by Ken Robert on April 10, 2009
If art is war, as Steven Pressfield would suggest, then ink is my weapon of choice. This is true even when I’m not writing. Working my way through Lisa Sonora Boom’s The Creative Entrepreneur, a book about developing business ideas through the use of a visual journal, I’ve had the pleasure of dabbling with paint brushes, pencils, crayons, chalk, and charcoal, but the pages I’ve created with colored ink pens are my favorite.
Maybe it’s because it feels so familiar. I’ve essentially been using black ink to draw words in notebooks and journals for several years. Now, I’m using a variety of colors and adding shapes and curves and lines. I love the way the ink gently spills onto the paper as I move my hand, and the way even the simplest doodle stands out on the page.
There’s something about the flow of it all that allows me to flow too. When I’m feeling empty and void of ideas, I find that simply creating abstract forms with a pen somehow breaks something loose inside me. Alternating colors of ink as I write does something similar.
Add some background music and I’m lost – in a good way.
I assume that some people feel this way about painting and others about knitting or whittling or even cutting and pasting.
What’s your weapon of choice? Do you know?
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discoveries
by Ken Robert on March 24, 2009
The other day I wrote about the fear of being feminine, how I was secretly a little embarrassed that so many women respond to my writing. Then an old friend, a female, left a comment on my blog about how I must be the brother she never had because we’re so much alike.
And that made me think of the sister I did have, the one that got away. Becky.
Becky died with Pneumonia as the result of the Hodgkin’s Disease that had wreaked havoc on her immune system. She was 28; I was a freshman in college. It was a tremendous loss that sent me reeling. My grades and I slipped downward together and I ended up letting an entire semester lay in ruins.
Becky was the member of my family who persistently told me I was good. Becky told everyone they were good, and when she said it, we all believed it.
When she left, I felt like I had lost the only person who believed in me and who didn’t wish to change me. (Note: This is the first time blogging has ever made me cry.)
And now, thinking about the comments and emails left by you ladies, I feel foolish for ever having worried about whether or not my material is too feminine, or masculine enough. All that it needs to be is human.
In the part of my heart that still holds onto the possibility that there really is some kind of magic in the cosmos, I’d like to think that Becky is somehow trying to send me a surplus of soul sisters who believe in me and support me the same way she once did when she was here.
So, you’ll never have to worry about me worrying, ever again, about the gender distribution of those who like what I’m doing.
Thanks, Michele.
Tagged as:
discoveries
by Ken Robert on March 23, 2009
Fears are funny things. You can have them and not even realize they’re fears, mistaking them for common sense. Everyone, for instance, knows you can’t make money doing something you love. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves, because admitting that we possibly could might mean we’d have to try and possibly fail.
One of the fears that’s kept me trapped is one I only recently recognized. I’m afraid of being feminine. It bothers me that the majority of people leaving comments on my blog are women, not because I don’t like women, but because I’m afraid of being seen as too soft, too tender, too (May I say it?) fruity. I’m not proud of these thoughts, but I’m glad to finally write them out loud.
I’ve always been secretly ashamed of my love of things that don’t meet conventional views of masculinity.
I love the raunchy rebellion of an AC/DC tune, but I also love the reflective ruminations of an Annie Lennox ballad.
I love the rough and tumble of sports, but I also love the softness of a baby’s skin.
I love the ribbing and name calling I engage in with my best buds, but I also love the heartfelt exchanges I share with my dearest friends.
I’ve long envied some of my mother’s and sister’s creative outlets. Scrap booking comes to mind, not because I wish to create little pink books with ribbons and bows, but because I see the creative potential and storytelling opportunities in piecing together words and images and textures in book form. My scrap books, if I were to make them, would have a different look, feel, purpose, and message, but the process would be much the same.
Why should men let peer pressure keep them from expressing themselves however they choose? What’s so courageous and strong about that?
Men are not sets of checklists; they are human beings. There are marvelous differences between the two sexes, but incredible commonalities exist as well. It’s too bad when we feel a need to diminish and destroy aspects of ourselves for fear of disapproval, especially when those aspects reside in all of us.
The flip side of my fear of being too feminine is the fear of being too masculine, the fear that the women who enjoy my work will be disappointed to discover I’m not always so tenderhearted. They might be shocked to hear the things I say and see the things I do when I’m out with the boys. But that’s the real me too.
Maybe that’s why men sometimes fear exploring certain kinds of creative expression. Maybe we’re not so afraid of being seen as feminine as we are of giving up our masculinity.
Perhaps we’re afraid all the parts of us can’t coexist because we’re chained to an either/or view of living. We’re either this, or we’re that, and never the twain shall meet. So, we set about denying and killing parts of ourselves in a misguided attempt to defend the others, when what the world really needs is everything we are.
The best solution I can think of is to just be ourselves, crazy little mixes of many things, and let others do the same. I think that would be damned interesting or – ahem – delightfully intriguing. Take your pick.
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discoveries