Creative Nirvana

For every artist/creative, there is that dream job, that big one that either landed your name in the right circles, or put you on one of those unseen professional "maps" that people talk about. After that, you've pretty much graduated from the trenches. You can almost sit back and reap the benefits. You become a household name. You command your own prices, you can fire your clients!. It's creative nirvana.

I don't have one of those kinds of jobs. Yet. But I got a call from a potential client today that might put me in that situation. One of those clients that would hold the key to the locked room where they keep the "map". That's the good news.

The bad news is that the kind of project that they might want me to do, I have never done before. I have done components of the project, parts of it, for different clients, but never done the whole thing as a package before. So I am in one of those places where a large part of me wants to get the call for them to say, "Go ahead sport, you got the job" - I'm assuming that's what the "map" keeper would say if one existed, stay with me here.

The other part... well, you know.

childhood innocense

My beautiful young niece came to visit this weekend, and she made me appreciate those photographers who are able to take pictures of toddlers and make it look easy. And in particular, how critical an SLR is to the process.

<epiphany>Never try to take a picture of an active toddler with a camera that only relies on autofocus.</ephiphany>

The Nikon Coolpix 5700 - while an excellent camera has several shortcomings, not the least of which is that it is not an SLR and therefore does not allow manual focusing on images, at least not in the conventional sense, or at least in the sense that's useful.

Be that as it may, there's something to be said for youthful innocense. More than not being able to take a single usable shot with my digital camera and having to resolve to using my Minolta film camera, I got satisfaction from the fits of laughter that emanated from her whenever the flash went off.

internal conflicts

At what point do dreams get sacrificed for reality? At what point did that little bit of creativity used to replenish the soul become just another moment not doing something that could be constructive.

I used to dream of days when I would take my laptop to the cafe in the Met, sit down there and in inspired sorroundings produce things that may one day be referred to as creative in relation to the works of art in that magnificent edifice. Life creeps up on you and one day you find yourself looking back on what could have been and finding no real answer as to why it wasn't. New York City is as fertile as you can get for inspiration.And sometimes I can't seem to get enough.
Yet I feel empty sometimes. I guess I must not be soaking up the right things. The soul of a creative needs to be fed. Or else, being in a city like N.Y looking for inspiration can become like soaking a dead leaf in water. It may re-hydrate, but its never going to come alive. Am I making any sense?

I guess that's my point...