For an allegedly creative person, I can be wildly unimaginative at times. When I first arrived at art school, way back in the day, it was challenging for me to wrap my mind around some of the more vague assignments that did not always involve parameters. In my first photography studio class, the teacher assigned us to “bring something to critique in a month.” Not necessarily a color photograph or even a photograph at all — just: something. It was a photography class, so naturally, I made photographs. Other kids with seemingly more expansive imaginations made sculptures, or did performance art, or set things on fire and took pictures of them. My mind was blown in that first critique. Apparently, to be a photographer did not mean you had to take pictures!
That was my first clue that to be an artist does not mean to identify yourself with a traditional medium, or any medium at all.
Now, I’m a writer. But sometimes, the things I do to feed my writing have nothing to do with writing or reading or even thinking in words. I take one workday every month and play “creative hooky.”
This last Friday, I took my hooky day and went to some of my favorite creative haunts in San Francisco: the bulk spice aisle at Rainbow Grocery, Flora Grubb, The Village Market. I ended up at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. This is San Francisco’s newest and most popular museum, so I had shied away from checking it out on a weekend. I’m glad I went during the week — although somehow the place was still full of sick children. I can’t wait to someday have kids and bring them to museums when they are sick. What fun that is for everyone involved! Especially for the unwitting stranger who gets strategically seated next to your hacking, tubercular child in a locked, blackened planetarium show for a solid hour! Anyway, snotty attitude aside, the planetarium was the highlight of the museum, until, that is, I rounded a corner and discovered the jellyfishes.
I don’t know about you guys, but jellyfish rock my world. They are one of the few things that make me lean away from Darwinism and toward Creationism. Not really, but still…. why did nature make jellyfishes so cool? When nature blows my mind like this, I find that I can get out of my head and let my imagination flourish. I was inspired to take this riveting 47-second movie and spend hours that night figuring out how to sync it to music with iMovie. I call this: Yellyfish — The Movie. I’m thinking of submitting it to Sundance.
(If the movie below is not loading for you, click here to watch it on YouTube.)
Okay, back to writing now.
