In acting, you're basically someone else's paint on the canvas, which is cool. I enjoy that process. But in music, and in this particular genre, I can bring more of myself. I can say the things I want to say.
A Cleveland artist applies her paint to great effect. At a recent screening, local filmmakers introduced their cast and crew with much ado, thanking the paint that gave their movies life. Shahin worked alone on Born Lucky, a film about her son's deployment to Iraq with the British Royal Airforce. With no production team to introduce, she thanked her family for opening their lives to us. The film drew us in with close-ups of Neil, talking with his family on the eve of his departure. We followed him to Iraq and home again to be interviewed by his kind videographer mum. By film's end, we understood our role in the project: witness to change from innocent to veteran, carefree to careworn, open to guarded. We recognized the young man's paint, and ours, on the tragic canvas.
Public or private, we are the stuff of each others' imagination. Psychologists warn about projection -- the friend who paints her world and you in shades of envy, the child who gives you devil's features dipped in the sin of 'no.' We are painted as we paint.
I hear there is a Dave Matthews cruise where Dave and his band meet the cruisers on a tropical island. Picture yourself in the palmy theater; Gaugan soaks his canvas in the jam band's sound. If you are a fan, this could be paradise and I don't hear $100,000/concert DMB complaining about being the paint. Ah but I've tainted my handiwork with tell tale tinges of resentment. Forgive my crass vanity -- I can do better.
If there is a difference between paint and painter, it is in the mind. Consciousness melds discipline with intent in the imperceptible migration of hand to brush.
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