ORIGINAL POSER – “DEFINE YOURSELF”
Life, as we know it for some, is the pursuit of YOU. Who are you? And how you define yourself? What makes up YOU? What is your Style? Your Passion? Your Flavor? What defines you and separates you from the rest?
Enter…“Original Poser”
Of course, the term “Poser” we all know implies – a fake, unoriginal, acts in an affected manner to impress others, impostor, etc.
In 1994 at 24 years old I had the incredible opportunity and experience while actively working in the art department in Hollywood to work as a set dresser on the Indy Film “Dead Man” starring Johnny Depp and co-starring an amazing support cast. The film was directed by the Indy guru Jim Jarmusch and Shot by Robby Muller (Repo Man and Barfly). After the movie production ended, my creative inspiration rose another notch. I followed and looked into a lot of Jim’s other work. I came across his list of “Rules” in which he declared “Nothing is Original” – we are all influenced, so you should actively go steal, bite, borrow from anything and everything that you love that speaks to you, that appeals to you, and then form it around your style. From that moment on, I was in, and had been in for my entire life. But reading those words seemed to cement that whole ideology.
The awareness started to materialize…
In the early part of my life, I was driven by a furious passion and a frenzied pace, driven by a maddening level of ideas, thoughts, and dreams, all of which I felt I could accomplish. My mantra was “it is not what I have done, it is what I have yet to do” which led to a lot of great experiences but no real deep accounting of them, as I was always immediately onto the next act of creation. Now, as I have aged, I have had this urge and need to sit back and reflect and take inventory…and what I have realized is that:
To this point in my life I have been able to do what I consider to be an amazing amount of different things ranging from many years spent in Hollywood in the late 80’s through the mid 90’s working in film and production, owning and operating my own Indy production company and record label, producing and directing multiple music videos, live concerts and events, having a fledgling clothing line, making and creating my own Indy zine, designing and installing over 43 locations for a national coffee franchise, chairing the board of Southern Oregon’s largest youth programs center, coaching wrestling, creating random art, etc. The list goes on, all of which have led to some pretty sweet experiences, each one of them lending me some influence into my style, my behavior, my vision, my lifestyle.
I wholeheartedly feel and embody that the sum total of your experiences, the good the bad, the ugly, how you handle your situations, your swagger, your sway, your jam, your vibe, your style, your influence, how you do what you do is YOU!! And being aware of that certainly helps to accent it.
Thus, I am the Original Poser!! Influenced but Individualized.
Accumulative—You = the sum total of all your experiences!!
I am an Ultimate Optimist. I lead with the belief that all is possible, I always look at the Positive in a situation, I always look for solutions, I am in a constant state of calm, and constantly stoked and riding the high of life and that any moment is the perfect moment to do something fucking cool. We all have the ability to be great and to affect the people around us in a positive manner, to change their lives with one small act of Radness!! Believe in yourself. Be Great–DEFINE YOURSELF!!
Go Be Rad!!
