When it comes to letting talents lie fallow, I guess I’m one of the guiltiest around. I discovered my arty gifts at a rather tender age then spent the rest of my life momentarily drawing on them once in a blue moon; primarily when I needed a form of escape from some of the less memorable periods of my growing up years. I found this the other day:
Nothing spectacular, but then it was only my fifth portrait and the only one that could fit into a scanner.
I had developed a weird fascination with the female form (big grin) and so all the portraits I drew then were of models in varying degrees of undress. I’d rather leave the question of the healthiness of such endeavours to a later time. Anyways I also found some poetry I wrote during this period. Good Lord I was hopelessly besotted! Sorry, but derelict as my blog may be, I can’t risk the possibility of blackmail in future so I dare not post such sissy stuff. The guys would bone me for life. I was such a sentimental schmuck!!! Probably still am but at least you can’t see it through all the layers of... whatever I’m layered with (Is that a good thing, I wonder?).
Anyway I’ve decided to revivify some of these hobbies, including music, whatever’s left of it. Dreadlocks and a guitar... keewwwwwl duuude!!!. Of course the models will be clothed now. I can’t speak for those “controlled professionals” for whom it’s simply “art” but in my experience the mind can be dreadfully difficult to tame without feeding it such evocative material. There, I’ve said it. Sincerely though, I was controlled most of the time, but having such an awfully vivid imagination there were times when for instance, while laying idly at home, the scandalously clad girl straddling the motorbike on the Xinqi billboard advert would slowly slide off and glide toward me, hips swaying in a well-rehearsed provocative rhythm ... anyway the point is kids, your folks are right (whether or not they adhere to it themselves): that stuff isn’t good for you.
I always tend to go off on a tangent don’t I? I was talking about undeveloped gifts. Yah, there was also chess, which I started playing at 9 (same time I started playing scrabble) and developed quite rapidly at until my friend filched my board. After that I didn’t play again till my very late teens (ditto for scrabble). Mom and dad just never got round to buying me another board. Which brings me to another point – if you’re not ready to bend over backward in ensuring that every, and I mean EVERY, talent of your child’s is developed to its fullest potential, do your unborn children a favour and stay the bad word away from the bad word lectern... moooshaa, moooooooshaaaaa.
So my ingenious strategy for honing my chess, art, guitar and writing skills is... play, draw, strum and write (that’s why I blog even when no one reads) :-). Simply sublime! I never cease to amaze myself (chuckle). As someone once put it "If you want to be a writer, write". Whether it’s taking great photographs, working with little kids, old folk or the sick, galvanizing people for community service or hunting down rare birds in Kenya, I find that we all possess some secret passion we think about while balancing accounts, slicing and dicing people or cadavers, or punching cryptic code sequences into computers. A number of these things really don’t take that much of an investment in time and those that are less accessible can be planned for, but alas “the countless nothings of life”...
It is my (newfound) conviction that - at the least - all abilities I innately possess are unique and requisite pieces of the puzzle that is doug. If I’m wrong, I will at least have had a blast and gotten a few things to teach my little ones, should they be interested. So I leave you with a line from (of all people) actor and martial artist Chuck Norris’s personal code:
“I will develop myself to the maximum of my potential in all ways.”
I hope you take it to heart.
"We cannot tear a single page out of our lives but we can throw the entire book into the fire" - George Sand
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