Kinetic Knack 11/24/08

Life is a great big canvas, throw all the paint on it you can.

Danny Kaye
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About 20 years ago a friend decided to make a master resume of my professional life. I still have it. It is many pages long because I did so many different things. I went to kitchens, gardens, stages, studios, pools, band shells, offices, lecture halls, class rooms, street corners, prisons, auditoriums, orchestra pits, ball rooms, church basements, book stores, bell towers, subway stations, senior centers, insane asylums, playgrounds, press rooms and others: the twisting trail of a vagabond trying to make a buck. My paint box was very complex.

The artist Robert Motherwell created many interesting paintings for many years using only black on white. And I have seen other artists create amazing, magical things with nothing but a piece of paper and a pencil. It just goes to prove the old rusty adage that says it doesn't matter what you use it's what you do with it that counts.

Life is an opportunity as well as everything else it is. Or rather, it's a vast, inexhaustible string of opportunities to do amazing things. But those things require vigor and enthusiasm no matter what's in your paint box. Notice that Kaye says "throw" not dab or fiddle. After the throw comes the time to shape, form and carefully arrange

I think the secret is love. If you love what you're doing you will throw it at the canvas, at life. Most of all I was a performer. That's what I loved, and whether it was music, broadcasting or theatre I would do it anytime, anywhere, even on a street corner or in a band shell. And I always knew when I was with my kind of people because when they weren't on stage they were standing in the wings watching the show.


DB - The Vagabond