize, maybe I should at least consider... as I get older, including some other folks... if for no other reason than passing it along...as well as the pragmatic reality of life, has got to include realizing that some of it should be turned into serious dollars or I will just be a gutter living bum.
Then there's the gradual shift towards hands on healing and ceremony again...something I have resisted, becasue years ago, though I was very good at these things, I never felt worthy at such minimal life expereince... what has been gained in the past 15 years has been that necessary expanded view... a beginning of such a view, anyway...
and I realize I should consider not holding back because of some sense of fear that the power of such work is too large a responsibility.
whatever we have which could benefit, we must pass along, must express, must not hold back.
Learning and practice is necessary, for sure...
I was glad I slowly ripened over time, I needed to grow further... 15 years later, it's starting to any be an interest to contribute in a wider range.
None of the creative process was geared for money or fame or reward...
so... it's no surprise I haven't any high rise offices or widely known production companies, or hand prints on the walk of fame, or huge catologue of officially released work.
But I do have the work complied to a degree, documented and prtected from the rain.
Living while creatively walking this path had been a tight rope act that blows my newly advanced pragmatic thinking-mind... in other words... more risk than you would believe...
and almost terrifies me to overview in retrospect.
somebody somewhere had to be watching out for me.
to still be in one piece.
I know enough about the risks and have met the many who haven't made it this far... to be able to say this.
Relying very little on material reward, I can't tell stories like Willie Nelson can, about selling a song for a bag of grocereis...I heard he had to buy that one back for a couple million 30 years later.
A bag of groceries that fed his family, eventually made others probably 10 million in royalties in all those years.. just a guess.
I never made those kinds of deals.
Folks never knew I could.
I always knew it.
I have a few gems, sitting idle, that no one has seen, heard or read...
It's a rather difficult thing to stomach the concept that if I werre to be hit by a flash flood right now, it would all be for naught.
I have watched, and noticed, that ... over the years, the various folks I have interacted with around me have profited if they listen close.
a few years back I helped invent-re-invent a direct marketing info-mercial... it made those folks millions upon millions.
and I wasn't astute enough to get my portion for the part played, in time...or to have an agreement on paper. though I documented it in other ways, getting my share would require a legal war, these days... and though I do have some residual trauma from surviving such ordeals of awareness... and several incredibly intense years of painful scars that will walk with me now, from here on out....
I was able to steady myself just enough and almost stand back up completely enough to recognise that it was good not to go to war over money... so far...I have come to understand is directly in opposition to the fuel for inspiration that helps me create all future art, music... and many other outcomes... beyond money.
Most of which, as I have already said, may not ever get seen by the real intended audiences, if a big tsunami hits...
I study survival and martial art and other skill in realms that most would not recognise as such art forms.
for example, If I ever did survival, it was really survival. Like the kind that happens in the mission district at 3 am on a moonless night, while gangs blast luxury cars windows up and down the streets around me... I was there... I survived that... I got a few hundred stories like this... absurd in their detail because I was alone in those deserts with no safety nets... none...
If I ever had to fire walk, it was real fire... if I had to survive in a situation, and the fact is that I survived, because I am alive today, I had to find those routes with no room for error... none... it was way beyond fear factor... and it makes me feel really crazy to have been there in that deep without any idea I was going to end up in such equations.
In fact... looking back on some of these just now, I wish I had been offered a way to "sell out" at such times... and I never could chastise anyone for saving their own asses in some creative negotiation with the devil, like Rober Johnson at those crossroads.
I don't seek out such risks.
and I have come to tell folks, "don't be me"... "dont' follow me"... "take the easier roads".
Needless to say, I also finally came to understand that everyone gets their versions of risk/reward equations and challenges to solve in their life. And each life has a certain number of close escapes which require instant flexibility with no fear...
or they'd be dead.
and as we know , folks die each and ever day.
in fact..
I ahve even come to believe that the flashback sequence on the road to dropping the body is a certain style of ride that could actually become a redemptive process, and a healing all in one. Most folks see it as the last movie and then drop into peace... but many, upon many, each and every day more, speak about making a choice, then recovery with no disease apaarent afterwards... baffling for the doctors... but when you hear the story, it was the request of the soul for "more time", or "another chance"
To me...
it's all the same as the creative process...
If you go into it with open eyes, and really interact with it, by the time you are finished you may see you survived the ride of death... and came back different from what you saw.
these expereinces... well...they come with the territory.
I guess I have been successful so far, because i have survived.
The heart stopped beating, but then it started again.
And I saw a movie.
But solo, is solo...
and no matter the art, music, or whatever else I leave behind... it will benefit others, not me... at least that is how it has been so far.
and we all know that , no matter the extensions we all seem to get,
nothing will last forever... not even us..
that is...
not forever in the physical.
all things eventually transform.
Some say all things change.
True.
But notice, they do not just change...
They transform..
as do we.
each and every day, different than the day before.
Either being born, or busy dying.
Notice I never described any of this as rebirth.
. ..Yet, if you study the equations of the process of creative growth, or creative life, or creative anything... such as painting, you are different at the end of the phase, than you were in the beginning.
And if you do a good job, everyone who sees what you create, hears what you create, breathes what you created, is also different, transformed by it.
the more you do it.. the better you get at it.. and some call it mastering the process.
but every master knows this:
Once you master it, you actually are just a little closer to beginning do it for REAL.
So... I do what I can to keep the ourtcomes safe.
But the tight roape, fire walk of it... is just part of it.
no other routes could be as successful.
and surely these efforts will bear fruit.
Will you someday be walking past one of my paintings in a museum of moderrn art?
Will this writing be posted next to it, or avaliable on a DVD?
Seems like adestiny of sorts, that is already 80% finishsed... because I am transcribing it all and digitizing it all as we speak.
..........
In my world, it will all be a failed process, unless it inspires you to reveal your bveauty through your creative process...
Which surely exists, becasue you are breathing and living , too.
The process of living, however, under these circumstances is beyond climbing mount everest.
but it's a walk in the park compared to some.
...........
I have come to understand that many of the early successes of our modern era, some of the people we see as role models, can't find it so easy as they get older to live with themselves... knowng what they compromised, becasue of overwhelming desire or fear, to get a quicker route or a safer route... when the heat got hot.
Those are the people we walk and live among.
And the ones we can reclaim if we inspire them to notice the good they still can create from reflected within.
in some cases, they may have helped us have a better world... in others, they have convinced/tricked a majority into believing along with them, that cheating your way forward is a better way towards success, as long as no one knows.
yet they know... they know... in their hearts they know... how they got wherever they got.
and why it was never really worth it.
I used to point such folks out, to others, 15... 20 years ago.
But I was pointing right back at myself.
going forward sneaking your way around the risk... you get to find your own scary ghosts and the house is haunted.
and resentment... follows all around...
and the worlds goes grayer.
It's not a path, or a rotue to envy.
and what folks who chose such routes need more than anything is compassion.
unless they feel that, they won't feel safe enough to notice you coul dhelp them.
yes you.
recognise the part of someone that;s worth belieivng in again, and watch it grow again.
try it and see.
it really works..
like a charm.
no matter the damage they left behind them, it all will fall away eventually,
but converting a path of darkness and emptiness to light and love, it's actually the best art of all to see... and experience.
there would be no stories to teach anyone, unless someone was there and survived to tell the tale.
This installment has no solutions.
Nor explanations.
I'm going to start presenting some of my catalogue.... finally... soon.
But it's not going to be hyped or targetted for a mass audience, like I thought it would be 15 years ago.
I am a believer that the fruit which is sweet will draw the partakers.
It's a way to rely on the innner glow.
and to get away from the expected result is the only way to give the process more spring, more fly power... such arrows fly farther...
when they are released with les sloppy tension..
I guess it's what a person develops if they survive enough..
just a premise.
the proof is always in the pudding.
.........
As far as my own creature comfort -needs and wants- I trrust my catalogue- It's going to build a certain amount of basic simple lifestyle.
comfort is not the goal.
it's the by-product.
yeah , that's what I want to say...
the objective is not to find, create or seek comfort... a comfortable life.
The real goal is to stop holding back... and let the audience /viewers decide what gets voted further, and to listen as they drink it in....
also known as;
Removing the cover from the lighted lamp...
...letting the folks who are seeking these kinds of flavors, be able to find them... getting out of the way.
Since it all came from God/Goddess anyway...
It behooves me to step out of the way of it's flow back to God/Goddess through you.
yeah.
I can't believe it... the spell check says there are not any mistakes here....
impossible. impossible. impossible...
www.ARTintoLIFE.com
http://www.zazzle.com/toekneestanger*
posted by Toe Knee at 10:59 PM
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