February 23, 2009

Now and Here

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Did I say that out loud?
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Yesterday I made a post which was highly personal but guarded and terribly mysterious. Today briefly I had 3 followers of this blog and then later in the afternoon I had 1. Now, I do not know if the oddball post played any part in those who had publicly proclaimed an interest in this blog pulling up stakes but noticing this and reading todays Copywrite Ink has caused me to ask the question: Was my personal post appropriate on a blog which bears my business name?
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Please, allow me to introduce myself
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Amongst other things, this blog is about self discovery and my relationship to how I earn a living. In the past I have played various roles in the trades and none of them were entirely satisfying. I have built houses the traditional way always feeling like something was amiss. I have discovered rot under homes and detected the reason behind it. I have acted as a detail man doing the final walk through on a new residence before the homeowners were given the keys. I have been in charge of subcontractors, quality control and safety and still none of these jobs on their own made me feel entirerly fulfilled.
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Art and Carpentry
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I did not grow up particularly good with my hands. I was an imagination kid who played with action figures and Dungeons and Dragons and later transformed that history of role playing into hopes of an acting career. I attended the North Carolina school of the arts for drama where I also happened to learn I was a songwriter and a harmonica player. During my second year of college I had an increasingly hard time. I began questioning several of my teachers about why various aspects of acting were as they were being taught and I remember feeling very unsatisfied with their answers. There was one teacher, Cigdem Onat , who saw right through me and told me so in an end of semester evaluation. She told me she believed that I needed to find something that was all my own. 3 months later I was gone from NCSA and after a brief layover in Chicago I found myself back in the state I grew up, in a hundred year old one room schoolhouse with a hammer in my hand.
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Carpentry and Art
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In Stewart Brand's book “How Buildings learn” there is a chapter entitled “The Low Road” in which he writes :
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“A young couple moves into an old farmhouse or old barn, lit up with adventure. An entrepreneur opens shop in an echoing warehouse, an artist takes over a drafty loft in a bad part of town, and they feel joy at the prospect. They can’t wait to have at the space and put it immediately to work.”
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He goes on to write:
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“even in rich societies the most inventive creativity, especially youthful creativity, will be found in low road buildings taking full advantage of the license to try things.”
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These two passages describe my relationship with the schoolhouse to a T. Anything and everything was game to try. Mixed styles, mixed media and found objects incorporated into designs. Demolition and additions and I am still revisiting and reworking much of what I have made over the past twenty years. My tastes have changed some along the way and I now substitute study for youthful enthusiasm but my experiments in this house are a road map for how I got to where I am today.
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Full Circle
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This blog is partially about self discovery and my relationship to how I earn a living. It did not start out this way but truthfully it is the only honest way for me to proceed and at this juncture it is very important for me to be honest. Why? Because all of my life I have been hiding who I truly am in one way or another. In my business dealings I have always been afraid I might appear too weird if I let my artistic side show. In my art I downplayed the tradesman but now I feel the first thing you see when you land on this page is true: This really is a Junction Box. A place for customers and friends to better get to know me and I them. And, like in yesterday’s post, it is a place for me to get to know myself out in the open and with the utmost certainty that I can take all the gifts and challenges I have been blessed with and make of them an honest and fullfiling way of life.
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Thanks for riding along dear reader and please, don't be afraid to chime in.
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6 comments:

rocketts said...

I was waiting for the other two to leave.

Barry said...

Hi B,

I like social networking a lot but the follower, friend and fan aspect of it whereby we put ourselves onto public lists I find distracting.

I use the links at the bottom of the Junction quite a bit (plus I like to watch the nails fly by) so I end up seeing that follower widget several times a day. 3 is a good bit more than 1 so I noticed the parking lot was suddenly emptying out. I did not have to tell the world that I noticed however because the article I linked to provided me an adequate entry into my questioning whether my earlier post had been appropriate.

Still, I wanted to mention it because it truly was what made me question myself in the first place. On the internet it is really easy to sculpt our words to make ourselves look better. If we are nervous people we can reinvent ourselves to appear calm and so on. But today’s post was not about looking better or appearing to be anything at all and it was not about losing followers. It was about intention and laying the map out on the table to get a better idea of just where it is I want to go with all of this.

Thanks for chiming in. Now that you are here I will remove the distracting follower widget altogether. :-)

-B

rocketts said...

I am still trying to make sense of all of this, forgive me. The article you linked to on communication speaks to a world I still don't understand.

The poster you drew up for the second Carnivore, on the golden rod paper?
Aaron Hamburger's response to the KITUS press package?
Where do these fit into this discussion? Or do they?

Rich said...

Barry,

I liked yesterday's post.

Any number of things could happen to followers too, by the way. Are they related? I dunno. Much like Twitter, it sometimes it remains a mystery.

I've visited your blog for some time and it's always been a little eclectic, which is why I like it. That is not to say it doesn't capture the spirit of my post. On the contrary, there is intent, one which includes bridging personal and professional thoughts. So, nothing has changed from my perspective.

So was your personal post appropriate on a blog which bears my business name? Hmmm ... that depends on the followers you supposedly lost, I imagine. It also depends on the business.

Again, from my perspective, your post was the same despite the topic. And from what I am reading now, I can conclude it was not the same for you.

But that, my friend, is a different subject all together. ;)

Best,
Rich

Barry said...

@Rocketts

Man, you are really cracking the nut.

First off let me confess that I remember the name Aaron Hamburger but I cannot for the life of me remember what he said about our press packet. I do remember the poster though and the debate it fostered within our ranks. You are dead on to bring that up here because it is entirely relevant.

I loved that poster but if we were to have the same debate today I think I would come down on the other side. Because the art the art is promoting is the theatre. That poster was a personal statement I was making at the time about who I thought we were. Leslie from the grove hung it up on the wall and it stayed there for 15 years but Leslie was an actor and a mime and was thrilled to see something which spoke to her.

But I think Madge was right to question whether or not it really would attract a diverse cross section of Sussex County Delaware. One answer to this could be to have different creative out there so you could get the broadest audience to see the shows. In this way the work could continue because tickets were being sold. Eventually, like bread and puppet, folks would start to recognize the artistic style as being connected with the performance and the posters could get as far out as we liked because our audience would be looking out for them and word of mouth would take over.

You by the way have a natural ability to create promotional material which balances clarity and style. IMO.

@ Rich

I think the thing which was so different about that post for me was that it was very emotional and in a way that display of emotion felt un-professional even though I had attempted to choose my words in such a way as to not give too much away. Thus I had to re-examine the intent.

The follower’s thing is funny because from the moment I added the widget it made me uncomfortable even though the people who were following me I consider real friends. I do get your point about followers who were “supposedly” lost and let me say that theoretically I understand that much of this is unexplainable and not worth devoting time to pondering.

Still, I think it is important to recognize clearly that one aspect of social networking I have a really have a hard time with is the nomenclature involved when identifying our fellow networkee’s.

I feel like the creators of the various applications ask us to focus in on the meaning of words as opposed to our added layers of meanings. In other words, I am a follower because I am following what you do as opposed to I am a follower and you are a leader.

In a way it is really great but in another way it is full of landmines of distraction for me which I try not to let detract from the experience.

Add it up and I am back to taking social networking slow. :-)

Rich said...

What? I'm not your leader?

I agree that the words are meaningless. Follower was the evolution of "friend" when people placed too much weight on the online definition.

Anyway, intent does help us make decisions. If you were an executive at Cisco and posted the same, it would have jolted people.

But here, you have more flexibility as you've demonstrated creativity is part of your business, and creativity often comes from personal places.

Best,
Rich