“I really should do some paintings. I really need to. Get in the studio and create some paintings.”

Weak sauce! The statements are weak sauce! They inspire nothing, nothing seriously. I should and I need to. Not at all… doesn’t work.

If you have not painted a lot and you wish you could you might say… “I really want to, one day, do some paintings and learn how to paint.”

No, no, not one day, one day never comes. It’s now or never bitches. Even if you have to go to a blank sheet of paper or canvas and squirt paint out on to that support and smear it around with your hand and then walk away, you’ve created something.

You did something, it may suck, but you actually created some art work. You made a mark on a piece of paper or a support of some kind. If you go up to a slab of clay and punch it a couple of good times, you’ve made some marks at sculpture, you’re doing it. You’re working.

There’s so much more power in actually producing something. Anything other than just kicking cans around and needing to, or wanting to get back in the studio one day. I’m going to learn about some artwork that is so weak, and that is the dialogue of failure. And there’s only one type of failure and failure really, truly is not even trying at all.

Other than that. There’s you know, maybe attempts that don’t go as planned or something. Doesn’t turn out the way you wished it would have. If you’re breathing, you’re not a failure unless you’re not trying, not trying at all. You’re not experimenting. You’re not discovering new things. You’re not trying new things.

Not trying. If you’re a musician, you can get on a music app and. Just start mixing some beats with no real plan. If you’re an actor or comedian, you could just stand up and start doing some skits, trying out some different jokes or doing some improv with friends. You could do some journaling, just start writing random bullshit on a piece of paper.

When you do that, when you get into the groove and you are producing something, anything, even shit, it’s going to compound and grow and evolve from there. The time it takes to do that varies from person to person, depending on how bad of a rut you may be in. You may have to drag yourself back to the drawing board 20 times before you start to feel that feeling.

That feeling that you want to create something or see the vision or hear the sounds that you want to express musically, you may have to return over and over, or it may only take one time. And then that spark is ignited. You’re back to creating, you’re inspired or motivated then you’re producing the way you were meant to.

I’m just having fun here. And this is a much as a note to self, as it is a lecture or me telling you how it is or what to do, or that I’ve mastered this. Everyone gets some ruts. I get in a rut. Every artist I know has ups and downs challenges. And it varies from person to person as to how long they stay in the lows and how long we stay in the peaks.

We each have different things that move us and then inspire us and motivate us. And sometimes you can lose touch with that. Have you ever asked the question though, that when you’re blocked, when you feel like you have a creative block, there’s no flow. No desire to perform your craft. What is it? What is it that it’s keeping you from doing what you really want to be doing?

What you could be doing? Had you not been overcome with this feeling that I can’t do this, or I won’t do this. It’s not time. I don’t feel like it. What’s preventing you. What’s preventing that creative spark from igniting. Is it fear? Could fear be blocking you from producing at a level that aligns with your true potential fear?

You could fear the outcome. You could have created something amazing and you fear that you’ll never be able to live up to it again, you could fear that you’re just going to fall flat, that whatever you’re trying to create is not going to turn out the way you want it to.

You could fear that you’ll achieve exactly what you set out to achieve, and you don’t know how to receive that. You don’t know how to go with that flow. There’s many reasons you could feel fear, but generally speaking fear is the reason that we become blocked fear is the block. And removing a creative block is as simple as standing up to the fear to confronting it.

Not necessarily battling with it. You don’t want to battle with your fear because ultimately you’d be battling with yourself. You don’t want to be in conflict with yourself. So there’s some level of acceptance that has to happen.  “Hey, I’m feeling fear. I’m feeling blocked, but I’m okay with that.”

Now there should be a reason behind it, but the reason is not ultimately important, not as important as it just acknowledging that there’s fear acknowledging that there’s a block. That’s primary!  But there could be a reason why there’s fear and it could be a good one. Look at that, honestly. Dissect it and accept that that’s part of yourself, but proceed forward with the fear that fear could be your inspiration and disguise fear could be that feeling.

And we all know that feeling. It’s when you’re having fun. You ar fucking having fun, enjoying what you do, which is to create because you’re an artist.

If you’ve stopped having fun got to look at that. Why have you stopped having fun? It could be because you’re doing the same damn thing over and over and over, and it’s getting fucking boring.

You’re tired of it. You’re sick of it. You want to try something different, something new and exciting. So, if you’re found, when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, then you need to get lost by doing something you’re not supposed to be doing something you want to do something way off course, off topic.

The artistic method, if there is one isn’t as concrete as the scientific method, the scientific method is the same, every damn time. It’s supposed to be boring. It’s not supposed to be exciting. It’s about mining data and observing the external universe. The artistic method is more exploring inwardly the internal universe, if there is one.

So the scientific method starts off with asking a question is a powerful question. It doesn’t have a known answer. And after you asked the question, you do research to gather data. What is known about this topic that you’ve asked a question about? And after you do your research and gathered data, then you form a hypothesis.

You say, “I think if I do this, it will have this outcome”. And after the hypothesis, you might potentially run an experiment and see what happens. And after you see what happens, you analyze the results and then you compare it to your hypothesis and you’re either right or wrong. If you’re wrong, you might form a new one and do a new experiment, but eventually you’re going to communicate.

Your results, your conclusion. So art can be a little bit like that. Like the scientific method where you ask a question, “what would happen if I do this?”. And then you do some research and then you set up your experiment and you execute it, and then you analyze the results. See if your hypothesis was correct.

And if you check off on the artwork, then you release it to the public to be consumed. And what I mean by that, as you allow it to be viewed, you allow it to be experienced and you can’t control the experience that other people have when observing your artwork. They’re going to have their own unique experience.

That’s completely individual to them, to that person observing I’ve done the abstract artwork where I was painting nothing. There’s no object in the abstract painting. Nothing, no intentions. Just allowing myself to flow with the paint and the canvas and directing it so to speak, but allowing things to happen on their own, the natural way, the natural flow.

But when an observer views that artwork, they see things. The brain is a powerful pattern recognition expert, and it can see things that are there that aren’t really there. It can pick out faces, shapes, animals, objects that I didn’t paint inside the canvas. It just automatically appears. And when that person sees that it’s an emotional connection.

And it’s a discovery for them. It’s almost like an ink blotter test and people see things they want to see. In reality, there’s a confirmation bias. People are looking for what they want to see in reality. And that’s unremovable, it’s an unremovable aspect of the human experience, perceiving reality. We see what we want to see.

An artistic method can grow and evolve over time. Unlike a scientific method. I think science and art could overlap at some place because creativity is needed in science and science is needed in an artwork, but the artistic method can be changed according to your will. You can bend it and. It’s all about your own internal, personal experience with artwork.

It’s about expression. We’re not creating reality. If anything, we’re creating an unreality, we’re creating something that doesn’t exist showing something that doesn’t actually exist. It’s purely personal experience. And in its purest form tells the truth. It tells a personal truth, not the absolute truth.

It’s very important to discern the difference between absolute truth and personal truth. They’re both true. Absolute truth is overall truth. Like the main thing that none of us can see, none of us can see the absolute truth. All we have as human beings is our own personal truth. And that’s all that we can report from what we’ve experienced, what we gathered in this lifetime, what we know to be true based on our experiences and this reality, but because no one knows the absolute truth you have to ask..

Is there an absolute truth? Does an absolute truth exist if no one is aware of it? I’m leaning towards the answer, it’s no, that there is no absolute truth. Everything is so personal, so biased as to personal conditioning, the conditions you have been born into influence the filters in which you see the world around you. The way you see the world is your conditioning.

And you cannot permanently subtract that from your bias and judgment and assumptions of the way things are. If there’s a source of creativity, it’s a giant, massive void or a vacuum. The entire universe is creative. It’s constantly expanding itself and growing infinitely. It’s already infinite and it’s infinity plus one. It’s constantly dividing into itself.

And that multiplies, as we all want as artists to tap into that infinite creative well. And to control it and to own it and make it our own power, but we don’t have that ability. We don’t have the ability to control that. It’s just simply simply available to us. You can work from it, you can merge with it, but you can’t own it.

You can’t control it but you can work with it. One way that artists accomplish this is by removing that personal conditioning just for a limited time. And you can do that through meditation. You can do that through hallucinogenics acid mushrooms, you can do it through suffering. Some people have suffered so deeply that their personal sense of self has been temporarily removed.

And they’re able to see things much clear and access that infinite source of creativity and beautiful things come from that artists like van Gogh suffered horribly. He cut his ear off and sent it to his girlfriend… really fucked off shit, but he was tapped into that creativity through his suffering. But you don’t have to be a van Gogh in order to access that you don’t have to trip on acid either.

All you have to do is temporarily suspend the personal sense of self, which a lot of people struggle with. It’s not as simple as it sounds, but when you’re having fun, that’s exactly what you’re doing. Okay. When you’re having fun, you’re a kid. Again, you’re not this overly defined adult with responsibilities.

You’re coasting. You’re coasting on the wave of creativity, fun and flow. I mentioned earlier, the artistic method can change and grow. It can be completely unique for each artist. There’s no set way of approaching creativity or creating art in general. And there’s so many different forms of art.

There’s so many different ways in which a person could create. And I’m interested in hearing more about other people’s approaches, but what I’m putting together is artistic method templates that people can borrow. You can use and change customize for yourself. But it’s going to be a part of my book that I’m writing in my artists course art courses, basically.

And in my courses, I’ll teach technique like watercolor oil, painting, sculpture drawing, and anything else, but it won’t just be about technique. Or how to use it. We’ll also be exploring the avenues in which you can take yourself out of your own comfort zone and see things from a different angle and put yourself in a different perspective and tap into something that’s already inside of you that you may not be aware of.

What’s really cool to me… I find that, and I didn’t realize this, that the podcast in and of itself is a form of art. And that people were inspired by the podcast and want to express themselves in the verbal form. And I find that really motivating and I’m very happy that I launched this podcast during the Snowmageddon.

And, you know, I realized that a lot of people were without power and there’s food shortages and water shortages. And here I am launching a podcast, but I feel like that was the best use of my time. And I know that things will be getting back to normal now that the roads are passable. Supply trucks are coming in.

Water treatment will be back online and people will have their regular services restored. And, you know, Texas just wasn’t prepared to deal with that much snow and that cold of temperatures for a sustained amount of time. And that doesn’t happen very often. That’s crazy. And I’ve really feel for the people that went through something during that time.

I didn’t lose power or water in a very thankful for that. And I hope that people that did lose power and don’t have access to drinking water and can’t find food, I hope that they find the resources they need as soon as possible. And I have faith that things will turn around soon. I find that having a creative project helps me get through hard times.

So I’ve always gone to art as a form of therapy in dealing with whatever’s happening in the present moment. And although it may seem insensitive when everything’s in chaos and I’m painting and posting pictures of paintings. During times of crisis, for example, it’s not necessarily insensitive. It’s just a way to divert the attention away from worry or stress, or in a sense it’s just going with the flow and just doing what you want to do and spite of whatever may be happening around you.

Being creative is a lifestyle. It’s a way to approach living. It’s a philosophy. And I find that it, it takes me out of being so identified with what’s happening and, and taking it so personally. It gives me a distance between me and what’s happening, that I can actually observe things and really look into them from an outsider perspective. Because art is meditative and it gives you space in between your thinking and your reaction time.

So you really get to allow some of those negative emotions to rise and fall, and then have a more clear head and a more calm approach to how you perceive what’s happening. The fight or flight mechanism is needed, like in, you know, catastrophic emergency situations and you need that adrenaline, you need that energy, but most often it’s not the right response.

And that’s the response that happens. Having moments where you can disengage. And being meditative really helps you deal with these really hard moment in life. That and abrupt reaction isn’t necessarily the right response. 

Now, guests wanting to be on the show I’m really pumped about, and I’ve found that some sleeper artists are waking up to their creativity and are inspired and want to be on the show. And what I mean by a sleeper artist is someone that has fuck tons of potential to be an artist and maybe has done artistic projects in the past and has really reawakened to the possibility of what sleeps inside of them. 

And I think having people on the show that haven’t connected with their creativity in some time, might inspire them to get back into it and start creating again, because having a current project to talk about or promote is a little bit more relevant than just talking about what’s happened in the past.

It all ties together. What you’ve done in the past and what you’re doing now and what you want to do in the future. But if there’s only what you’ve done in the past, then it’s almost like talking about something that’s dead and we want to reincarnate your creativity and have a current project to talk about.

And everyone can do that. Everyone has some sort of creativity and artistic nature and expresses itself and infinitely different forms. Anything can be a form of art if you take it seriously and try and master that skill. 

And I don’t want to limit this podcast to just, uh, you know, tattoo artist or fine artists, visual artists. In my Facebook post where I released the fact that I’m doing a podcast, I made it clear that any creative type could be on this show.

We’re talking culinary artists, creative writers, sound engineers, dancers, performing artists, actors, just anything. And just because I didn’t mention it doesn’t mean it’s off limits. 

There’s creative sources that are outside the artistic realm that inspire me as well. Yoga and meditation is very near and dear to my heart.

And without it I wouldn’t produce art. Without yoga and meditation, there would be no creativity, no productivity for me. Now I want to get into that a little bit about yoga and meditation. And I am a yoga teacher, probably not the best one, not the worst one either, but it doesn’t matter. I teach yoga because I need yoga.

I do meditation because I need it and yeah, I help others with it as well. But the main reason I do yoga is because being a tattoo artist, I sit around with my arms out in front of me for six to eight hours in a session. After that my spine feels like it’s ripping out of my back.

I mean, the body is meant to be moving. It’s not meant to be sitting still. And that’s one of the main tips I would give new tattoo artists that are starting out younger. People probably don’t feel any pain sitting around for six to eight hours, maybe 10 hours for younger guys. You don’t feel any pain yet, but stick with tattooing for 10, 15 more years, and you’re going to start feeling it.

You have to move your body. I take a break about every hour for about 10 minutes, five to 10 minutes, and just walk around, stretch a little bit and then get back to it. It really helps. It really helps. And then I do your yoga, um, you know, maybe two or three times a week. And I teach at least one class a week.

If not two, on some weeks, it just varies. But teaching helps me stay dedicated and committed to doing yoga. Which without yoga would not be able to tattoo. So tattooing is just something that I experienced in my daily life, but I do some computer design and web design, and that’s no better than tattooing.

You’re sitting down whatever arm, whatever hand is dominant for you. You’re going to have on the mouse or you’re typing a lot and you’re using both hands, but that’s outstretched in front of you. And. Nerve damage back pain. It all arrives from incorrect posture or sitting for long periods of time.

Without moving, you got to get up and move around and yoga with, with yoga, you are stretching the muscles and your deep breathing and the combination of those two things engages the parasympathetic nervous system. It’s the rest and digest mode. I believe it’s the parasympathetic nervous system.

It’s rest and digest when you’re doing yoga and you’re stretching and you’re deep breathing. You engage that aspect. And so that’s opposite of fight or flight. This is when you can relax, you feel safe, you feel like you’re not threatened.

And what happens to the body is magical. Some people take it to a spiritual or metaphysical level, but if you don’t like those types of things, if that’s too woo for you, then on a purely scientific basis, what’s happening in the body is still fucking magical. It still does outstanding things. And on an emotional level, a mental level, physical level, like so many aspects of self are corrected.

Self-corrected through yoga. You can do it at home, just watch videos, but I highly recommend going to a yoga studio because you get to network and engage with the yoga community, which is so supportive. Now most of the time you go to a yoga class, you’re going to find a woman teaching you. And I find that women yoga instructors are way better than men because they’re more nurturing.

There’s just something nurturing about a woman teaching a yoga class, but. I don’t want to discount men yoga instructors at all. Men are great at teaching yoga as well, but I find that I have a different approach to teaching yoga than most women do, surprisingly, because I’m a man and yeah, there’s some weirdness there, I guess.

But like I said, without yoga, I wouldn’t be able to continue doing artwork. So it’s necessary for me to stay in the game at my age. And I think any age for yoga is, is just as important. And any age can do yoga. There’s modifications that you can do into your, you know, any age you can do chair yoga, but anyway, I do have a different approach.

I’m not so nurturing in my class. For one, I like to make jokes. I’ll say a few cuss words. My wife comes with me and she’ll talk shit about my teaching abilities. When I make a mistake, she makes it very clearly obvious and we laugh about it, but I find that that helps beginners not feel so self-conscious like, Hey, I’m in a yoga class.

What’s this going to be like, it’s more beginner friendly and accessible. And also I’m not as flexible as women are. Men are generally more stiff than women. And so in my class, I, I only do the poses that I’m capable of doing. So you’re not going to get tied up in a pretzel, or you’re less likely to damage something because I’m not going to push it to the outmost limits.

That being said, you still get a good workout and you still get the benefits of doing yoga with me and my class. But one thing that I do in my class is I bring singing bowls and my collection of singing bowls is growing. I do use metal singing bowls because I, I like them better than the crystal ones.

And I find that most people, most people are having the crystal singing bowls. They’re louder and they have more like consistent high pitched tone, but the singing bowls have a depth. And a soul to them that the crystal balls don’t have for me. I like the metal singing bowls better just for me personally. I have one gong so far, and there’s a bit of controversy on the gong because some people really dig that loud.

It’s a very loud, abrupt sound that can be a little jarring for a yoga class. I even think that, but I love the gong. Using seeing bowls in a yoga class as generally called a sound bath, it sounds kind of metaphysical or crazy hippie stuff, but a sound bath is basically just I’m playing the singing bowls and it’s relaxing.

It’s meditative and you just listened to it. That’s all there is to it. It’s, there’s nothing magical about it, but it is very relaxing and it works really well. I enjoy it. So going to yoga class, you’re going to connect with the yoga community and there’s many different types of people in the yoga community.

And many of them have gone to yoga, to heal from something. And yoga is very healing because it helps you helps you let go of a lot of the things you’re hanging on to, and some of the things we hang on to emotionally get expressed in the body. 

If you’re worried about something and you’re holding tension in your shoulders and you have a job where like, say you’re on the computer all day, the combination of all those things creates, you know, neck and back problems.

So doing yoga helps you undo the damage done in the body, which in turn allows you to start dealing with some of the internal reasons that you may have physical problems manifesting. And that’s exactly how yoga can help now in my class, instead of focusing on trying to manually heal people like me, do it through my words, I just let it be automatic.

Because I feel like healing happens behind the scenes without anyone having to say or do anything just when their conditions are. Right. So if you set up the right conditions, you don’t have to talk, talk about it or try to force healing to happen in this one hour class, when it might be healthier for healing to happen over a period of time.

Forcing things to happen is just, it’s not natural. And I’m a big believer in the natural way and allowing things to happen in their own time. And for me, that’s the best approach. And that’s why I have a lighthearted approach to my yoga class for beginners to make people not feel so self-conscious and to increase the accessibility of people that could come to the class.

Now, that being said, Very few people are coming to my class right now. And it’s a combination of factors. It’s for one it’s the COVID times. And you know, a lot of people still aren’t getting out and doing things with other people and, you know, that’s a personal choice that each person has to make individually.

And I wouldn’t want to influence someone to come out that doesn’t feel safe doing so. And then they end up getting COVID and blame me. I mean, you have to make your own choice when it comes to reintegrating with society, but it will have to happen at some point that band-aid has to be pulled off and people have to get back to it.

At some point in the yoga community, I’ve noticed that, you know, people go to yoga for healing and some people develop a dependency upon healing. Almost like they’re addicted to healing. And that in itself becomes a sickness. What I mean by that is people tend to develop, or some people tend to develop a new identity based in the fact that something’s not right with them and they have to fix it.

And it’s not true. It could be that, that person’s moved past what they were working through and this new identity has them locked in this healing pattern where they’re constantly trying to heal themselves. 

Now, if you haven’t witnessed this yourself, you may have no clue what I’m talking about, but if you’re a part of the yoga community, I’m sure you’ve seen it.

That someone’s just constantly needing healing or perceivably, they think that they are constantly needing healing, but in fact, they may have moved past what they were trying to work through or heal from. 

And just haven’t assumed that new identity, that new, like, Hey, I’m over this shit. I can get on with my life now, like still do yoga, yeah, fine. 

Still enjoy the things that, the methods that got you to the point of healing. But I think that’s when the person needing healing becomes the healer and they may have some apprehension about assuming that role, but once you’ve dealt with your own shit, you can help other people deal with their shit.

To a degree you can’t, you can’t help someone to the point they’re not able to be helped because it goes back to doing things in a natural way, in a natural timeframe. And so you can only help guide people and help people get up when they fall. But that for me is the masculine approach to teaching yoga.

I have a suck it up buttercup attitude. I don’t want to dwell on negative things that have happened to me or negative situations. I’d rather work through them. I’d rather get past it. And, you know, being caught in the healing cycle and being addicted to healing is a sickness unto itself. There’s something to say about the, do no harm part of the Hippocratic philosophy.

I don’t think it’s a part of the Hippocratic oath. All it might be sometimes the do no harm philosophy is, I think, the most important approach to teaching yoga is that don’t do anything in the yoga class or in yoga teachings that would cause harm. And that’s just the base start of an approach to teaching anybody.

Anything I think that just doing nothing alone does no harm. So when we start to do things, is it making things worse? Like if, if you do too much yoga and you end up hurting yourself, you’re actually doing worse than if you did nothing at all. So do no harm approach to healing, I think is a really important point to focus on as a starting point is to strive for not making things worse.

That’s a good place to begin. So what I’m trying to say is that people stuck in an endless loop of healing. Are actually doing harm because of their addiction to constantly try and heal and improve. If you realize that though, you might just be in the position to help someone else, it might be time to switch gears.

Yoga and meditation is just one of the things that inspire my creativity and topics that I enjoy talking about. Another one is green tea. I am a green tea fanatic, and I’ll have to get into that in another episode. More about that. But this Friday, Friday, the 26, February the 26th, Friday at seven o’clock.

I’m teaching a yoga class at one, love yoga in Texarkana, Texas, and I’ll be serving. Japanese matcha green tea. We’ll have a tea ceremony before the yoga class and you’re invited to come and enjoy some tea, the singing bowls and my yoga class. If you can’t make it, you can always do it next time. The Friday yoga classes are not consistent.

I just do those when I feel like it. Basically. Now I do have a yoga class every Monday at six o’clock and that’s also at one love yoga in Texarkana, Texas. Yeah. A lot of times my tattoo clients like to take my yoga class and. My client coming in this weekend wants to do the yoga. And he had requested that we do yoga on Friday.

I created that class for him, but everyone is welcome. Yeah. So the tattoo I’m doing on him is a trash polka style tattoo. And it’s inspired by his adventure on Mount Everest. And I believe I’m going to be doing a podcast with him to talk about his experience and the reason why he’s getting his tattoo soon, I’m going to release the tattoos.

I want to do what you’re designed to that I custom design. And present as tattoos I would want to do. Now, one thing to say about that is just because these are tattoos I want to do because I created them. Doesn’t mean that your idea is a tattoo I don’t want to do. It’s just that, I don’t know what else to call these tattoos that I want to do.

So that’s, that’s what I call it. And I designed these custom designs that anyone can get, but I’ll only do that design one time. Now the content I may do over and over, like say it’s a, and how, and designed this one out and only one person can get it doesn’t mean I won’t do an owl again. It’s just that this specific design will only be done.

One time. So maybe the next podcast we’ll have a guest and I’m looking forward to that because. It’s a little weird doing a podcast by yourself. Just talking yeah. To a microphone alone in a room. It has some weirdness to it. I am a little concerned. I learned about the logistics of doing a podcast with two people because it becomes a little bit more challenging on the technology side.

So right now I’m talking into one mic. And I’m set up for one person podcast, but doing a two person podcast is going to be a little bit more challenging to get the sound quality as good. I’ll need to buy some new things, which I’m totally, yeah. Fine with doing that. I just don’t know what I need. I don’t know what I don’t know at this point, but I’ll guess I’ll find out as I go.

That’s the evolutionary process of being creative. Until next time.