Beyond The Boundaries

Talent isn't enough to sustain. It may play a part in how one moves through the world, the opportunities they may attract or the recognition they receive in bringing something to fruition, but talent can only take a human so far. There are many with talent who rest on it alone, and it becomes a limiting quality. Usually, those who rest on talent alone are looking for validation. They are insincere.

It's akin to a group of hikers lost in a forest after dusk. To remain warm they build a campfire. They each bundle sticks and create torches to keep warm and navigate the night - yet, they remain at the campfire.

There's so much land to explore. There's so much for a human being to explore within their own creativity. I would honestly say that we have not explored anything. Our dreams are very small; they are worldly. They are what our parents and our friends deem as success. They are what the community validate as success. These versions of success are inherently limited because they're all different varieties of the same thing.

Popularity

Everybody wants to either be popular or make a great deal of money. Whatever societal game is happening, they want to win it. There is nothing wrong with playing those games, but they are limiting because the rules are fixed. Very rarely does someone exit stage left and pursue their own thing. Very few ever do.

I think a lot about my work today. I look at my website that I launched in 2016. It was a shop, devoid of my writings. It was a bit fragmented, but I sold products; at the time it was something I was looking to explore. In the eight years since, the website's function hasn’t changed drastically, though it has matured.

In the last three years I felt those changes while shuttering and then relaunching both Cereal and Such and Posture. I felt the changes personally. I left a lot of the fulcrum of my work - the years of experience, the journey, all of those details - off my website. Those works were too vast for a portfolio, too much life to fit on an “About" page. I built a personal archive on my own cloud service, but I never shared it with the public. I published a book and used my social media thinking it would suffice to express the breadth of work, but I found neither was enough to carry the weight of the experience that its own dedicated website can.

It wasn't enough because a large part of what made the final result on this website was missing. There was no context. Someone would enter the website, see the products, and buy it. But that's not the individual I speak to. The people who come to my work arrive either because they are familiar with it or it's been brought to them by some degree.

The website worked for what it was doing in 2018, which was to sell products. Over time, however, the idea of selling products has changed for me. It is far more about the journey I am embarking on than it is about selling.

Origins

I'm always looking at the origins. I'm always interested in the seeds. Before the tree was the tree. There are many successful individuals who I've had the opportunity to meet long before their successes. There's a resonance in finding it before the world does.

That resonance was missing from my website. I saw fragments of it, but if I were me - which is who I designed the website for- I would want to see deeper than the surface level. My website lacked that. It did not encapsulate everything on one channel where you could shop, examine the archive and see the history.

Now the website, even in the time of announcing the index, has since changed. There is a great design history of work that I've done for myself and others. Projects that others have no idea that I was a part of, constructed, navigated or led. Products created that I was not credited for.

It's a far different website. It isn't an e-commerce with news and some updates. It's the documentation of my work. It is the evidence of an existence. I took several UX courses as I was interested to explore what it was, but as I was in it, I realized: This was already my lived experience. It was my experience in making Cereal and Such. It was my experience in building Office and Gallery. Usability testing, research, that's what I did. But that I did that naturally without any curriculum. Without any rote memorization. It was lived experience.

You can trace the evolution from the release of my first album - hiring an art director and graphic designer- to assembling a creative director and directing my own projects on the next album. From illustrating my own projects to illustrating for others. It has been a non-linear journey, a snowball gathering speed with each turn: building products, opening an office, putting cereal in it and turning that into an experience, and then turning that experience into a product. Today, it's buying raw land to build a studio in Joshua Tree, which is my current project. That's what this website represents. That's what it is today.

Popularity

It was never my intent to become popular.
That feels like selling myself short because my craft was not something I deliberately chose to do. Making music is not something I chose to do; it in many ways is all I am.
To turn something natural into something mechanized is to sell myself short. To pursue awards is to sell myself short. I am music. It's less of a goal more why a bird sings and a grasshopper chirps.

To me that is the base programming. When you buy a phone, it comes with its core elements. That to me is what it is. What else can we do with that? Where can we take it that it hasn’t been taken? That's where my interests are, and in rebuilding this website, that's what I've recognized.

I have mastered the craft. I named the song, "Mastery" on TM 2, the album I did with Thelonious Martin, for that reason. It was evident that in different forms, in different ways, in different styles: I’ve got it, no question. I named my album Self Titled, because I produced, mixed, mastered, engineered, artwork. Those were avenues that I was still exploring.

So what else is there to do? There are amazing things to do within music. In using the torch analogy, now that we've got the flame on the torch, where else can we bring this thing? I'm interested in where can we take which has not been taken. I mean that qualitatively. There's so much terrain that has been unexplored.

I think of the artists who I know sitting around awaiting validation. It is selling oneself incredibly short because how do you know the validation will actually satisfy you?

Permissionless

Like a child playing with a toy or someone engulfed in an activity, the reward is in the doing. For those who are still waiting for the award panel to recognize them or for a certain community or industry to validate them: you have it already. Many human beings never have it. They'll never know what they want to do in this life. Never. They'll live this life waiting, looking, hoping, and wishing. Not everyone has the opportunity to devote themselves to something, let alone even know what they enjoy.

Most humans have jobs because it's something to do. Most pursue degrees because it gives them a sense of mission. It allows them to feel like something in this world.
For those with an exceptional talent who are looking for the validation of the world, who are looking for awards and sales and numbers and acclaim, I'm not saying to not have it, but there's so much more than that. There is so much more than that.

I also was conditioned with waiting for someone to come. But everything that I've done -  recording my first album, self directing my music videos, making products like Cereal and Such and Posture, designing an office from scratch, building a property- all that has come despite any recognition. I was going to do that anyway. No one gave me the permission to do that. I did it 'cause I had no choice.

We are so much more than an award, we are so much more than that. We are so much more than people liking or not liking. Who cares about that? We are so much more than that. Winning the games that others have set is boring. Create your own.

I find that those who are interested in winning those games truly don't dream big enough. Those who are excited to win particular awards or desire acceptance by communities, I feel like their dreams aren't big enough. It's still relative. It's still nothing that shakes you in your boots.

If you won an award only for the audience’s memory of said win to be instantly erased, leaving you solely with the memory, you probably wouldn't care about winning the award.
Awards have no value beyond the industry that propagates it. Like Chuck E Cheese tokens, the value plummets the minute you leave the building. There's nothing wrong with an award, but I'm not interested in getting a pat on the back for doing something that I would've done anyway.

I want to go where no one has gone. I want to do what no one has done. What no one has the gall to do. That's what interests me. And today's website, thetheoshow.com, reflects that. It is a complete document.