Blast From The Past?

Why not? It might make a difference to some folks I know, maybe a few I never met, and a few that I know nothing of or really don’t know…but what the heck. 1983? ’84? and on up to 1988? Even beyond. I dunno. What I need to figure out is how to get out of this hole that I’m in. I know what I did in 1983. I know who completed the work I began…and the entire beauty of the thing is that it snowballed…chain reaction. Perhaps, yes, a few interfering factors, neighbors, poor judgement on my part to name a few things that didn’t make things as smooth as these might have been. This is a picture that was enclosed in the letter. Don’t it beat all. I felt like the freakin’ ugly fat waddle waddle duckling…

I never got used to my own skin…always comparing it with others. Now I’m fat and sassy…in need of trimming the waistline from the seven years of being beach free.

If I went all the way back to…Punky Brewster, Alf, The Cosby Show…ouch, meow, is that the cat, or the cast I heard crying at the door?

But they didn’t know did they? The eighties were something else.

I was swimming with sharks, without knowing it, before the book was ever written…and I was bitten…badly. I have a “survivors” collage I made a few years ago. In one corner is a cut out of Mickey Mouse, glued to a shark…ride’ em cowboy! Yoyo Ma is immediately next to the two of them holding his nose like one of them passed gas. And we all have our flaws and problems with flatulence. Disney has had their fair share of farts. So has Dreamworks. I should be working for one them..or maybe Warner Brothers. At least I would carry a lighter with me to see whose fart was the funkiest.

Anyone that can create a song, a character, and a rough draft in less than a day is employable…right? Not without a portfolio. My portfolio was a letter to NBC in 1983.

But I got side tracked. This picture was prior to my wasted years.

Oh, yeah. What’s the use of trying to present a portfolio without college degree? Does five semesters of theatre design and playwriting count?

Movie teasers, scripts… rough outlines, video directions written directly below lyrics, illustrations, what else…lyrics. Lots of lyrics. I never could stop writing lyrics. Lost a lot along the way. Ideas, yeah. Lots of those. My home has been broken into at least three times since moving to Kentucky. I won’t bother to count the times in California that I lived through Violation of Private space… ransacked.

Over the years…personal documents, poems stolen, trashed, paintings, illustrations, thrown out, lost storage, what have you. And this is one reason why I write this here and now. I recently lost my storage. So someone, if they aren’t stupid enough to toss it, has a goldmine. In my opinion. But that’s almost all I have to my name. Opinions. One cannot eat opinions unless one is paid for it. I could starve with the pocketful of opinions I have.

These scans are about the same size as the originals which were drawn on a napkin during my lunch at a nursing home where I was working at the time. These were intended to be painted on a much larger scale. About 4’x8′ for the bottom and 2’x3’for the upper ink. Something quite similar to marginal art…

Set designs for a video? One never knows until one tries?

As it is. I figured I’d better open the bag just a little and see if the cat is still alive. Hissin’ and spittin’ mad, she is.

How would you react, I wonder, to seeing a movie out of your ideas and the only person you ever told was your next door neighbor? Paranoid? I mean really afraid. Details that you shared in the simplest passing conversation about being creative and how your mind works…so you give them an example and they ask a couple of questions and you answer those questions and then two years later there is this movie…exact characters played by exact actors I said should have played the characters. Life just doesn’t make sense.

So I stretch my arms and take a break.

Here is a five minute bic pen drawing.

And there are those that would put me in a different light. I would put me in a different light. And these things don’t matter. Not really. If they did, and if I’d had a way I would have done something…what? Well…I can only do what I am about to do. Suit up and show up.

I will not be cornered. I will not be caged. I will not allow my life to become some leftover’s leftover. I am strong, capable, intelligent, and highly creative. And there are people relying on me. More now than ever.

I am not perfect. I have my flaws and character defects. I’m impatient. I want it yesterday. My computer skills are limited.

My business savvy isn’t linked to the likes of Buffett or Oprah. My brains aren’t anywhere near that of Shakespeare, O’ Neal or Miller. However…given the time, the nurture, the space and tools I am capable of much. Below is a finger painting I did in one night, which no longer exists. I was pregnant with my daughter at the time and the folks upstairs decided to cook bacon which happened to make me quite nauseous. Like acrylic paint fumes were any better…

Onward and upward. I am a scrapper as I’ve said before. If I’ve survived this long… well I guess I can go a bit further.

One of my major points to make, by opening up like this is that I get all these great ideas and there is no one to share them with. Really. Some writers work as a team. Creating a masterpiece, that without each other might never have existed. Some writers are loners. I am a bit of both. I have my moments were I need to recluse, recover, regenerize. Then there are those times where I know that I would be better at what I do if I were interacting with another creative individual. There is the biggest obstacle.

Who?

When?

How?

Where?

Not what…that part is simple. Screenplays, musicals, childrens’ books, and cd’s. The only thing missing is a contract, signed, sealed and delivered with a thumb print.

And so my day comes to a close. I remember much more than I want to and again…not enough. So I troll the avenues of my soul, accepting the difficulties that wait ahead, challenges to be overcome. No one broke my arm to send that letter. It was something I wanted to do. I was just ignorant about how I went about it. Naive. No more. How’s this for pimpin’ my work…as a start?

“Talk it up girl…talk it up…”

Any time I open my mouth my work disappears. So here I am…screaming from the page instead. Hey You! Anybody out there listening! Yo! I got a job to do and I can’t do it by my damned self.

I need…Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Foster, Tony Bennett, Barry Gibb, Randy Travis…oh yes, Randy, have I got a song for you about Eve and Her Apples. I read the poem to a fellow blogger the other night…it’s actually lyrics and a video. Family oriented fun…and makes a great illustrated book.

And I need a composer for a musical, three actually. It’s bad enough that I lost everything on this computer a month ago, if that, but now…as I begin to see how life works. Well, I had better get on the ball….and call you all to me.

So if you know someone who knows someone who knows some one…well get that someone to tell that someone who can tell that someone that someone needs their help right now! Please.

In the mean time…I’ll just keep plugging away…and praying.