creative consulting for the art of life by Jason Jenn

creative consulting for the art of life by Jason Jenn

Thursday, September 29, 2011

West Hollywood Book Fair

This Sunday, Oct. 2, between 5pm-6pm I’ll be presenting/singing a selection from the collection of lyrics I wrote, both from my book “Songs & Stories Of My Days” and the upcoming “Life In An Over-POP-ulated World”, at the Homo-Centric Booth (#B35).

I am excited to have this opportunity to share the pieces in person, for I find live events have such a wonderful quality about them. Of course, the lyrics are wonderful to read in print as well, but really dance off the page and take to the air when sung to their distinct rhythms.

There's a great line up of writers from the LGBTQI Communities, so stop by all day to be filled with the glory of the spoken word!




You can preview “Songs & Stories Of My Days” in its entirety and/or make your order here:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2496775


For more information on the Book Fair and full Homo-centric line up visit these sites:
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=273927645959189

http://www.westhollywoodbookfair.org/

Friday, September 23, 2011

Equality & Duality: Light and Dark in the Life of Art

 
Today is the Autumnal Equinox, one of two times during the solar tour when the days and nights are the closest of equal length. It’s a great time to reflect on the duality of life, on the yin and the yang, the shadow and the light within us all and how it pertains to leading a life of art. This is a time of balance, of being equal, a resting place of centeredness. Key to remember is that moments like this are fleeting, the day will pass over to imbalance and inequality, but are guaranteed to return someday again. We are part of a cycle, a continual source of rebegins.

Leading a life of art is not about being perfect. We are imperfect beings. There are even particular artistic styles which understand that and purposely place imperfections into their work so that it honors our nature! Sometimes Art portrays very ugly or unappealing visions as well, perhaps with very important messages for us to consider and recognize. And sometimes “ugly” events occur to good people that is beyond their control. How we experience and manage our interaction with those events however, is in our ability to control —  to a certain degree.

Art is the language of life. Mother Nature (or God if you will) is the foremost teacher, embodiment, and master of the language of Art. But as we all know, nature isn’t always idyllic, organized, and pretty. She can be brutal, vicious, and downright ugly. Art doesn’t mean perfection or beauty, on the contrary, art has a much broader meaning, which encompasses the whole gamut of human experiences good and bad.

If you google your wiki - you just might find: “Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect. It encompasses a wide range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression…etc.”

Indeed the definition of Art is rather broad, so in reality we ALL live our lives artistically in some way, shape or form. Living a life of art is a given – but my blog and what I seek in life is about how to be more conscious in how we view and experience artistic principles in our lives!

But human beings have vastly different aesthetics - what appeals to one person, doesn’t necessarily work for another. That’s where cultural and personality differences really come through. A person simply can’t live life trying to please everyone (and that has been a key lesson for me throughout my adult life). We must do what we can to grow as human beings, becoming sensitive to how we move through the world, aware of what type of Art is made through our interactions, and how employing different methods achieve different results.

Art connects us to the greater world and the to various processes of nature. It can alter our experience and help us to deal with challenging issues. It’s why I find art therapy to be one of the most healing things a person can do. There shall be moments when we seek and discover our balanced aspects and everything seems harmonious. But a life of art is a life that strives to pay attention to and be in tune with the cycles of life.

There is no light without the existence of the dark, but too much dark or too much light can be unhealthy for us. As we recognize and learn from the energies at play in our life, we can work to use them as source material for transforming and presenting another result. This is part of the artistic process of life. We strive for a productive place that mixes and balances those energies in different ways at different times.

Living a life of art is not just something we think “oh yes, when I get everything else that is important done, I’ll make time for art,” it’s a way of being that proclaims, “it is most important to live a life of art and then everything else falls into place.” To not make art, is to deny ourselves the opportunity to open up and communicate to the world, to move beyond issues and hardships. Without the art of life we cut ourselves off from our true potential and stagnate, we disconnect from the life force and source. There are occasions when physical medicines and therapies are required for a person’s health, but the power of the mind is very strong — and living a life of art and filling it with an active engagement in creative energy can affect our minds and souls in ways from the simply subtle to the sensationally sublime.


Friday, September 16, 2011

A Feast of Colors



It's the glorious autumn harvest season, so I thought it would be most appropriate to let your eyes feast upon the many colors from the bounty of rainbow chard and other organics grown at Dirty Face Creek Farm in Iowa. May you be inspired to add a wide spectrum to your food palette and rejoice the diversity and beauty of nature's art - imagine what a festival of color can do for your body inside!

IN-JOY!







 





- from The Song of My Days

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Routines are GROOVY, man!

Watching the sun rise and set are a glorious, age-old routines to incorporate into your life.
This is the story of how I lost and got my groove back!

After a long summer without blogging due to various circumstances, I’m back now with a vengeance and a backlog of great material and photos to share (which I may post date to fill in where I planned for them to originally go). Your ReBegin blog is a splendid weekly routine for me to adhere that helps me track my artistic progress and serve as a warm up for other projects during the week. I find my creative spirits are bolstered when I have completed the task and shared appropriately with the blog-o-verse (and those whom I am very grateful for taking the time to read). Because I went through (and in ways still am going through) an upheaval both physically with a move and emotionally with a challenging break-up, I found my creative routines disrupted. However, it is high time to get back in the groove, and with each sentence that forms I can feel my creative soul breathing a sigh of relief. AH!

I’ve always struggled to maintain a routine, not because I hate them, but because a freelancer’s life is constantly in flux, especially when travel is involved.  I actually love the concept of holding and having regular routines that occur around the same time daily. Routines / regular rituals serve as a sort of linchpin for all other activities to revolve around. Of course when circumstances force me to alter a routine in some way, I am definitely left feeling unhinged. Something in the Universe just isn’t right without them.  

AHA, I just found it very interesting to consider how routines fit into the concepts of Your ReBegin and ReEvolutionary. Because each day/season/etc begins again, re-evolving upon the axis of a singular steady element that remains the same, but allows for variation around it. For example: our solar system has the Sun. Without it we would be set adrift in the cosmos, incapable of sustaining life. And yet as we make our daily rotation and yearly revolution around the sun, we go through vast changes, but look forward to similar routines and elements that occur yearly during those spins. For something to change, something must also remain fixed to give guidance.

Whether lasting for five minutes or several hours, routines and regular rituals steady and ground our creative spirits, which unmanaged can float all over the place unfocused. You can metaphorically think of routines as the string that holds on to our creative spirit kite. It helps to tether it, giving it something to pull on / offer resistance. The string allows it to flow in the wind, but not go adrift where it may crash into a tree, thus ending it’s flight. We want our creativity to keep soaring! Routines help create structure and give direction. Little daily and weekly rituals and routines help our minds establish internal rhythms and give a time reference for events. They also gift a sense of accomplishment upon their completion. They are little confidence boosters cheering on our larger endeavors.  Our brains do well with a healthy balance of routine and variation, and for each person the equation is different.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Take some time to examine your own routines and regular rituals. Which do you enjoy doing, and which seem like such a pain? Which ones are connected to your creative spirit — take some time to determine the difference between a daily chore/routine (like brushing your teeth) and a creative one (like humming a song every time you brush your teeth). Which ones give you a sense of accomplishment? Which ones seem to feel good, but really just drain your energy and don’t serve you artistically? Which ones are missing? Which ones can you experiment with adding into your schedule? Start off with simple, short routines. A little can go a long way towards fulfilling its purpose!

I can just feel the inspired rays of light shining down as I complete this blog.