Krayon #4

For those interested, I do these color scribbles in good ol' Crayola, because I like the smell.

I have a big box that some Christmas candies came in one year with "CRAYONS" written on the lid in black Sharpie. I open the lid. I take a long wiff of the contents. And everything is alright.

I do the Krayonage - theoretically - without planning, without thinking. I try to anyway. I'm of the personality - as I mentioned a couple posts ago - to think and rethink, plan and replan, and so I try to practice impulsive, rough-n-ready, chaotic creative action as much as possible. I realize the irony in making an effort to be spontaneous. My primary art training is as a filmmaker and screenwriter, which are jobs that - try as we might - just don't lend themselves over-easily to the random dance of improvisation and funky drum of accident.

For example, the following conversation has never taken place, ever:

FILM WRITER/DIRECTOR: Say, I want to make a big budget action movie.
STUDIO EXEC: Can I read the script?
FILM WRITER/DIRECTOR: There is no script. I'm going to just wing the whole thing. It's going to kick ass.
STUDIO EXEC: Good for you. Here's $20 million. Let me know when you need more.
FILM WRITER/DIRECTOR: You bet.

Filmmaking, because it involves dozens or hundreds of technicians - and millions of dollars - and scads of guilds and unions - just can't happen like that. It would be exactly like a construction company's putting up a building improvisationally. A side effect can be that one's yummy/stinky creative fecundity gets constipated in moviemaking. Or arthritic. Or impotent (Or make up your own Physical Affliction Analogy!). And if you try to make a full-time go of it as a screenwriter, you're almost certainly in danger of some creative stagnation. It takes real effort to keep the spark alive - to keep the romance alive - the delight in imagining something new and crazy, and trying through a medium to get strangers to imagine it just as vividly as you first did.

So the Krayons help me in that way. I wanted to go into art school when I graduated from Kettering Fairmont High School (Kettering, Ohio - suburb of Dayton), but, thank God, took the film school gamble instead. Still, I love all the visual arts and the more I work, the less difference I see between one medium and another. I get an idea and, being horny for a variety of media, I'm better able to let the idea find it's best home rather than trying to force it violently into the few, or one, medium or format I'm comfortable with.

So get out some crayons. Give yourself 15 minutes. Go mad. Throw the results in the trash. Do another one. Or don't.