I experience the most intense feelings of nostalgia whenever I listen to Oliver Mtzukudzi’s music that it has become  unbearable.

Francis Ford Coppola

 

“Always make your work be personal.
And, you never have to lie. If you lie, you will only trip yourself up. You will always get caught in a lie. It is very important for an artist not to lie, and most important is not to lie to yourself.”

“The artist always battles his own/her own feeling of inadequacy.
We are very insecure. People are insecure, not just young people. Everyone is insecure. They say that Barbara Streisand, when she goes on, she has a panic attack. She feels she can’t sing. Of course, she can sing. I believe that when you write something, when I write something, I turn it over and I don’t look at it. Because I believe the writer, the young writer, has a hormone that makes them hate what they’ve written. And yet, the next morning, when you look at it, you say, “Oh that’s not bad.” But the first second you hate it.”

“An essential element of any art is risk. If you don’t take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and expecting to have a baby. You have to take a risk.”

“I once found a little excerpt from Balzac. He speaks about a young writer who stole some of his prose. The thing that almost made me weep,  he said, “I was so happy when this young person took from me.” Because that’s what we want. We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice.”

“And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you. And Balzac said that in his book: It makes me so happy because it makes me immortal because I know that 200 years from now there will be people doing things that somehow I am part of. So the answer to your question is: Don’t worry about whether it’s appropriate to borrow or to take or do something like someone you admire because that’s only the first step and you have to take the first step.”

Illustration by Anthony Hare ]]> http://www.jepchumba.com/2012/02/coppolla/feed/ 0 http://www.jepchumba.com/2012/02/i-chose-failure/ http://www.jepchumba.com/2012/02/i-chose-failure/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:35:03 +0000 jepchumba http://www.jepchumba.com/?p=1488

I chose to become an artist because I wanted to be a failure. When I was young, if you wanted to really ostracize yourself from society, you became an artist.

- Mike Kelley

Milton Glaser on the fear of failure. So much wisdom, watched and re-watched it again.

The self doubt, fear and thoughts were all just a massive security blanket of excuses. Excuses are like massive vats of alcohol full of empty calories and packed with a lot of regret.

Create despite the fear.

Build despite the doubt.

Inspire despite the lack of confidence.

Being a brilliant artist or innovator is not a package you can install into your personality, it is the everyday decisions. I am quickly realizing that one’s potential to achieving greatness comes in the simple little choices we make everyday.

The choice to go to bed before 3am,

The choice to put that donut down

The choice to open your mailbox and hit send.

The closest thing I can think of what I am trying to tell you here is the same thing I go through when I run. The first 20 minutes of a run your body and your mind are screaming for you to stop. “what the hell are you crazy… no one is chasing you.. stop it. just stop it!”.  But you don’t stop.. you put one foot in front of the other.. and you know what you get stronger, you get faster.

So stop looking for all the answers.. just do. Just do it in spite of yourself and you will find ‘you have reached your destination!’

New Media’s Role in Reframing Africa

Africa is more than AIDS, poverty, civil strife and safaris. With the ever-increasing access to digital tools Africans on the continent and all over the world are using the web to farm a new vision of Africa in the 21st Century. Social media platforms amplify and help spread this “new take” on the continent, both enabling Africans to tell their own stories and offering an alternative to mainstream media’s coverage of Africa. Ultimately, using new media Africans can and are becoming the architects of what very well may be a new “African Renaissance.” This panel will look at how Africans are using the mobile and social web, what sort of content is being produced and what are the messages being communicated. The panel will also examine new media’s social and economic impact as it relates to Africa.

1. What are the images and messages being put forth? Are they only relevant locally or is there an international audience for African centered digital content?
2. How has technology impacted Africa and facilitated the growth of new media on the continent? What are the digital tools being employed by Africans?
3. How are Africans using new media to collaborate with content creators outside their countries borders?
4. With over 400 million Africans with mobile phones and the ease at which they can create and share content using their mobile devices, what sort of impact does this have on the content being produced?
5. How can new media be leveraged to create economic opportunities in Africa for Africans and overseas investors?

The best advice I could possibly give you, and forgive me if this seems glib, is to work. Work. Work. Work. Every day. At the same time every day. For as long as you can take it every day, work, work, work. Understand? Talent is for shit. I’ve taught school for nearly thirty years and never met a student who did not have some talent. It is as common as house dust or kudzu vine in Alabama and is just about as valuable. Nothing is as valuable as the habit of work, and work has to become a habit. This I learned from Flannery O’Connor. Read her. Read her letters especially, and her essays. You will learn more about what it is you want to do from people like her and Ben Shahn and Eudora Welty than you will ever learn from drawing classes. Read. Read. Read. You are in the business of words more than pictures. You must understand words and the craft and art of putting words together to move men’s souls and minds and hearts. Listen to music. Listen to Bach’s Art of the Fugue and the Goldberg Variations over and over and over. Every day, day after day after day until you begin to sense, if not understand, what he is up to. Then try to implement what you intuit from Bach into your own work. I don’t care if you don’t like classical music. Do it. It is invaluable, but you have to listen, and then don’t listen. Let it fill your mind at one moment and then let it flow over you and into you until you are paying it no attention whatever. Bach will teach you form and structure and rhythm and all sorts of things you never imagined.

Second to the value of work is the willingness to fail. Faulkner said that to not fail is to be perfect and that if we ever did anything perfect nothing would remain but to cut the throat. Experiment and fail. Move on. Experiment and fail. Move on. Always keep in motion and finish the job even if it is not exactly what you hoped it would be, is not as good as it could be. It will never be as good as it could be. But each time you must try to make it as good as it could be. Its shortcomings will reveal themselves in time, sometimes to your embarrassment, but that’s ok. It’s part of the growth process. Failure is the foundation of growth. I’ve done over 200 books and not one of them is perfect. But.I would rather have the 200 imperfect books that comprise my history and mark the vectors of my path through my art form than to have one perfect book which would comprise nothing but its own perfect self and denote no vectors of a life lived, and an art form struggled with and occasionally, very occasionally, bested. More I cannot advise you except (as corny and prosaic as it may seem) put love first in your life, love of yourself and your work and of other people, and of whatever things of the spirit move and motivate you, and to have fun and maintain a fierce sense of humor. There is nothing so serious or important that it can’t be laughed at, or even poked a little fun at. Practice safe sex. Don’t do heavy drugs. Don’t get drunk and drive a car. Eat your greens. Get plenty of sleep.

…my very best wishes.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen.