What is the BrainHeart Beat?

Trish Szymanski is a multi-genre artist whose word includes
Performance, as actor/director, singer, singer/songwriter, musician, performance artist
Installed work, as conceptual innovator
Music, as songwriter, singer, percussionist
Writing, as published and constant writer of nonfiction and fiction, poetry, script, essay.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Too much to write about

It's been many months now since I've written here. But I've been writing, alright. There's been plenty of business development, correspondence, marketing materials, website development, advertising, checking in, confirming, clarifying, creating. Just not much blogging.

I'm back here because I added a blog to my profile to boost my business, my Boost Your Biz business, that is. It's going pretty well.

And I'm working on my acting too, even though I missed a couple of classes lately. I've got a role coming up in the fall that I've been developing for a while, so I'm getting excited to bring her to the stage. And I've been invited to submit a part of my play script to a one-act festival, which is inspiring. And I was offered use of a country house as a writing retreat, so I might actually be able to do it.

And I am doing some photo-manipulation-collage which includes a piece that will be in a group show next month. And I'm co-producing a small event next month. And I got a cool domain name and a great deal on hosting.

And I'm working on my business savvy and sensitivity, negotiating relationships, bettering my self-skills, my boundary navigation. And I'm challenged by health limitations which I am determined to break through, and I think I'm doing it. And I'm feeling more confidant and relaxed, though not always.

And I'm looking for roommates and really pretty broke, like bad broke, but kind of don't care because all the stuff up above this paragraph is all I care about.

Well, there is that thing about feeling alone, which is different from being alone. I'd rather not be involved with either one of those. Working on that too.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Fog

I met the original Baadasssss tonight. He showed up at a fundraiser for BlackWaxx Recordings (http://www.blackwaxx.com/) at their Jersey City studios. Other luminaries were in attendance, including Bob Law of "Night Talk" fame, who proved his finely honed wallet-squeezing skills.

Melvyn Van Peebles is 75 now, a diminutive-looking man with a white-gray beard. He wore black parachute and an orange/black bandana. His cinematographer, whose name I regret I did not catch, drove/accompanied him. We chatted about the fire in the Deutsche Bank building, south side of Ground Zero, that burned today. Weird.

Here's what I took away from him.

He said that when he was starting out -- he's been writing for film since the 1950's! -- it was like he was rowing around in the fog. He called out, "Hellooooo," but all he heard was his own voice. It was lonely but he kept rowing. Periodically, he would call out again, "Hellooooo."

Finally, once, he called, "Hellooooo," and listened hard till he heard a couple of small voices, far away, calling back -- "Helloooo." He rowed in what seemed like their direction, and they did the same. Eventually, they met up and made contact. Together, they rowed on, called out, made contact with still other, like-minded artists of vision and together, they made their way and backed each other up.

Van Peebles's 1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song exploded into black America, first, and then hurled itself at the rest of us, lauching more than a genre, not a movement, but the ship called Equal Opportunity, the chance to create work, control its creation and profit from its sale. As author, producer, star and director, Van Peebles owned "Song" in every way.

The thing is, he made it because he KEPT ROWING HIS OWN BOAT and worked with people whose sense of integrity was compatible with his.