Bingo! You're a regular Clare Voyant!

Doug-

The only models I have available to me.
Myself and my neighbor.

thanks for liking the polaroids.

The rest of my work (or at least some of it) is on
My art page here.

the writing is not my best work.. I hide all my best work away.

Wild Gravity--I am so sorry but I thought you were a guy. Until I saw the most recent photos. What was I thinking? My extreme apologies for even thinking that! Will you ever forgive me?

Say what happened to all of the guesses regarding the quiz? Mt last question was "What color starts with 'n.?"

Were all of the answers eliminated? Danedlion you didn't do that did you?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: biplane1,

Your question is still on there. Are you sure there were answers as of four days ago, or did you hallucinate them?

Quite alright, actually I've gotten that quite a bit online, so its ok.

Wild Gravity, I like what I have seen of your photography, especially you as a model. You remind of some of the shots my daughter has taken years ago. She has a web site, but she only has her weddings, senior photos, and family photos there.

She has a series of off-beat items that she featured on note cards, a chess set at an angle, a dried up red pepper on the arm of a rusty glider in my dad's yard, etc., etc. If you would to check out her web site, she does have some neat head shots of some young ladies. It is catmanchackphotography.com.

Thank you for your forgiveness.

Wild Gravity, you started this thread with the question "What do you do that's creative?" I am not sure if I have posted any of my abstract artwork on the site or not, but here is one example of what I do to be creative.

Abstract-2.jpg (53 Kb, 17 downloads)

At the end of "In Search of Lost Time," Proust wrote of how the happy years are the wasted ones and the years you suffer are the most meaningful.

I haven't read the book, so this may be taken out of context, but gotta agree with Proust here. Up until age 10, I only did creative things because I wanted to, and that they meant something to me, not with any commercial considerations. At age 10, I decided to be a writer professionally.

Then followed 35 rather painful years of beating my head against the wall. First, I had to come up with an idea so original that no one else who had ever lived, present or past, had thought of it (this becomes harder every year due to the larger number of people who have lived and ideas which have been recorded--think about it.)

Next, I had to express it so brilliantly that it would be worth the time of a significant number of people to read my literary offerings rather than something by Shakespeare, Mark Twain, or anyone else who ever wrote anything.

Third, I had to market it well enough to make a bujillion bucks. I also had to avoid anything that would be too much of a distraction from writing. This naturally meant never having a full-time job, and being broke most of my life.

As far as I got was to finish one full-length work and a few shorter ones, all of which had to be published either by myself or by small non-profit presses. My novel was a resounding failure, trounced as being too factual for fiction, too fictional for non-fiction, too juvenile for adult readers, too adult for juvenile readers, and bottom line was most readers are uncomfortable with the subject matter. I couldn't think of anything "better" to write as I found the material very interesting.

Lately I've turned to other creative pursuits. The less commercial, the better. I'm fairly certain they would be classified in the area of "hobbies" and no serious critic would consider them "art." Whatever it would take to elevate them to "art," I am not interested in learning, as I am happy with them as they are. As far as commercial considerations, I am extremely unlikely to ever sell any, not so much because people wouldn't buy them as because I wouldn't sell them, and to some extent they're costing me time and money as I have to create spaces in which to build them.

When I'm "wasting" time either working on these, or just driving or walking around, very likely shopping or just thinking about various creative pursuits, I am almost as happy as before I started beating my head against the wall at age 10.

Am I betraying the standard set by my idol, Ray Bradbury? It's been pretty well demonstrated that my mind simply does not work like his and cannot by any means I have discovered be induced to do so. He comes up with ideas for short stories, or novels that can be written in segments. Although my novels can certainly be broken down into scenes, I don't see taking scenes out of context as segments working very well, and I've never been much at short stories, much as I'd like to. After 35 or more years of reading collections and anthologies, and watching classic anthology series, it should be demonstrable by now that I could stare at a broken roller coaster all day and not raise one single sea monster from the depths.

Is this all just a massive cop-out to try to escape the pain of 35 years of wall head-hitting, or is it really good to do something while you're alive that makes you happy? I just can't seem to give up the hobbies until I bring to reality the images in my head, although they may have "no commercial value."

Here is another good quote: "Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted." -- John Lennon

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dandelion,

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Years go by and many are swept away as wind when Christ comes in to reveal intent of one's life. All in human effort? All about me? As a transient, what endures but God's hand in one's life. Without that, all dissolves.

Currently, getting back seriously to music. Completed a good 50 or more songs. A hundred fragments. Figure a way to make an income? ...then we got something practical besides creative sojourning. Several things on YOUTUBE<> Here's one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BryFydAvYI
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But as to actual jobs go, I've made a list, checked it thrice and more, and totals over 220 jobs. You say, how can anyone have that many jobs? Easy. Get hired a lot.

Some of the jobs I've had thru the years:
( first job ever): Making a list of clients at a literary agency
Assistant Editor for a trade journal
Art director for a trade journal
Production manager for lighting magazine
Sold radio time over the phone
Agency paste-up artist for newspaper ads
Re-write editor for surgical trade journal
Final Proofreader
Manifested freight bills for truck loads
Manifest freight bills for train loads
Worked OS&D (overages, shortages, damages) for truckline
Drove a taxi [Yellow Cab, or Checker. Forgot.)
Cut printing press paper in San Francisco
Worked at Bank of America in San Francisco
Painted tables at a fancy hotel in San Francisco
Worked at 12 different print shops in Los Angeles in 10 weeks
..... (Got so confused couldn't remember where I worked. By noon that same day, had another job)
Sold hot dogs at a ball game
Worked at a newspaper
Sold printing
Stamped prices on cans and shelved them at a supermarket
Ran a printing press
Worked for a medium sized convention consultant firm
Wrote for a motivational guru outside of Chicago
Worked for a Jewish restaurant in Chicago as a cook
Worked as a unsolicited ms. editor (assistant)
Managed a Minuteman printshop
Number of different print shops I've worked at: 65+
Trucklines : 15
Railroads: 1, The Erie Lackawana
etc.
etc.

...

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This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nard Kordell,

Beautiful piece, Nard!
Sort of a Melancholy Tango.
Ever heard Scott Joplin's "Solace - A Mexican Serenade", or his "Bethena"?

You can hear a tiny bit here:
http://www.amazon.com/Joplin-Rags-Ragtime-Heinrich-Schiff/dp/B0002KVVBK

But, the Joshua Rifkin recordings of the late '60s are the best.

So, (referring to another post somewhere) you still want help identifying your Mystery Tune, or what?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Braling II,

Thanks, Braling. Now if I could weld the two together, creativity and food on the table and rent paid, I'll be okay. No, that Mystery Tune remains a Mystery.

No TV? Hey, I didn't watch TV for some 15 years. Except two occasions. The 1984 LA Olympics, and the week my dad died in 1979. (Oopps! Watched a few innings of a world series in a restaurant while having dinner). When you don't watch any TV, you remember when you did.

The new James Cameron film about finding the bones of Jesus, reminds me of Paul the apostle comment in scripture, that if Jesus did not actually come back from the dead, (afterwards walked thru walls, appear and disappear, etc...) then, in his words, (in so many words): We're the most stupid people that ever lived. But when you come to that understanding what it means, both to you personally that Jesus came back from the dead, and overall, that everything was brought into existence because of that event, we might pause and think about Thomas, who didn't believe unless he first saw and touched Christ, alive from the grave. And he did.

Many people dismiss Christ. Farrakhan just this weekened spoke of him as a prophet. He would never speak of him as God. Scientists, many of them, don't believe in God. Many science fiction writers dismiss him. Ray visits all the possibilities. C.S. Lewis relented later in life and accepted Christ. Author J.R.R. Tolkien was an editor for the popular Catholic New Jerusalem Bible. Are there any science fiction writers today that are Christian believers? ....!
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Nard, as to the Mystery Tune, if you can give me some of the melody, maybe something will click?

Yeah, people keep trying desperately to disprove the Resurrection. Many of those who did extensive, albeit biased, research endeavoring to do so ended up believers!

Farrakhan is a very disturbed man. He comes off more bigoted than a Klansman.

Did you see the "Nativity" movie? It seems to have been popular back East, but not out here.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/198/story_19848_1.html

Insightful.

One who begs to differ: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17345429/?GT1=9033