My dream. It seems to ebb and flow. And morph in front of me as the days, weeks, months and years pass me by. I have things that I am still completely devoted to – writing and filmmaking – while I have developed and cultivated past interests – photography and drawing – and look towards new talents that I have never given time to…
Theses are my present interests. And my present direction in life. This brings to mind Robert Frost and his Two Roads. I believe we all have choices to make, but most of us feel (or/and fear) that once that choice is made that we have closed something off from us. And in some cases we do. We marry one person and close the door to another. Someone who may have given you a wonderful, but different life. Choices are something paired with definitive ends.
Then there come those little paths in the forest. Did Frost forget to mention them? Those little off-shoots that are covered in weeds or obscured by overgrown bushes. Those narrow paths where the forest floor has not yet been tread upon – by you.
There once was a time in my life where I was constantly drawing in notebooks and in sketchpads. I was never without a pencil, a pen or a piece of charcoal. Students would ask me to draw portraits of them. Teachers would insist that I continue studying Art. As a teenager, I even had the opportunity to go to college at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) after attending the Pre-College program; however, I decided to go down a different path in life and I chose to go to a Liberal Arts University – Denison University in Ohio – and then to Film School – Emerson College in Boston. In time, my artwork fell to the wayside as I focused my energy and attention on writing and filmmaking.
Sometimes we need to focus and put things on the backburner in order to excel. I have learned that this does not mean that these unexamined items will necessarily “go cold.” You can reheat old interests. Early on in the pre-production of my spec commercials, I drew out rough storyboards for the Storyboard Artist, who in turn said, “She doesn’t need me.” And here I was on my little filmmaking path, concentrating on the image in my head, and I suddenly found myself skipping down a little dirt path that brought writing, filmmaking and drawing together; a path where I reacquainted myself with a different type of artist inside of me; a path that redefined what it is to be a Visual Artist. Perhaps all we need to do is find a new path to wander down in order to find ourselves again.