Time for a split?

Another dawning realization is that I may need two blogs; one a professional/business site to avoid scaring people away and another for everything that can be scary.
One of the issues that keep coming up is the overlap between the two realms that do in fact overlap. Art is personal, at times very intimate. Business, at least in a traditional sense, is weighted with the expectations of PROFESSIONALISM. While I’m sure many others have explored this issue in more depth and clarity, and with more eloquence than I, it is my reality now and my head is hard enough to run into this issue and not be traumatized, so here we are. I pride myself in my tendency and capacity to behave in unconventional ways and this is to a measure some of the excitement I feel about this new medium, electrons as fluid as paint, as potent as words, as impermanent as wind, and solid as a rock. Business is done differently now, social interactions are different; the cliché true- we’re in a brave new world, the old rules are changing. Having said that I, for reasons I learned a few years ago, feel the need to be a bit conservative. Which is at odds with the drive to embrace the liberty that gives birth to the new and manifests my passion. Really, the age old conflict between order and freedom, another set of ideas I need to pour forth about, and here is the crystallization of the issue. When my art is an exploration of these very ideas, (largely in my head at this point) how do I go about separating the strands in a practical fashion. I have been told and have read that the best business comes from a personal relationship with one’s client. How personal is too personal? Does the person simply wanting to buy something beautiful(that I do so well) when coming to my site need to be linguistically assaulted by some rant about how appallingly corrosive the Republican liar squad is on our body politic. About sexual liberty in the land of the free, now terrified? And then the struggle over whether I want to do business with people I don’t like or the delight I feel in taking their money. The need to behave with integrity towards my own values of respect and decency, knowing that the world I want to live in and create is one of respect for others and myself, and being honest with my own feelings and clear about the damage done to that same integrity when I tolerate disrespect from people who, to be perfectly honest, have utter contempt for “faggots like me” (for the record and so as not to confuse people-I'm bisexual- neither gay nor straight). I will pour out these ideas in my own words and art; but it is also business. To be honest and true when that same honesty is overwhelming and uncomfortable, there's a challenge. Art can harness this passion and I can make a living at it because I do it well. Caveat emptor.
Another note I need to stick in here is something a friend told me a few years ago that I wish I had been told as a child, and maybe the single most important lesson I have ever learned. There are only two things every single human has to do in this world. First-Make your own decisions, nobody can do that for you. Second-Live by the consequences.

A smile so big

I am childlike in the dawning amazement about the scope and nature of the changes this new engine (blog is such a clumsy, inelegant word) is enabling. Yet another awakening is occurring. The number of needs and desires this is addressing in me is transformational. Podium/soapbox/storefront/laboratory/gallery/publishing house and more, and it has been in front of me all this time! I feel a little sheepish for having had the potential in my grasp for so long and to not have known the possibilities. Certainly not the first time I have undergone something this profound, and how lucky (is blessed too strong a word?) am I to experience it again?! No excuse for failing to bloom; I am empowered.
I’m tempted to pop my brain in a stream-of consciousness mess all over this screen but won’t quite now, or perhaps ever. A need for discipline regarding this mode of communicating is pretty self-evident to me. But so much passion and an acute awareness of how short our time can be… I want to make my fire burn for a long time.

Homo Novus

Here I am at the beginning of a whole new adventure in my life and trying not to engage in too many birth cries; I'm a little overwhelmed and getting my bearings. Kinda like learning to breath in a new atmosphere you could say. In the same way that a newborn isn't going to be any kind of a conversationalist, for the moment I'm going to just be quiet for now. I just had to do this first.