Cool Change

So, off in the Melbourne, Australia, cool changes are often abrupt and almost violent things -- wind whipping through the streets, stirring up dust and refuse, so strong you couldn't stand up against it and you'd have to hide inside. But after it passed, the temp would drop, oh, twenty degrees and the air would be clean and pleasant. Really enjoyed the days after a change.

Well, I often find as an artist that the wind gets a little stale and I have to move on. And, by that, I mean that it all gets a little too comfortable and easy to do what you do - an immediate recipe for artistic mediocrity.

Or the converse can happen. People around you start making it too hard to do what you do - by not hiring you or laying down sets of core values that aren't germane to your artistic process. Folks start to believe they know you too well, know what you can do, or know how you'll respond, and that's where they put you. Again, an immediate recipe for artistic meh.

And, then there's the worst: you get yourself a posse. Posses make you look a little more important and impress folks outside your personal sphere but tend to contribute to artistic cronyism - I mean, you gotta pay back that posse somehow, right? Death to any attempt to make great art.

So I make the wind blow, dust off my wings and go elsewhere. Between you and me, I secretly like this part. I know I'm not supposed to because change is supposed to be hard. But it gives me a chance to clear the cobwebs artistically (and emotionally and socially, actually) and tends to leave me clearer and more motivated than before.

Ease rarely encourages an individual to strive. I'd much rather be a little fish in a big pond, than a big fish in a little one. Which is one of the reasons why there is a Jaybird Productions in the first place.

It leaves me a bit of a lone wolf but that's fine. Cool change is refreshing. Consider it often.


Jacqui Burke is a freelance director, writer, and theatrical teacher living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  She is currently directing Lend Me A Tenor for Scarborough Theatre Guild and prepping for her Shakespeare is Boffo! summer camps and prepping for an all female version of Taming of the Shrew for Jaybird Productions going up in the fall of this year. She is, also, serializing The Pretender, her first novel, online at http://thepretender-amarcienoelnovel.blogspot.ca/.  


Jacqui Burke
talk/text: 647-292-0210
twitter: @jaybird01
skype: Jacquiburkecell, jacqui.burke
www.wordsnimages.com
www.jaybirdproductions.ca
www.shakespeareisboffo.ca
http://jacquiburke.blogspot.ca
http://thepretender-amarcienoelnovel.blogspot.ca/
http://jaybirdproductions.blogspot.ca/