Artistic Expression

Artistic Expression of Love, Change, Growth, Freedom

A story of accessing love in a seemingly impossible environment

An essential exploration into the ebb and flow of the individual self  (which in its essence is made of love) and its desire to connect to another being through that love, within a surrounding environment of limitations, prejudice, and separation.

How many times have we heard this story?

As storytellers we have a platform for facilitating and contributing to change. We are responsible for the images that we portray that become a part of the global narrative and essentially the truth. What those images represent is not only indicative of our own inner nature, but contributes to the collective consciousness of what really is, helps to build the perspective of the world around us, and gives us insight and exploration into what needs to be addressed and what really matters. Asking the key question of : What is the collective story we are all telling ourselves about who we are and what our purpose is here?

This is a piece I made a few years ago, and was actually the very first personal project straight out of film school.

Out of any and all of the stories that I could tell, I had a choice, what story do I want to tell right now?

What came up was something based in and around love, truth, passion, and courage in a time where the environment discouraged and even dispelled such natural occurrences through constricting physical elements, promoting powerlessness through control and separation. How can these two things live in the same place?

Love is love and deserves the right not only to exist in whatever capacity and form it takes between beings, but every person should have the ability and opportunity to have access to that within themselves and others during their time here.

When it comes to love and separation, I thought of 1950s America more specifically, and the events that were going on at the time in terms of race relations.

I looked at those events and thought to myself, how strange to separate people, and express hatred bias and prejudice from one human being to another based off of something so surface as skin color? Is skin color indicative of someone’s capacity to love? Of someone’s willingness for growth, change, and understanding? Is skin color indicative of the integrity and wisdom a person has within them? What are the elements and essences that live and breathe beneath the skin color?

Why do we spend our time looking for our differences, when we can activate the choice within ourselves to choose to spend time looking for our similarities? What are the things that connect us? The things that we share?

We all feel love, joy, happiness, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, empathy etc. And we all wish to live whole-hearted lives that are fulfilled and inspire that legacy for our children and the next generation.

Why don’t we spend our time, and our storytelling, focusing on those aspects? Focusing on promoting more positive imagery of inspiring stories and images of true unity. And an even bigger question still…What would the collective world look like if we all individually contributed in that way?

The sum total is made up of individual parts. What if we started asking, what can I do individually to help bring more love and understanding into the world?

How can my unique, talents, skills, knowledge, efforts, experience, and actions contribute to the global community?

A specific quote from Joseph Campbell comes to mind when he says “We all operate in society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity? Or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes?”

My question is: how can we operate better as individuals in order to create a system that encourages our striving towards human purposes, rather than crushing or squandering it in a negative never ending cycle over time?

“The influence of a vital person vitalizes” ~ Joseph Campbell

And lastly, how can we individually be more vital towards creating a global community that is united?