There was a movie called Il Posto (The Job) made during the European New Wave era. It was about a young clerk rising in the drab confines…
There was a movie called Il Posto (The Job) made during the European New Wave era. It was about a young clerk rising in the drab confines of a corporate office in Italy. At one point (as I remember it), an older clerk dies and opens up a position in the office. When authorities go to the dead man’s meager apartment to take stock of his belongings, they find stacks and stacks of manuscripts he has written. Labors of love he wrote at night to counter his bleak existence as a clerk. None of his writings had ever found a publisher. / “What should we do with these?” one official asks. / “Throw them out,” is the reply. Sometimes I feel like that guy. I’ve spent many years writing screenplays, sending them out, trying to market them… hoping some day to see one on the silver screen. Not one sale. Realistically, it’s a very tough racket. Tens of thousands of screenplays are written every year. Only a few hundred films are ever made. It’s got to be top-notch for someone to want to invest millions in making it. So the rest… forty-thousand or so, give or take… lie moldering in the closets of despairing screenwriters in shabby, unkempt dwellings. “Don’t quit your day job,” they say. This is the voice of experience speaking. I’m not sure how many other Bubblers have nurtured dreams of fame and success in the marketplace. Hoped to be accorded some measure of worth for their artistic efforts by actually being paid for what they love to do. But I would suspect I’m not the only one who has dreamt such dreams… instead of ending up like the clerk in Il Posto. So how does one come to terms with obscurity? In my case… two words… Small Victories. Yes, I have come to live with anonymity by finding fulfillment in the process of creation itself. “Against the darkness there is but one defense… the creative act.” Wisdom from the Beat Poet Kenneth Rexroth. Penning a well-turned phrase. Capturing a pleasing image with the click of a shutter. Applying paint to canvas with a beauty that stands on its own. Something you can stand back and say: “Ah, yes! This I can leave to humanity with a sense of pride. My love letter to the universe.” And in my most Zen moments I ask: “What does fame and fortune get you anyway?” (other than that nice Lamborghini I’ve always wanted). Fame is basically an ego-fix. As we’ve seen from the supermarket tabloids, it alters one’s personality. Lives turn brittle and restless with dissatisfaction. Rehab facilities thrive on the rich and famous. And who needs that horde of jackals snapping photos of you every time you go to the store for a Twinkie. Small victories. I store them in my memory. Fill scrapbooks with moments I can savor. Like Marcel Proust, I have turned memory into an art form. Small, intimate details that are mine to keep. Lovers… voyages… fantasies. These are the essence of our days. And Red Bubble. That is a small victory, too. A global village of fellow artists who strive for some kind of perfection in their art… exploring ways to express their vision. Offering kind words… sharing their experience… knowing they are not alone. And even achieving a bit of fame within this cyber world… becoming not quite so obscure as one may have thought. —Gary Crandall /
Here is a fantastic Poem by Pablo Neruda… And because Love battles / / And because love battles / not only in its burning agricultu…
Here is a fantastic Poem by Pablo Neruda… And because Love battles / / And because love battles / not only in its burning agricultures / but also in the mouth of men and women, / I will finish off by taking the path away / to those who between my chest and your fragrance / want to interpose their obscure plant. About me, nothing worse / they will tell you, my love, / than what I told you. I lived in the prairies / before I got to know you / and I did not wait love but I was / laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose. What more can they tell you? / I am neither good nor bad but a man, / and they will then associate the danger / of my life, which you know / and which with your passion you shared. And good, this danger / is danger of love, of complete love / for all life, / for all lives, / and if this love brings us / the death and the prisons, / I am sure that your big eyes, / as when I kiss them, / will then close with pride, / into double pride, love, / with your pride and my pride. But to my ears they will come before / to wear down the tour / of the sweet and hard love which binds us, / and they will say: “The one / you love, / is not a woman for you, / Why do you love her? I think / you could find one more beautiful, / more serious, more deep, / more other, you understand me, look how she’s light, / and what a head she has, / and look at how she dresses, / and etcetera and etcetera”. And I in these lines say: / Like this I want you, love, / love, Like this I love you, / as you dress / and how your hair lifts up / and how your mouth smiles, / light as the water / of the spring upon the pure stones, / Like this I love you, beloved. To bread I do not ask to teach me / but only not to lack during every day of life. / I don’t know anything about light, from where / it comes nor where it goes, / I only want the light to light up, / I do not ask to the night / explanations, / I wait for it and it envelops me, / And so you, bread and light / And shadow are. You came to my life / with what you were bringing, / made / of light and bread and shadow I expected you, / and Like this I need you, / Like this I love you, / and to those who want to hear tomorrow / that which I will not tell them, let them read it here, / and let them back off today because it is early / for these arguments. Tomorrow we will only give them / a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf / which will fall on the earth / like if it had been made by our lips / like a kiss which falls / from our invincible heights / to show the fire and the tenderness / of a true love.
Hey everyone! I have just entered some of my art in a photography competition. I would love for you all to vote for me ;) You can vote mo…
Hey everyone! I have just entered some of my art in a photography competition. I would love for you all to vote for me ;) You can vote more than once, but only once every 24 hours. You can vote for me here Love, / Sarah
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