Beyond The Boundaries

I don't think the creativity that one has been bestowed is the end goal. So for instance, a musician, a painter, an artist, the natural ability that they have as a musician, painter, or artist isn't the end goal. I wanna state that this is my view and this comes from my own bias of what I see as greatness, world class, excellence. I don't think the talent is the end goal.

I think the talent plays a large part in how a human being moves through this world and the careers they choose to pursue and the industries that they may enter.

With that said, I don't think the talent is the end goal. There are many creative and extraordinarily talented people who I've come across and I feel that we all sell ourselves incredibly short, and we do that because we long to be validated by the masses, which there is nothing wrong with, but we long for validation. It's like a group of people at a campfire and they're looking to stay warm around the fire. And before they go to each of their respective tents, they take a branch and they stick the branch, into the fire. Now they've been able to have their own torch, yet they stay at the tent.

But the only reason for the tent was to stay warm in the fire. 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. I think our dreams are very little.

I think they are worldly. They are what other people deem as success, what our parents deem as success, what our friends and family deem as success. What the community that we rest our opinion upon, validate as success. And those things are in limited because they're all different varieties of the same thing.

Everybody wants to either be popular or make a great deal of money. Or whatever game is occurring, whatever societal game is happening, they wanna be the best at that game. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's incredibly limited because you're still playing the game that is set for you. There's nobody exiting stage left and pursuing their own thing.

Very few do that. And so I think that the creativity that an individual's been given is the foundation. It requires a great deal of understanding and refinement and experience, which may come about through these avenues that I mentioned, but I don't think it's the end goal.

I think a lot about my work today. I look at my website that I launched in 2016 as a shop and it didn't contain my writings and it was a bit fragmented, but I sold products. It was something that I was looking to explore. In the eight years, the website's function has changed greatly and my mission has changed greatly.

And in the last three years, I felt those changes both with shuttering cereal and such and posture and then relaunching them. But I felt the changes personally. I left a lot of the fulcrum of my work, the experience, the years of experience, the journey, all of those details, those couldn't fit on a portfolio.

Those can't fit on an "about me". I made a personal archive on my own cloud service, but I never shared it with the public. I thought maybe I'd use my social media to do that and maybe I'd share it in a book. And I did do that. I did share it on social media and I did release a book. But it wasn't enough.

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 come onto the website, see the products, buy it. But that's not the individuals for who I commune with. For people who come to my work, you either come because you are familiar with it or it's been brought to you to some degree.

The website worked for what it was doing in 2018, which was to sell products. And over time, the idea of selling products has changed for me. It is far more about the journey that an artist takes than it is about the end result.

So for me, I'm always looking at the origin. I'm always interested in the seeds. Before the tree was the tree. There are many individuals who I've met and I'm always interested in their origin. There are many individuals who are incredibly successful today, who I've had the opportunity to meet before any of that success.

There's a resonance there, there's an interest in finding it before the world does. That sort of story lacked in my website. I didn't see it there. I saw fragments of it, but if I were me, which is who I designed the website for, I would wanna see the aspects that were deeper than the surface level. My website lacked that. It may have been on socials and it may have been in fragmented areas, but it wasn't all there. And so that was a large part for creating the index. There were many iterations of this sort of website, but it did not encapsulate everything on one channel where you could also shop, where you could examine the archive and you could see the work.

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

That was all to learn and to experience. I find that information is necessary today. It's just as important as the work that I do for myself because it is me going into these arenas and, upon doing that and brushing up on my UX design came a realization, which was the website that I have today isn't the website that I began in 2018.

It's a far different website. It isn't a it e-commerce with a news and some updates. It's first and foremost the documentation of my work. The reason why I took the UX was because I was led to do it, but as I was in it, I realized that: i've already had this experience.

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 keywords. Without any right phraseology, without any rote memorization. It was lived experience.

This website is a reflection of where I am today, and it's a documentation of my work, in what's worked, in my examinations of what's worked, in the research and in the steps taken to arrive at the end result and the constant iterations of said work and understandings.

You could see that from putting out my first album to, hiring an art director and a graphic designer to assembling a creative director, to creative directing my own projects, to illustrating my own projects, to illustrating other individuals projects. There's been a non-linear journey, a bit of a snowball. Building products, to beginning to opening an office, to putting cereal in it, to turning that into an experience, to then taking that and turning it into a product, to then opening another building to ending that building to working on new projects, to building a home in Joshua Tree, which is my current project. That's what this website represents. That's what it is today. And so I sit here with all of this said and I recognize that I don't think it was ever my intent to be a popular musician. I'm not interested in being a popular musician. And I'm not gonna be a popular actor or a designer or artist. That's not my pursuit.

That to me, to me, feels like I'm selling myself short because, this was not something I chose to do. Making music and design is not something I chose to do. It in many ways is all I am. My father's a musician and my mother's an artist.

It's quite natural. So to turn it into an end goal to me is selling myself short. To wanna win awards and to travel and tour in the name of music is selling myself short. I make music. I'll never not do it. But it's less of a goal and it's more why a bird sings and why a grasshopper chirps and jumps.

To me that's part of the base programming. When you buy a phone, it comes with some core elements that to me is what it is. But what can we do with that? Where can we take that? Where can we go with that? That's where my interests are, and in rebuilding this website, that's what I've recognized.

I'm not here to take it where it's been. I'm not here to just make a really great album that's remarked. Not as a direct intention, but simply as a byproduct. I've been doing this all my life. I've mastered the craft. I named "Mastery" on TM 2, the album I did with Thelonious Martin, I named it for that reason. Because for me it was very evident that in different forms, in different ways, in different styles. I got it. No question. I got it. I named my album Self-titled, because I produced, mixed, mastered, engineered, artwork. Great.

Did it. Those were avenues that I was still exploring. So what else is there to do? There are amazing things to do within music, and those things will happen naturally, again, because it's just who I am. I'm never not gonna do that. But using that flame analogy, using that torch analogy, now that we've got the flame on the torch, where else can we bring this thing?

I don't mean in terms of genres and sounds. Sure that may be a byproduct though, but that's a byproduct of the pursuit. I'm interested in where can we take that has not been taken, and I don't mean that from a quantitative perspective. I mean that qualitatively. There's so much terrain that has been unexplored.

I think about many of the artists who I know and admire, some, I know, some I don't and they're extraordinarily talented and in many ways they're sitting around the fire waiting for the validation for their talent, whether through external forces, maybe getting a job and those things are practical.

That makes sense. But I would argue that it is selling oneself incredibly short because how do you know that's actually what you want? How do you know that's actually even what you're interested in? That may be what someone's driven to do. And in many ways, when it's something a person is driven to do, they don't care if they're validated or not.

They just love it. It's like a child playing with a toy or someone really engulfed in, in an activity, a sport, or whatever they're doing. The reward is in the doing. And so for those who I know and some who I don't, who are still waiting for the award panel to recognize them or for a certain subset of a community to recognize them or for validation from those around them. Or their industry. We have it already. Many human beings never have it. They'll never know what they wanna 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 be interested in something.

Most don't know what they wanna do. Most have jobs because it's something to do. Most, pursue degrees because it gives them a sense of community and a sense of connection with others. It allows them to feel like something in this world.

So 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. I'm not saying one wouldn't have it, but there's so much more than that. There's so much more than that. There is so much more than that. And I've recognized today that I'm not interested in any of that.

If it comes, it comes. That's cool. But there's so much more that I can explore with what I've been given. There's so much more that I could do with what I've been given that I, myself also was conditioned with the thinking of waiting for someone to come. But everything that I've done, everything that I've made from starting my first album, shooting my music videos, to making products, to Cereal and Such, to making clothing to, designing an office from scratch to building a property now- all that has come despite any recognition. I was gonna do that anyway. no one gave me the permission to do that. I simply did it 'cause I had no choice.

We are so much more than an award we're so much more than that. We're so much more than people liking or not liking. Who cares about that? We're so much more than that. This is not even a question about devotion. We're so much more than that though. Winning the games that other people, it's boring.

I find that those who are interested in winning those things truly don't dream big enough. Who are excited to win particular awards or to be accepted by communities, I feel like the dreams aren't big enough. It's still relative. It's still nothing that really shakes you in your boots.

It's still something that feels comfortable to show others. If you won an award and the entire audience who saw you win the award, your enemies and your friends, if they were all watching and someone told you, Hey, after you win that award, they're all gonna be zapped with that Men in Black laser.

And then no one's gonna have any record that you won this award. The only person that's gonna know is you, most probably wouldn't wanna win the award. If the award isn't visible to others. If it doesn't place you within a particular category within society. Awards have no value. They have no value beyond that, and there's nothing wrong with them, but where is the individual who doesn't care about the award? Who's looking for things beyond manmade things? Who's looking for lands that have not been explored? That's what interests me today. My website today isn't a shop with some items and writing on it. It's completely my artist statement. It's the work that I do.

It's the journey of the artist that you can trace from 1997 back when I was in grade school drawing. You can trace it then all the way till today, and you'll see the iterations of these websites. That's what I'm interested in and where that takes me. I'm not interested in someone giving me a pat on the back for doing something that I would've done anyway.

I don't want that. I want to go where no one has gone. I want to do what no one has done. No one has the gall to go and do. That's what interests me. And today's website, thetheoshow.com, references that. There's absolutely a shop, but there is a complete document. That to me is everything, and that will determine what's to come. That'll determine what's next. As opposed to me picking a destination on a map, the work and the experience of the work, because all of that's led me to understand what I'm understanding now, that's gonna determine what's to follow. That itself, not me.

That itself will determine that.