The Help Buld Better Communities Campaign

Friends, Family, and those who know me,

Some of you may have heard the quote that says "it takes a village to raise a child." I believe that this quote needs to be taken a step further. For it takes a village to not only raise a child, but to sustain a family, as well as offer a sense of security, significance, and belonging to people of all ages. We can see this in the people in this world who turn out to be healthy, happy, and successful in their own right. In these types of people you will almost always find a host of other individuals who had a hand at raising, influencing, and impacting them for the better. These individuals form a village around the person that allows them to truly tap into their potential as people, while being made to feel that they have the potential of which to even be tapped into.

Yet that village seems hard to see in everyday life. We all seem to have so many issues that have not been worked through, goals that have not been reached, and needs that have not been met that it's difficult to even conceive of a village scenario such as the one I'm proposing. To be honest, there are not nearly as many villages out there- with the virtues that I am speaking of- as there should be. Yet in that lies a huge opportunity; the opportunity to create one yourself.

I am in the fortunate position to be working for a company that pays me to do just that. The companies name is Whos Your Brother. The mission of the company is to essentially help people help people in their communities WITHOUT exchanging money. This is done using a website(which does not cost you anything to sign up to) that facilitates the process. On the website you will find both people who have an array of needs (tutoring, food, clothes, advice, books, etc) as well as people who use their talents, resources, and a bit of their time to provide for those needs.

The ironic thing about these two types of people on the site is that they turn out to be one in the same. For the people who have needs, also can provide for the needs of others. My jobs is to connect these two type of people together(Starting on the site and ending off the site, in person) and in the process of doing so help them to see that the two people(the one helping and the one being help) , are in fact, the same type of person; one who has both needs they require help in order to remedy and ways to met the needs of others using their own gifts, talents, resources, and time.

Imagine entire neighborhoods, college campuses, cities, even countries of people who could go right next door to either get whatever is it they need or- through their neighbor- get connected to where they can go to have their needs met. This is the world that Whos Your Brother -along with myself- wish to create. But it must first starts with me, and it must first starts with you.

I will be working in both the Hill District and Duquesne University to begin the building of this type of community, and I need your help to do it. Whether you live in those areas or not, if this is the type of community you would wish to create and live in, then join me in this effort by signing up to WYB @ www.whosyourbrother.com(It's free!) and putting in my referral code (Z8ZY317X5). Together I truly believe we can make this type of community a reality!

Peace, Love, and Brotherhood
- Adam Keene aka Rhetorical Artz
A Rescuer and Advocate of Whos Your Brother

Inspiration: A small part of a bigger conversation

The other day, I was watching the Charlie Rose Show online. It was an interview between Richard Serra, Eric Kandel, Oliver Sacks, Chuck Close and Ann Temkin .They were talking about creativity and where it comes from. As I was watching the interview, I hear Chuck Close say how he has always said that "inspiration is for amateurs," and that "the rest of us just get up and get to work." He proceeds to say that you can't just sit around and wait for an idea light bulb to light up because it may never happen. The point he was trying to get across was that one has to constantly work in order to excel in their craft.

While Chuck made a good point about the importance of working, I think he's only looking at a part of the picture- in terms of his views on inspiration. For to levy off inspiration as a "bolt of lightning" that randomly strikes you in the head, traps us in thinking about inspiration as being an unreliable source of creativity. Similarly to Chuck Close, I too have something that I have been saying for some time now: That there is a reason why trap and part are spelled with the same letters; that when you only see part of what something is, without a) seeing what it's connected to and b) how and why it's fits into the larger model of what it's connected to, your left unable to ever assess it for what it is; stifling you from seeing the whole picture.

This is what has happened with the word inspiration. In our society inspiration has been singled out as being a mere spark, a moment, used for firing up the creative process. This may be one of the reasons why quotes are so popular in our culture. They represent "moments" of honestly, in which a thought or insight lightning bolts out of a persons' mouth; shedding light on a situation. These "moments" are accredited as being hallmarks in the creation of new products, philosophies, and practices as well as future ideas and innovations. Yet the problem about the use of quotes lies in their tendency to be used either out of the context of their original meaning, or used in a way that fails to convey the full story. So when a reporter takes down a quote and puts it in an article- as I toke down the quote I heard from that Charlie Rose interview- it can lose it's true meaning if the person seeing the quote, and/or the person taking the quote down, does not understand the process that lead to the quote being said.

The same idea applies to inspiration. For I have come to understand inspiration as a "quote" from a larger, ongoing, inner conversation. Within this conversation lies a continuous stream of wisdom, resourcefulness, and brilliance, which rests upon the essence of who we are, and what we are collectively connected to as human beings. However, due to the many indulged upon distractions, chosen obligations, and inner conflicts that play out in our lives, this inner conversation becomes too low in volume to be heard consistently(if it's even heard at all). It's only when we really listen closely, that we catch quotes or glimpses of this constant conversation happening; which we misguidedly label as only being an "inspiration"- sectioned off from the inner conversation that houses it.

My point in mentioning all this is to offer an alternative as to what we perceive to be inspiration; to illuminate another option for creating great works; to point out an accessible power within us ,to create great works, if we only take the time to stop and listen to the ongoing conversation that is happening within us. For I believe, that allowing inspiration to be to both seen and present in the whole inner conversation, is a key to the creativity, spirituality, and the all-around vitally of our existence here on earth. For to truly live out our hearts' visions of life, we must begin living it within first.

The Movement Continues...

- Rhetorical Artz

An Uneducated Approach to Learning

What we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The issues at hand

Students are graduating college with nothing but a piece of paper and a possible position for jobs that justify the uncreative mind. Mind you now that in the eyes of many students, and many people in general, that is a perfectly acceptable end. To many students, college is nothing more than a means for momentary fun and money, not a means for true joy and enrichment. This seems to be todays' version of a "rich education"; acquiring professional skills instead of purpose building ones; closing in ones mind to finding a career instead of freeing it up to finding a calling. If this is the model which entails a "rich education" then I would much rather receive an abhorrently poor education- one that cannot, in itself, enable me to make massive amounts of money or get me the justification of a job- but one that will empower me to learn valuable lessons about truly living and loving life. However, to a certain extent, I do recognize the value of a capitalistically centered education that has fueled my own inner capitalist. It is, in all honestly, a big part of what has kept me in school this long (minus the fact that much money and sacrifice has been given for me to get this education). This inner capitalist, in collaboration with my conscious, shouts out "hey Adam, lets make meaningful money! Lets profit doing something positive! Lets prosper pursuing your most authentic of passions! It is a voice that I have come to accept into the Adam Keene club as the executive director of my financial thoughts.  
For those financial thoughts never once double-crossed my core beliefs on what learning was really about. Before I continue, if I have not stated what it means to be a learner well enough in the first paragraph, allow me to state it clearly here: To be a true learner is to be a liberator of ones mind, and the mind of others, in the pursuit of a fulfilling life. This central idea has been injected and accepted into the depth of my identity(by conscious choice) in order to better build my uneducated learning life in this bitterly broken system that is our schools.

Tales of the Uneducated Learner

Now if this was an action-adventure movie, this would be the scene where an angry army of academics, administrators, and security sheep(these being some, but not all, of the parents, students, professors, and professionals that were crafted within academia) storm into the base of the insurgents, demanding them to surrender their inventory of insights on the issue of education or else. The insurgents would promptly refuse, and all be hanged...or would they? For just as they are about to be put to death...BAM! In comes the special insurgent forces to set the caged captives free once more. But how will they escape the treacherous School city? The answer is that they don't...well not immediately anyway. Instead, they temporarily integrate themselves into School city as citizens, binding their time and building their resources for when the time comes to strike out against its reign of tyranny.

The United State of Our Society

But in doing so, the insurgents discover that School city is only a servant to an even bigger system failure known as the United State of Our Society. When gazing upon this bigger Goliath, the problems in our school system only reflects a even larger problem in society today. For our society has made a shift in focus from true substance and scholarship( note: I am using the definition of scholarship defined as the process of learning and gaining knowledge received by studying) to truly superficial and stagnating standards of living. This shift can be seen in the news, entertainment (two subjects that seems to now be synonymous with one another), and education which I shall now return back to through the fiction framed battles of the Uneducated Learner.

Back to the battles of the Uneducated Learner

With the true menace revealed, the insurgent forces quickly realize that they will not be able to fight these dark forces alone. In order to have a fighting chance against this gigantic foe, the insurgent forces would need the help of the very education system that they were trying to change. So they began to look for people and programs within the system who shared a similar desire in liberating minds to pursuing a fulfilling life. As they sought these people and programs out, the insurgent forces soon discovered that their was indeed a voice of these individuals and initiatives. In fact many of these individuals and initiatives were ones that the school system had willingly allowed in to promote such a cause. 
This was just what the insurgents were looking for. They started seeking a way to become one of these initiatives that the school system allowed in to liberate minds in a way that certain wiring(And bureaucratic red tape) within educational hardware had stalled. But to maintain their presence and growing influence in the schools, they needed to be registered in the system as something that wouldn't raise suspicion. Thus, no longer would they hold the hostile position of insurgent rebels. Instead, they would rise up as a phantom-like force known as the Uneducated Learners. With a new identity in place, the Uneducated Learners were then able to use that positioning as a foothold to form a quiet uprising through the citizens of School city who shared or sympathized with their cause.

Bringing the battle back to a reality

So what is the moral to this little tall tale? For me it is that as much as I have seen school fall short of the core ideas that are supposed to drive it(As all organizations do to a degree), I recognize that I also have needed school-and will still need the support within the school system- in order to become a full fledged vessel for social change in the society that surrounds us. So what I have decided to do over my many years of schooling is to become an uneducated learner amongst the education system. 

Educated learner vs. Uneducated learner

Yet in making this decision I have taken notice to the tension that lies between uneducated learners and more educated ones. The educated learner stands as those people in the system that benefit from it working the way it does. They do not wish to change the system(despite any claim to want to), but in fact wish for/contribute to making the system run more efficiently and effectively. 
Now before I continue on, I must make something clear. Being an uneducated learner does not mean wishing for the system to be destroyed and dismantled to the point of degrading the educated learner. It only means changing the system so it can support both types of learners, and in doing so acknowledging there differences.
For there are many differences between the educated and uneducated learner. Differences that the school system,and our larger society for that matter, currently are not doing a good enough job in acknowledging/serving with equal respect. In this instance, the difference being highlighted that distinguishes the educated and uneducated learner lies in how they are informed and uninformed about what it means to live a fulfilling life. To fully explain this, I need to first briefly talk about the relationship between society and the school system.

Society and School= Husband and Wife Stereotype

In an old-fashion stereotypical marriage, the wife is subservient to her husband. She takes care of the kids, maintains the house, and prepares the food so that when her husband comes home from work, he has a peaceful environment to return to after a long day out in the "real world." This is the relationship between Society and School. Societies wife(School) raises her kids(students) to be good little boys and girls for Society to deal with. They are raised to "do as they are told" and to "not talk back to your mother, or else daddy will give you a spanking(a degrading, doubt-filled, penniless life) when he gets home." The house is kept nice and tidy to support a stable environment for Society and his kids, so they can live "happy and content lives". 
I'll break away from this allegory now and give it to you straight: the big problem with the education systems lies in how strongly and subserviently they shift to the whims of societies current state. In other words, because our society works largely under a 9 to 5 structure, that is what schools largely educate students about; because society is polluted with the promotion of fear, that is what schools largely talk about; because society set it's citizens up to finding a place in it, instead of making a place in it, this is what schools largely encourage people to do. This is not to say that those are the only things that school does(if it did, I would honestly have already dropped out, don't care how much money I would be wasting). But I would venture to say that this is one of the loudest voices in the school space today(knowingly or not). It may not be said out loud, but 93 percent of communication is conveyed through what is NOT said verbally(As a communication studies major, I have been well informed about this).

The Difference: educated vs. uneducated learners

What someone listens to and how someone listens to it ultimately determines what's actually learned. And here is where we make our difference between the educated and uneducated learners in society. For the Educated Learner is informed by what they are told. They listen to what society says, and shape what they've learned/heard from their schooling to fit into societies image of them. In doing so, they risk compromising their creatively (aka the ability to make a life for themselves) and allow society to create a life for them in the same way that a chameleon compromises it true colors to match it's environment. They are literate in the language of losing your authentic self to better drive society onward. You can find the Educated Learner saying something like "that's just how the world works, so you better learn to work with it." They graduate college with all the basic knowledge needed to survive as a pawn in societies game of chess. Some of those pawns even make it over onto the other side of societies chessboard and- after "having" to stomp on any chess pieces that get in their way- evolve to become societies knights, queens, rooks, or bishops.
The Uneducated Learner, on the other hand, takes what is being told and uses it to advance their imagination- the ability to create essential and personal ideals into concrete realities- while refusing to compromise their identity. By doing this, the Uneducated Learner opens up doors into a life directed by a divine consciousness. This often drives the Uneducated Learner to pursuing timelessly valuable meaning over money, branding money as a by-product of moving in infinitely meaningful pathways, instead of the opposite being the case. In taking this route, there is no need to step on anyone else to get what you want because that fails to produce anything meaningful (beyond possibly a temporary period of false bliss). This route often fills the Uneducated Learners' path with bumps, twists, turns, and one unexpected event after the next. Yet it is within the unexpected, the unknown, and the uncertain that the Uneducated Learner both consciously and honestly lives life. 
However society, specifically the Educated Learner, tends not to look very highly on Uneducated Learner for this. To them, how the Uneducated Learner lives ought not to exist. For society has only taught the Educated Learner how to live linearly. Therefore, the non-linear lifestyle of the uneducated learner- that doesn't have a well defined step-by-step method to moving towards fulfillment- is viewed as an anomaly, or even a glitch in the matrix. In fact for the Educated Learner, who has been taught since elementary school that everything has a beginning and an end, the path of the Uneducated Learner may even appear to them not as a pathway but as a mere fantasy, or a lofty dream.

End of the Uneducated Learners Journey?

There is no end for the Uneducated Learner. For to be the Uneducated Learner means to continually look out at life with an air of undying thirst for adventure. Thus what the Educated Learner makes out to be an unseen end, the Uneducated Learner envisions into a beauty beginning, and a new revolutionary road to ride upon. 
Through this road isn't easy, that is the path that I have chosen. I will enter the next stage of my life, after gaining my undergraduate degree, with a sense excitement, adventurousness, and an uneducated spirit of freedom. Because true freedom happens when one makes a conscious choice to walk amongst the world untamed by it's teaching, unhampered by it's horror stories, and uneducated by it's standards. So continues the exciting tales of the Uneducated Learner, where only life will tell, what will happen next.

The Movement Continues...

- Rhetorical Artz

In Those Moments

It's about 2:15 in the morning and I am still wide awake. Wide awake by a thought that I all too often fail to convey. In my pursuit to empower myself and others, in my pursuit to spread positivity through the stories I tell, and in my quest to live life in the most authentic way possible, I have come to a much needed realization:
Life is hard. It's not a fairy tale where everything works out in the end exactly how you want it to. For most people, days are spent more on trying to get by then on trying to "reach for the skys". And that is truly understandable. For there are millions and billions of people in the world (including me) who right now are barely able to carry the scars and strife and struggles that they have already. So how can anyone who holds so much muck within their everyday life, possibly strive for better when their hands are already so full as it is?

I know personally that- despite the pains, setbacks, hurts, and hardships I have faced in my young life- there is one thing that drives me forward for more than what life seems to be throwing at us. It is the one thing inside me (other than what I believe to be a spirit from above) that I keep coming back to. It is currently nothing more than a deeply embedded idea, and the idea is this (prepare for the some night redundancy):

That if we can create and hold on to the opportunities we get for a few great moments in our lives to occur- moments where we are in our element, moments when we can feel our mind, heart, soul, and spirit come together to fully form (even for a second) a snapshot of our true selves- that we can move through life in a way that is truly fulfilling. I don't believe that we need many of these moments. But to have just a few of them- even one of them- and to really appreciate them when they appear, is enough for a truly enjoyable existence.

The next online endeavor that I'll soon be embarking upon ( M.Powered! Ideaz) deals with this very notion. M.Powered! Ideaz is going to be a site dedicated to exploring ideas that give people the power to positively move forward towards a fulfilling life. The ultimate aim is to provide an online space that serves as a opportunity for you to develop, find, and fine tune these types of idea into a way of life. Because with so much crap that we have to face in this place that we call earth, it's almost impossible to thrive, strive, or even survive without something to hold on to. So if you have to hold on to something, it might as well be something that gives you the power to move. Something that enables you to do what you love, making a meaningful living, and make an uplifting impact on yourself and those around you.

That is what an M.Powered Idea can do, and that is what I hold on to within each and every day. And I hope that in your own life, that you can hold on to something like that too.

The Movement Continues...
- Rhetorical Artz

Entrepreneurs are Artist

The term "entrepreneur" gets thrown around way to much these days. More and more I see this word being slapped onto resumes, strapped into cookie cutter corporations, and declared by people as if they are declaring their major for college. Sorry to say this guys and girls but it's not that easy. You having a network marketing business, multi-level marketing business, being any type of small business owner, or declaring entrepreneurship as your college major does not make you an entrepreneur.

The very same misunderstanding happens when asking the question of what it means to be an artist. You being a musician, a painter, singer, or rapper DOES NOT make you an artist. Artists put their hearts, souls, and personal being into their art to birth something into the world that is unlike anything that has been seen before. With their gut instinct and spirit as their guides( they do also get help and inspiration along the way), they are able to take an empty piece of paper or canvas, and place upon them visions that stretch the imagination; expanding the realm of what was thought to be possible. The art that they create is something that can not be copied close to well enough to amount to the real thing; many may try, but none will succeed.

Entrepreneurs are artist. They create, innovate, and originate ideas into ventures that have never been done how they are doing it. Like an artist, NO ONE can tell them how to do so; you can't tell anyone how to do something that has not been done before( but you can get help and will often need it at some point). Now don't get it twisted, their is nothing wrong with running a small business or declaring entrepreneurship as a major. And you can always become an entrepreneur or be an entrepreneur despite having one or both of those things slapped onto your resume. But being an entrepreneur DOES NOT happens just because of a major, a business, or simply because you say you are. It's a choice to venture pass the cut and dry canvases of society, risk it all on the bold paint of your ideas, and shake up the world; creating works of art that change the way we look at life. So now let me ask you two questions: are you an artist, are you an entrepreneur? Before you answer these two questions let me give you a hint: choose carefully, cause your answer hits two birds with one stone.

The Movement Continues...
- Rhetorical Artz

From Craft to Calling: The path to finding my purpose

What a crazy year this is turning out to be! I came back to school with so many unquenchable uncertainties; both about how this final college year would turn out for me and what I would do after graduation. But as a mentor of mine said, "this year I sense that things are going to come together for you." That has proven itself to be undeniably true. I can now see how my active quest for self-discovery(which will never end) is beginning to reap fruit. A quest that was put in hyperdrive this past summer break as I toke summer classes, traveled around the country and to the other side of the world, and spent hours upon hours soul my searching. A quest that began to develop in a whole new way 3 years ago.

For the pass 3 years that I have been in college, I have struggled with the question of what I am supposed to be doing professionally. It is a question that I have wrestled with because it was never as simple as just finding a job that I can do well. In fact it was never even close to being that simple. For I have never really wanted a job. I find personality that me getting a job is the same as me getting a justification; a socially conditioned distraction to take away from what I am called to do for the temporary sake of security. So for better or worse, a job has never really been an authentic option for me.

I found myself in 2007 walking into my freshman year of college; desperately looking for a possible career option to cling to. What I found was the beginning of an inner division between the artist- who wanted to write world uplifting rhyme and books- and the entrepreneur- who wanted to birth a business that made the world better while meeting the bottomline- within me. The two began to drift away from one another like former friends on bad terms. And like two angry former friends, they both began to greedily want me solely to themselves.

Choosing to hang with them both did not seem like an option. For when the artist got more of my time- during my freshman year- the entrepreneur would respond with an angry rants about how "being an artist was not respectable nor would it allow me to live the lifestyle I wanted to live" (a stance which most of my family and associates supported). Yet when I began to give the entrepreneur in me most of my time- Sophomore and Junior year- the artist began to respond by stating that "it had been their much longer(since elementary), seen me through the worst of times and thus deserved first place in my heart." This tug-o-war eventually tore me in two- especially in the face of personal turmoil- and I found myself in the final summer of my undergraduate college career; more lost than ever.

As I arrived home with this question running through my mind, it was clear that if I did not make a choice as to which one I wanted, that I would never move beyond my conundrum . It was this past summer that I began one big push to figuring out my direction in terms of both my career and calling. During this time I began hanging out with both the artist and entrepreneur in me(which neither were two happy about, but they consented to do to the confusing times). But a hopeless feeling began sinking in me that maybe this was all for not. It was at the moment when I felt that my searching would be meaningless and I would just have to start listening to the family and friends that said "just take a break from finding your calling and focus on school," or "right now your not ready to pursue your calling," that I found a way out of my dilemma.

It came as I was watching an interview with Quincy Jones. They were talking about what he has done in his life so far- traveled around the world numerous times, movies, music, art, giving back, and just about everything else you could do that screams an amazing life- when the interviewer asked him one of the most important questions that could be asked: "how are doing all this?" Quincy Jones simple reply hit my heart so hard that I thought it would bust out of my chest. He said that once you find your core skill[the things that we all naturally have developed] that things became easier for him. As those words echoed in my head over and over I knew that was exactly what I needed to find. But what was my core skill?

When you ask the right questions you find the right answer. For as soon as I began asking myself that question, the answer began to repeatedly reveal itself. Every time I sat down to watch a show, read something, talk to people, the word storyteller would riddle across my eyes and into my soul. The more the words came up, the more my heart thumped. I don't remember the exact day, but I do remember the feeling I had. It was as if I just got out of an extremely hot car to be embraced by the blissfully cool breeze outside. I had found my skill.

With that understanding in tact, I began to feel an uncompromising necessity for the growth of both the artist and entrepreneur inside of me. I no longer give them a choice; they had to work together. It was because of this that an interesting thing started to happen. The artist and the entrepreneur inside of me began to see that they had more in common with each other than they thought. In fact as we all started working together, both they and I began to see that we were in fact one being.

The integration of the artist, the entrepreneur, and the storyteller behind them has lead to a movement in myself that has needed to happen. I realize that I don't have to- and never again will- compromise one for the other. I can clearly see that the artist- who writes slam poetry, floetry, fiction, articles, and will soon be writing a book-, the entrepreneur- who launches ventures, builds cultures, and consults to create better world business models- and the storyteller- who tells tales about inspirational adventures and empowering lifestyles- are meant to journey together towards greatness and paradise.

So for those of you that have read this far (much appreciated) and are wondering "what's my core skill" or "what am I called to do in life," I leave you with these calling questions. I am not saying I have the answer or formula to finding a fulfilling calling, but I do believe that if we can ask ourselves the right question that the answers that are meant for us will find us. So here's a couple of questions to consider on the quest of figuring out your craft(core skill) to finding your calling:


Finding Your Craft:

- What do you find yourself doing when your bored?
- What are you doing the moment when times seems to fly by?
- What do you find excites you? What are you passionate about?
- What are the things that you obsess about?
- If you had to teach a class about something, what would you teach them about?
- What are the things that you have fun getting better at?
- When is work not work anymore? What are the things that you can do naturally, that others seems to have to work at to do?
- What are some things that you do on impulse?
- What are some things you do(that adds value into the world) that you see others pay for?
- If money wasn't an issue, what were some activities that you would find yourself constantly engaged in? What are you doing in these activities that make you feel so engaged in them?


Finding your Calling:

- What situations, opportunities, or circumstances calls you to summon every format and ounce of energy from your craft together to engage it in the best way?
- When are the moments when your craft is at it's best?
- What consistently challenges you to use your craft in ways you have never used them before(which betters them in the process)?
- What are you willing to risk everything for?
- When do you use your craft in ways that uplift both you and others?



If you have more questions that you have found helpful to discovering your core craft and calling, please post them in the comment section . These are the questions that have help me immensely in finding my passion and purpose. I hope that they will help you as well. That said, I leave you with this final thought:
Instead of focusing on the career that is best for you, focus on finding what your craft is first. That craft is what you offer to anything that you do, and that craft- if you listen to it carefully- will lead you to what you were called to do. I wish you the best in answering the life purpose that calls out to you.

The Movement Continues...
- Rhetorical Artz

Paradise Found: How to realize paradise

Two days ago, I finished all the lyrics for my Hip Hop "floetry" album- Paradise Found. It has been something that I have been talking about doing for the past two and a half years, but never actually put my mind to fully accomplishing it with vigor. Rapper T.I. once said in his track titled Goodlife that "fear ain't in the heart of me, I learned just do it, you get courage from your fears right after you go through it." These word ran through my head as I sat down after my anthropology class with the completely finished lyrics for my album before me; courage and confidence racing through my veins. I realized than that the reason I never really moved forward on finishing all the lyrics for this album before was because I was afraid. I was afraid that I wasn't a good enough lyricist/writer, that I had nothing worth saying, and more importantly that I wasn't capable of creating a full album- a finished product.

For the past few years I have had a habit of starting things but not finishing them to the best of my ability(if I finished them all). I had a lot of reason and excuses for this constant theme song in my life- being to impulsive, ADD,  it not really being what I wanted to do, and flat out not knowing how. But I think the real reason why I struggled to finish things was due to my desire to see things realized to perfection immediately- if they were to be realized at all (which lead to procrastination). My desire to see things realized in a way that reflected nothing less than the absolute paradise within my mind often hindered me. I found that if what I was doing was not reflective of what was in my head/imagination, that I would eventually lose interest and end up not putting my best into it.

I now realize that the only way to craft your internal vision into reality is to bring as much of it into reality as you can in the present. Lets put it this way: if your dream is to plant beautiful plants, but you're currently only able to bring buds into the real world, than plant the buds and raise them to grow into the plants that you them to be. Sometimes we are more concerned with creating a perfect plant than we are with actually planting the bud we already have in the first place. This hinders us. We keep our newly created bud in the closet; to ashamed to bring it out and show it to the world. We think "I'll bring this bud out when it's fully grown." But how can that bud grow up to become the beautiful plant you want it to be if you only keep it locked away in the closet? Plants can't grow without sunlight, and it surely won't be getting any sunlight in that closet. What it will grow up to be (if it even manages to grow up at all) is a plant that is weak, frail, and disgusting to look at. The worst part about it is the more we look at them- dying in the confines of that closet-, the more you don't want to touch them. So what do we do? We end up leaving these poor excuses for plants in the back of our closets to rot away when all we had to do was give the damn buds some sunlight, water, and overall care.

We do this everyday to our dreams, ideas, endeavors, art, and true desires in life. We forget that it takes sunlight and exposure for our dreams to grow into realities. We forget that we can't water the bud of our ideas in the dark and expect them to become the plants that we envision them to be. I saw this unfold clearly when I finally started making progress with my album. For there are two things that have allowed me to finish the lyrics for this album in a relatively sort amount of time.
The first thing was that I began taking "unfinished" past lyrics- that I had kept in the dark- out of the closet of my notebook, computer, or mind and into the spotlight. I began showcasing my lyrics at local open mics(and still do), performing them in front of friends, and presenting them to any random group of people that I would get into conversation with. I began uploading some of what I thought might be in the album to online videos and blog post(began to realize that a lot of the poetry I have written belonged in a different album, apart from Paradise Found). It was only after doing this that, in a period of a month, that I was suddenly able to find- with relative ease- the lyrics or "buds" that represented the concept of my album- Paradise Found. Thus I learned that, in the race to fulfilling your dreams, it becomes much easier to run towards the finish line when you appreciate what parts of the race you have already finished. If your trying to write a book, appreciate the chapters you've already written. If your trying to lose 20 pounds, appreciate the 5 pounds you may have already lost. Be grateful for the great works that you have already done, and part of a greater dream is what those works will become.

Yet as I began to appreciate my own past works/lyrics, I soon discovered that I didn't have enough of them to make a full album. Thus, I had to plant new lyrical "seeds". This led me to the second thing I did, which was to make sure I planted those seeds directly under the sun; giving them all the light they needed to grow. Now this can pose a potential problem. For if those seeds and buds get a lot of sunlight but not enough water, they will eventually burn up and die. In other words, if you listen to what others have to say about your work too much, or continually showcase/perform your work without continually working on it (and re-working on it), your work will eventually wither away into to something that others- but more importantly you- will fail to see any worth in.
But you see that is actually the whole point of putting your work under the brightest of sunlight in the first place; cause then you have to water and re-water them to keep them alive.  It was both the exposure to sunlight and consistent watering of my lyrical buds and seeds that allowed them to grow together into the perfect plants for my Paradise Found album. Shoot, I had to re-work this paragraph again- after already working and re-working it a bunch of times and then deleting some of it by mistake. In fact because of that, this paragraph got written far better than it had been when I first wrote it. My point is, when you realize that you have to take care of your ideas for them to grow into the realities you want them to be, you become the decider of whether your dreams or ideals truly live or die; instead of letting the world decide that for you.

In the process of planting paradise, many planters have chosen to give the deciding vote of whether their plants live or die to the world, or to their own doubts/demons, instead of giving the final decision to themselves. But you have to be willing to take control of your paradise in the face of those obstacles if it's something that you truly want("you get courage from your fear right after you go through it"). With that said, I leave you with this thought:
If you have something wonderful that you wish to bring into this world, don't focus on perfecting it first. Instead, focus on just producing it as it is, presenting it as it is, preparing it as it is. This will give you something to craft, cultivate, and more importantly create into becoming the very vision that you have always imagined it would be. I mean who knows, maybe it will be even better than anything you could have ever imagined. The best paradises usually are.

The Movement Continues...

Rhetorical Artz             

Write it Today, Rewrite it Tomorrow, Release it Never

My process for writing anything is simple. I write about something significant when I am experiencing it. I don't wait until I can look back and reflect on it. By then both the core content and power of that experience is already fading away. So I write the content that I am experiencing now. The article that you are reading right now came to me when I was on a 10 mile jog. I stopped and wrote out the outline for it on my cell phone during mile 4.

I stop writing and start rewriting when I am no longer experiencing that content. After that I give myself a day or more- possibly much more- to review and reflect on the lessons that I have learned from the experience. It is only after doing so thoroughly, or as close to thorough as I can get, that I begin the rewriting and revising of what I have typed out so far(at this point in the process I have usually typed it out). The jog that sparked me to write this article happened about a month ago. It wasn't until I spoke with writers about their writing process, read about how others were writing, and thought about it all in correlation to my approach that I began revising and rewriting this article.

So after going through this process, when is the perfect time to stop rewriting and release my final product? Maybe when I die. For their is honestly never a perfect time to release my work, mainly because their is always something not perfect about it. I can spend a lifetime revising, reviewing, even writing more of just one article alone. That is why to have to have what I call a "screw it point". Their needs to be a date or time that is set in stone for my work that says, " at this point in time I have done all I am willing to do to make this the best. It is time to send it out and hope for the best." My work will never be released if I do not have this point in time set up for myself.

This has not always lead to my most perfected piece of work, but it does get my work out there, and gives room for a fresh pair of critiques through the eyes of an audience.
The Movement Continues...
- Rhetorical Artz

Surfing to Success: Shout out to Burgh Cards' Ricci Minella

In the rip tide waters of the big business world, the start-up is similar to a surfer. Riding the roughest of waves with a surfboard of resolve, these entrepreneurial surfers paddle out in rain or shine when summoned by the call of the waves; despite the chance a disastrous wipe-out. The ones who survive in this world are able to catch a wave that takes them all the way back into the shores of success. However, in this world the best surfers are not always the one who happen to hit the biggest waves. Sometimes it is the one that paddles out when their seems to be no waves at all, only to be the first to catch the big one when it comes. That is the type of entrepreneurial surfer that Ricci Minella is...

Ricci Minella is the CEO of D.E. Premier Products. This company is out on a mission to offer all in Pittsburgh more burgh for their buck with their all-star product- The Burgh Card. For those in Pittsburgh, especially college students,  it would be wise to get this card. It offers discounts at restaurants, retail, and entertainment store in Oakland, Downtown, and Southside locations. But that is not the thing that entices me to buy the card. The thing that makes me a holder of these dynamic discount card is the events it provides discounts at. 

About two months back, I went to the a Rock event that the Burgh Card sponsored at the Hard Rock. Not only were the bands amazing, but I got 15% percent off everything I bought there! To top it off, for the events grand finally, in walks the CEO of D.E. Premier Product with the band A.E. Honick and the SoulShakedown. What a way to finish! This guys rocked the house out as Ricci rolled out his own signature song- The Sun Sets.  That was a night to remember. 

    

...As Ricci paddles out with a Burgh Card surfboard and a acoustic guitar, many from a distance may wonder why he's out there in the big blue. But watch carefully my friends, because this CEO is soon to catch a tidal wave that will save your bucks in the big burgh while jamming to a sound like you've never heard. So stay surfing Ricci, cause your in for one hell of a ride! 

The Movement Continues...

- Rhetorical Artz

*You can find out more about the Burgh Card @ www.burghcard.com              

The People Problem: When Ideology loses Integrity

I was talking with my aunt today about the oil spill in the gulf. We were discussing what really caused the spill to happen when she made a comment that stopped me dead in my tracks. "This is what happens when we have ideology without integrity." Ideology without integrity. The truth of that statement gave me shivers. 

On BPs' website, where it talks about their core values, it says  "BP wants to be recognised as a great company – competitively successful and a force for progress. We have a fundamental belief that we can make a difference in the world. We help the world meet its growing need for heat, light and mobility. We strive to do that by producing energy that is affordable, secure and doesn't damage the environment. BP is progressive, responsible, innovative and performance driven." Well BP, you are sure making a difference in the world. Just not a good one. For to have BP claim they are  a "responsible" company and then not make sure that all the necessary safety systems are working with their drills, does not put much weight on their words. 


And that is the problem. The words of ideology without the weight of integrity will always lead a society downhill. It is the issue of integrity that we need to understand when asking, "how did this oil spill happen," or "how did the Enron Scandal happen."  These are issues that never comes down to a money problem, a business problem, or a policy problem. These issues are people problems. You can have all the ideology and rhetoric in the world; be jammed packed with moral values, and good ethics. Without people upholding the integrity of those ideals, they don't mean jack. That is when ideology becomes insignificant and rhetoric goes empty.  


So the lesson here is simple: Whatever field, faith, or profession that you are in, a lack of integrity will always lead to the ruin of yourself, your community, and ultimately your country. So why not take the time in whatever you do to make sure your being honest and true. BP can surely show you what happens when your not.       


The Movement Continues...
- Rhetorical Arts  

The Gravity of being Great

Zero Gravity by: Rhetorical Artz
How can I grasp a gravity that hasn't had me

 How can I attain what my experience can't explain

For if I have not ever known what is true agony

Than can I truly complain?

How can I grasp a gravity that hasn't had me

How can I master another masters' self-embodied skill? 

For if I have never truly moved amongst that master

Then is mastering it even in my will?

How can I grasp a gravity that hasn't had me

How can I move the masses when I speak?

For if I lack empathy or experience towards mistake of the many masses

Then are there any masses I can even reach?

How can I grasp a gravity that hasn't had me?

 How can I grapple with the gravity of a great?

For if I have yet to move within my own laws of gravity

I will never truly begin to relate

The gravity of this poem

   To explain the gravity of this poem I want to first talk a bit about one of my favorite TV shows- the Charlie Rose Show. The Charlie Rose Show- where "acclaimed interviewer and broadcast journalist Charlie Rose engages America's best thinkers, writers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, business leaders, scientists and other newsmakers in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions"(copied from http://www.charlierose.com/about/show/)-  is an awesome program for two reasons.

   The first reason, is because it offers an opportunity for the sharing of ideas that are as inspirational as they are insightful. The second reason is that the show democratizes the actions behind those very ideas for anyone who looks at the greats in a given area and says, "I have no idea how to get to a place of greatness in what I want to do in my life." I have been learning a lot recently from the acclaimed greats who have appeared on this show. The biggest lesson I have learned is how to apply the gem of wisdom that these greats have encountered- lesson which tokes some of these people years to learn- into my daily life. However, there are moments in each show when I feel a complete disconnect from the gravity of the experiences that these acclaimed greats are sharing. Why is that?

    The truth is that I am disconnected from the weight and rewards that can only be attained within those lived experiences. That is why if I want to lets say be an actor, listening to the insight from Charlie's interviews with actors like Morgan Freeman or Matt Damon are both encouraging and enriching to that end. But when I hear Morgan Freeman talk about being stuck in the role of Nelson Mandela for a whole day due to the sheer magic of that moment in filming, or the experience of an alternative reality that Matt Damon was able to be in during Green Zone, I feel as if I have entered an A to B conversation in which my lack of experience is "C"ing me out of the insiders scoop.

    This realization that lead me to grasping the significance or gravity of the self-lived experience. The gravity of truly living out the things that you have in your sights verses seeing them on the side lines through someone else. In other words, it is one thing to love the idea of doing or being something, but it is something different all together to love the activity of doing or being something. It is a distinction that has a tendency to be missed in our modern day society, a distinction that the poem above tends to, and a distinction that offers a very key lesson.

   The lesson is that if one mistakes an idea of being great- whether it be a great actor, writer, speaker, entrepreneur, artist, or any other genre of which being great applies- with the action of being great, they have separated themselves from ever truly grasping the gravity and experience of attaining actual greatness. Which ultimately means that if you want to being a great writer, start writing(which is why I created this blog). If you want to be a great thinker, start thinking. If you want to be great in general, then by God just start being generally great! But if your not doing what your discussing, then what your discussing is in reality nothing.

How can I grasp a gravity that hasn't had me?

 How can I grapple with the gravity of a great?

For if I have yet to move within my own laws of gravity

I will never truly begin to relate

  

The Movement Continues...

- Rhetorical Artz

      
To see more on this topic, click the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2uFH0NCMY4