This is a reposting of a blog entry I made a few months back on Blogger. I didn't follow through with that blog theme and it just sat there. This posting, however, gives a good snapshot of where I've been and where I'm tryig to go.
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“What the hell am I doing with my life?”
I ask myself this question, while sitting at a coffee shop, gazing out at the parking lot. It was during a lunch hour while at Maryland Avenue Elementary School (quite the creative name for a school, I know) where I first had the realization that I want to be an artist. As with many kids, I was fascinated by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As I put a pencil to paper and attempt to draw my favorite character, Donetello, in an action pose, the kid next to me peers over and (with the kind of blatant honesty only children have the capacity for) commences to ostracize my abilities by bringing to my attention that what I had illustrated looked nothing like a ninja turtle. I had just moved back to the United States from a 4-year stint in Iran. I had a very limited understanding of the English language but, for some reason, that kid’s message resonated. I began to stare at the details of my drawings: Why was it that it looked like a Ninja Turtle in my head but when it made it’s way through my brain, into my eyes, through my hands and down on paper, it came out looking nothing like the hero in a half shell? I made it my mission to understand. During this time, my big brother worked for the City of San Diego. He would bring home stacks of used computer paper, the backs of which would become my canvas.
After two years of personal scrutiny, I made some small advances. During my three years of elementary school in America, I managed to write many short stories to great reviews from my classes. I won many writing contests with my broken English, even moving on to win the all-school D.A.R.E. (Drug Awareness Resistance Education) speech contest in the 5th grade. By the time Middle School rolled around, the turtle was looking a lot more like the one I was seeing on TV. This is when the realization hit me: I am not necessarily meant to be an illustrator but a storyteller.
Storytelling can take many forms whether they be visual art, poetry or film. The first time filmmaking popped into my head was when I was in High School, sitting in a nearly empty theater and watching Bad Boys. I have no shame in admitting that Michael Bay was an instrumental part in my personal development. The visuals blew me completely away! The musical score, the movement, the colors and the energy… The film bug hit me. During this period I started to dabble in music, creating hip-hop beats for my friends and drawing t-shirt designs for our school teams. I took drama; this was without a doubt where I felt most at home. In early college, I collaborated with a friend on a combination art piece which fused music, poetry and performance art. At a KPBS awards ceremony, we relieved the longest standing ovation.
As the years went by and life started to pressure me into looking at more realistic ways to make a living, something got lost. There was a deeply personal drive inside of me which screamed from the debts of my soul with an earth shattering demand that I must create – create for the sake of creating because if I didn’t I might just physically burst. That scream started to get muffled by the setting fear. Fear of lacking credibility, fear of poverty, fear of loosing face and fear of loosing respect. I sat on the bench at Mesa Community College’s lunch area and looked on as my friends moved on to bigger better things like med school and fraternity life at San Diego State University. They were having the time of their lives while I worked full time for a major insurance carrier and keeping the heel of my boot on that screaming voice. The Voice began giving up.
Feeling the intense weight on my chest, I made the decision to follow a creative professional path. My theory was that if I was a professional graphic designer, I could satisfy both sides: My personal need to be creative as well as society’s pressure to be a professional. I decided to transform my passion into a job. After interning for the Port of San Diego and working directly with graphic designers, I realized that creative work is still just that: work! I took on some side projects and watched other graphic designers around me, coming to the bitter conclusion that the creativity part of the industry is only about 25% of the job. The rest is deadlines, business management, office politics and appeasement of clients. Graphic design in a nutshell: You give the client four incredible options and one you threw together quickly just so you can show an even five and he/she invariably chooses that last one which you could have created in Microsoft Word.
I looked around and felt that everyone had left me in the dust. I imagined my most talented friends from drama class acting in stage plays and my Iranian friends starting their own medical practices. At this time, I dabbled heavily in entrepreneurial endeavors such as trying to start 2.0 web services and even a beauty supply shop, which my father was willing to fund; a brick and mortars business which he understood. Two or three years of my life was spent in these kinds of startup environments. Then the economy crashed. Two or three years of my life wasted away. Everything I had been working on came to a halt, just like that. For some bizarre reason, I had this tiny twinkle of relief underneath the crushing depression. What is this weird feeling? Where is it coming from?
A few months ago, I sat down to coffee with an old friend from drama. She was, without a doubt, the most talented actress I personally know. During our chat, she reveled to me that she never followed up on acting after high school and currently worked in an office. I noticed something familiar in her eyes. Call it personal projection or intuition but it looked eerily similar to that same longing which I felt. There was a Voice somewhere inside of her which she had managed to muffle as well. We sat in silence for a moment, acknowledging each other’s blood stained boot heels and the hemorrhaging Voice underneath.
The world felt like a daze. I began reaching out to old friends, going on coffee dates and browsing MySpace & Facebook profiles. Simultaneously suddenly and progressively , I realized I wasn’t alone. There were many out there like me. We were all walking through life, taking steps towards our respective & “respectable” career paths with one foot and using the other to curb stomp that Voice, periodically stopping to wipe the blood off and then continuing on. We look like professionally dressed zombies and talk like young go-getters. You would not know we exist unless you are one of us. You wouldn’t notice that moment of sadness and acknowledging silence that we share unless you had a Voice inside of you. The closest frame of reference I could give you was a scene in Brokeback Mountain where Jake Gyllenhaal's character non-verbally communicates with a man he briefly meets at dinner with his wife. They make eye contact, not a word is said but the implications are very clearly made; they share the same crushingly closeted lives.
I made the decision that I would follow my dream. Filmmakers are real people and becoming one, difficult as the journey may be, is not impossible. After all, look at how much crap Hollywood produces on a regular basis! Like any industry, it’s about marketing, networking and follow-through. There are people that talk and people that do – all I have to do is switch from seeing it as a dream to seeing it as a goal. That tiny twinkle of relief was my subconscious preparing me for this decision.
Coincidentally during this period, I was offered what I assumed to be an absolute dream job, which gave me an opportunity to use my professional background while working directly with the film industry. It very quickly turned out that it was not going to work out. I walked away from my stint at this organization crushed yet again. The job was completely not what I expected it to be and the organization not what it claimed to be.
A week or so later, after wrapping up a meeting with the founder of my fraternity, the conversation drifted towards the driving question: “What the hell am I doing with my life?” Chris, my fraternity’s founder, runs a record label on the verge of hitting it big. He works during the day for the government and spends all of his free time updating his website, scheduling shows and organizing photo shoots. The conversation went late into the night and ended with an epiphany: As long as I am making creativity my job, it will never be MY art. Masturbation cannot substitute making love and low-carb sugar-free cake will never take the place of real chocolate frosting. All of a sudden, all of those discussions in art school about the difference between art and graphic design made sense. An artist creates and then people buy his/her work. A creative professional is commissioned to bring to life the client’s vision. Where the seed is planted… that’s the X factor. I realized I would not be happy as long as I was waiting for others to plant the seed. The day-job would have to be just that: A job to pay the bills. The passion: To create for the sake of creating even if no one ever pays you a dime for it. Back to the coffee shop… I realize that to go where I want to go I need to go back to the beginning. I need to find that Voice. I must help him to his feet, bandage his wounds and apologize profusely for keeping my boot on his neck for all these years. I will hold him and comfort him. He has known what I am meant to be for all these years. I should have listened to him long ago. He is going to help me unravel the layers of this blanket of fear, which I have wrapped myself with.
So, why this blog? I am making myself accountable to you, the reader. I figure that if I have a place to share my journey, then I can learn from others. A place to archive my achievements, my education and my progression. This is a place where everything I am learning on my journey can be categorized, dated and archived.
Beyond that... In my upbringing and culture, it has been beaten into my head that we should keep family matters private and not air our dirty laundry. That attitude is what I believe is holding me back. It is what I believe holds our culture back.
An artist must above all else be totally honest. Honest with himself and honest with the world.
He must wear his heart on his sleeve. He must not be afraid to air his dirty laundry. An artist must have the strength to reach into the darkest parts of himself and tell a story without fearing public humiliation. That is the artists’ duty: To jump into the deep end of the pool of introspection in a way that normal people can’t bring themselves to do. Society needs us to strip naked and show our warts, disfigurements and insecurities. People need this because they can’t do it themselves. Sitting alone in a dark room, watching a film, reading a book or studying a painting, people need to see that they are not alone. People need to see that there are others out there who have been sexually molested, feel rage towards their mothers and have done things which make them ashamed so that they can gather the strength to wake up in the morning to drive our busses, fix our roadways and attend to our children’s medical needs. They need us to be honest in a way which society will not allow them to be. My quest is to find that artist within. I hope that you will join me on my journey. Let us all help each other find our Voice.
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