Professional MMA fighter. Certified arborist, co-owner & founder of a tree care business. Musician, painter/visual artist, writer, etc. It has often felt difficult to harness seemingly disparate passions to fuel a clear purpose. 

 

But the older I get, the more my role here comes into focus (though it shifts through seasons).

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I make art. The purpose of (my) art is to transmute the heaviest, most extreme or intense, most challenging emotions inherent in the human experience into something beautiful. Something light enough to hold, to carry, or to give away. The best artists are true alchemists, marrying science and literal magic to turn lead to gold.

 

A piece of art can rhyme so perfectly with a feeling or experience you've had that you feel there's no way the artist is a stranger. Like you're both in communion with something bigger than you, or at the very least that you're not alone. An experience of the "soul" of humankind, a remembering of your own full aliveness (which so much of our modern culture seeks to squash out of you entirely). Or sometimes, art serves simply to break up the heartbreak or monotony of existing for a moment with a little entertainment, humor, levity. Anyone who knows me well will tell you that silliness is one of my top priorities. 

 

Artists are the few among us able to deeply celebrate what you might call "horrible beauty" -- the perfection in brokenness and grief. In tragedy, even. Those who seek not only the highs of life, but who are also willing to face and fully experience the lows, with just as much open-hearted presence as the highs. Even with hearts heavy as the sea, there is a sense of fullness and aliveness available here too. What a shame to waste the lows only looking for the highs. No need to go searching for the lows of course-- they'll come as they do (and when they do, we'll sing the blues).

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I make art primarily because I have to. I cannot rest or enjoy my life much without creating and constantly pushing my creative limits. I must test my limits and I must set impossible goals. And whether or not I achieve those goals (some I will, and some I will not), I must play long enough to see what happens, and take the data (win or loss) into my next endeavor. It is a compulsion, it is my own therapy, and it is also part of my life's message. And if any single thing that I create before I die manages to help even one person transmute their pain or imprisonment into something they can do something with, I will consider that a great success. I'm here to get free, and I want as many other people as possible to get free too. Even a little more free is a victory.

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Art comes in many forms-- physical, visual, audio. I'd take all of this a step further, and say that we are all artists involved in the creation of our own Great Work-- the story of our lives. Thank you to everyone who's played a part in, or who follows along in mine. 

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Watch this!

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