Are you ready for your close-up? What’s stopping you from saying what you want to say?
I believe that we live in the greatest time in history for communications, for self expression, for saying what we want and need to say. The evolution, shrinkage and increased affordability of technology means that the tools for communication are legion. They’re also right there, just waiting for you.
All you need is something to say, and the nowse to push a few buttons.
I’m not a particular fan of punk. But I always loved this simple message of demystification and DIY in creativity from punk-era fanzine Sniffin Glue: “This is a chord. This is another. This is a third. Now form a band.”*
That was nearly 40 years ago. But creativity is eternal. The do-it-yourself message is eternal.
This week, my friend Sarah Miller posted a seriously great – and very inspiring – wee video, demonstrating perfectly how creativity and self expression is attainable for all of us in 2015. Please invest just two short minutes of your time to check it out.
Sarah goes behind the scenes of her weekly series of social media round-up video blog posts (or, if you will, vlogs) for AHRI (Here’s the latest edition). She shows you how to assemble the equipment, how to sort and light your studio space, and how to – in a very real sense – envloggenate.
While Sarah is a natural at this vlogging game, I’m not sure if I could overcome my nerves to give vlogging a try. Still, you never know…
But I love Sarah’s advice in her video on how to relax into vlogging. I think her encouraging words apply across all outlets for creativity and self expression (vlogging, blogging, acting, baking, painting, singing, tickling… and on through an endless amount of words ending with -ing):
“Have fun, be loose, enjoy the process.”
If you’re reading these words on a wee rectangle, the medium for vlogging (and for blogging, and for accessing information your ancestors would have had to put some serious footwork into unearthing, and for so much more) is in all probability already in your hands.
Whatever your chosen medium for expression, you can do it. You don’t even need to know what it is you want to say when you set sail via your preferred medium. Just enjoy the process.
Footnotes
* I first read these words in a lovely, three-page comic strip called Punk Memories by John Bagnall, from a second-hand copy of Escape magazine, which I found at Milton Keynes in the late 1980s. Providing a perfect illustration of just how ridiculously accessible information is in this rather good present of ours, simply googling “punk memories escape magazine” immediately returned the first two pages of this strip (sadly, the panel reproducing the words from Sniffin’ Glue must have been on the third page… but let us not moan too much if a small tip of the lily remains ungilded, eh?). I reproduce them below, but make no claim to the copyright of them, and will remove them immediately, if required.
And if I’m touching on the topic of punk memories, there is no way I can not include a link here to the definitive work on this topic: Baadad’s Clichéd Memories of Punk, from Adam Buxton’s tragically never-made-it-past-the-pilot MeeBox show.
- Image via Wikimedia Commons.
MJCarty 
