Where the Metal Hits the Meat: first installment

Today, not long after I made my first post to any blog (see previous post), I received this email from Rob Landeros, co-creator of the first-ever million-selling CD-ROM game, The 7th Guest:

------Rob said--------

I look forward to the glorious day when YOU, the FAT MAN, starts blogging off your current site. You can be assured that I would be there often contributing irreverent, snide, but insightful comments to your posts.

Roberto

-----End---------------

Is it a coincidence that a pioneer of digital media would encourage me thus to write a blog, right out of the blue, at the very moment I was wondering if I had made a good post?

Perhaps it is coincidence.

But I must say, things like that seem to be happening all the time around here.

This leads us to my first bit of practical advice for creating digital content that they wish to affect Humanity, that they want to be worth something, that they want to be considered Art: Be conscious of "coincidences" like this. Notice when things like this seem to happen. Tune in to the Universe. Be thankful to the Angels or the Spirit Helpers or the Quantum Laws or whatever.

Why, Fat Man? How does this count as practical advice, Fat Man? Where do you get off putting this stuff in my face, Fat Man? Why are you wearing those funny shoes, Fat Man?

Because it will help you use the new media to make Great Art.

And on that topic, it must be said that your best creative work, the work that will matter the most to Humanity, is NOT going to come from you. It's going to come through you.

Let's delve deeper for a moment.

It has been said that a person is not truly rich if he knows how much money he has.

I would like to extrapolate further and try out a correlary to that idea: Perhaps a person is not truly a great writer if he understands the meaning of everything he writes. Perhaps one is not a truly great artist if he carefully constructed each and every one of his artistic ideas in his own mind. When something comes from the Human Mind, it can only be as great as a single Human Mind. Great Art needs to be bigger than that.

When it comes from the heart, when it comes from the collective unconscious, when it is inspired by the infinite, your expressions in digital media will carry the weight of the Mysteries of the Universe.

Did John Lennon know what the lyrics "yellow matter custard" would mean to every person who heard it? No. Did each splash of color in Van Gogh's works indicate a specific star in the sky? No. Their works represent what it looks and sounds like when we tap into the Infinite.

On the other hand, an advertising copy writer likely calculates and tries to know fairly accurately how all his lyrics will strike the listener. A technical artist will have a specific purpose for each line he draws. You can keep all that for the Business Blogs.

On this blog, we encourage each other to tune in to the Universe. We try to recognize miracles when we see them. We try to open our hearts to the largest ideas that we can, and those ideas are bigger than the Human Mind can handle. A dog will never understand algebra, yet it exists.

On this blog, we will recognize the idea that sometimes it's more important what you don't do than what you do. Because how can the Universe work through you if you're always planning out every move and every thought and every line and every word?

Here is the first practical step. Look out there. Notice things that are there. Notice things that might be there, but that you can't prove. Notice things that seem to be there, even though you know that they can't be. Because, to quote some poet or another, "these are the wild leaps of imagination that fool us out of our boundaries." These are the things that will let us make works that are bigger than Life out of bits that are smaller than any grain of sand ever was.

I could be wrong, but I think that's important. And for me, crossing the line from "content" to Art-capital-A is one of the very few things I find interesting about digital media anymore.

What did the Universe tell _you_ today?