"We are all imitators" Aristotle

As I continue my journey throughout the ups and downs of this crazy thing we call life, I am wondering many things. So I want to write about some of them, meaning I want to write about all of the thoughts and things that keep rolling and rolling over and over again in my mind as I attempt to go to sleep, the things which won't stop until I basically just give up and turn my head over onto the pillow and force myself to get to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. So here we go, I will attempt to put them into words on this blog. First of all, I am wondering where the original things, the innovators, and all of the people who we revere and study all of the time in our schools and in our lives have gone? Aristotle has said basically said that we are all imitators, but I am wondering who are we truly imitating, ourselves, I don't actually know, but yes to a point that is absolutely true. But why in this lifetime and in this generation and at this time on the earth are we not even trying to attempt or obviously not completing our own classics, our own brand of history makers, and so on. We read The Great Gatsby as obviously one of the great American novels of all time, and then we make movies and films based on the book, and have parties with themes of The Great Gatsby novel and yet why are we not writing our own great classic novels and having our own original themed movies and parties? A great poet once said that life is just history replaying itself over and over again, the same themes, the same things, the same truths, heartaches, victories, excitements, and yet why is that, how does everything basically keep replaying itself over and over? Maybe because we are afraid to find our truths and our own joy, and even our own history? (Side note: The film Contact starring Jodie Foster was one of my favorite movies growing up and still is one of my favorite films to this day, because it touches on all of these themes and truly foreshadows the exact things that are happening in this day and age, in this time on earth. All of the questions asked in the film are based on the theories and findings of the great Carl Sagan and they ring so true and go all the way to the whys of the eternal nature of our own existence. The film shows how the search for truth is how we are all connected, how science and God intertwine and the film really gives us all a sense of what we are truly looking for in this lifetime.) Anyway how true is that, how honest and revealing that is, because it is just so true that we are all imitators. We are just replaying the same themes and going through life in just the same way everyone ever has and yet it seems like we have stopped creating the classics; that one day a hundred years from now we will still be reading the same books, still reading The Great Gatsby or will we finally one day create our own legacies and classics? Will we ever create new material to read, to watch, to finally somehow let the past go and again create our own future, and then become those people that the future people of this earth will imitate? Or will we just keep making sequels, reliving the past, keep recreating Shakespeare plays or will we come up with and become our own Shakespeare's, our own F. Scott Fitzgerald's, and create our own classics? What are we waiting for, yes a lot of people are doing a lot of great things with technology and art and athletics, but it seems like that no one is going to beat Michael Jordan, even though Michael himself has stated that as long as evolution exists that there will be somebody greater who will come along and beat his records and out do his athletic achievements. Where also is the next Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Nijinsky? Yes there is Stiefel, Acosta, Corella, but we have all these people saying that we are losing something, as we are going forward. Stiefel wants to create new ballets, and yet all we see is Swan Lake and Cinderella! David Howard was a great classical ballet teacher, and he has stated in an interview I just watched that took place in 2008, before he passed away, the same thing Ethan Steifel was and the same thing I am trying to put across in my own words right now. Even though we are moving forward each day, it seems like things are changing for dancers, actors, athletes, poets, musicians, and all people and artists in general. The great actor and the great acting teacher Michael Chekhov also has warned us that this was going to happen in his classic book "To the Actor, On the Technique of Acting" which by the way was light years ahead of his time when he wrote it and he was talking about things concerning energy, atmosphere, and basically the law of attraction before anyone knew what exactly these things were, and before anyone knew how this was going to all play out. Basically he warned us that the arts were changing and if we didn't watch ourselves and carefully examine and reexamine where we were all headed and what we were doing, that we were going to be caught in the snare we our caught in now, which was what David Howard was basically saying when it was and still is happening. Anyway, the dancers, the actors, the musicians, the poets, the writers, and the athletes have all become way too naturalistic or way too obsessed with the past in certain ways. Baryshnikov has always said it was not about "being the best," by the way no on has ever started to do something for just the pure reason of being the best, they wanted to do it because they loved it and they did it to better themselves everyday, the best set out on journey because they were talented and they put in the work, and when you do that you can and will become a genius and be at the top of your craft if things go your way, and things work out as explained by the classic author Malcolm Gladwell in his own classic book "Outliers," ironically in both ways because the book may end up being something we read in one hundred years, but the most ironic part about it is that the book is explaining and examining all of the ins and outs of how people end up on top of the world, rich, successful, even extremely famous because of their lucky breaks and the time and place these people were in that allowed them to go all the way to the top of their field and life, instead of just living lives of just "quiet desperation," like most people do as explained by a famous poet. Anyway the point that I am trying to make and started to do and went away from into other areas of discussion, is that even though our lives are moving forward it seems like we are standing still or just waiting for Armageddon to come and somehow save us all from this life that has gotten so out of whack and so complicated for no apparent reason other than the fact that we have somehow lost our way, and we are hoping for the Savior to come again and fix everything that has gone astray and fix everything that seems so much like a life and a world that has gotten way off track and needs to find it's way again. Anyway, we need new inventors, new innovators, new classic books, new films, movies, ballets, new Michael Jackson's and Jordan's and Shakespeare's, and Fitzgerald's. Where have we gone? It seems like we gone away of the social network. We have bombarded ourselves with ways to leave reality and fake our way through our own lives and existences that it seems like we need something or someone to come along and change things and create new things for the betterment of our own society. We can look back to move forward, but for goodness sake we have had enough Transformer's sequels, and enough Nutcracker performances to last us a lifetime. Let us pick ourselves up, and I am one hundred percent including myself in this plea to the world, and get going on and start creating and inventing, and imaging a new world. A world full of hope and goodness and happiness, instead of every news story being so completely negative that it seems like we have all just thrown our hands up in the air and said I give up, you win evil doers of this world. Where have all the positive, uplifting, mind blowing original works of this time and this future gone? We have read enough of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby, we have done so many Shakespeare plays and so many Giselle's, that it is finally time to stop imitating, and become our own imitators. Yes, again we can look to the past to look to the future, but it's time to move forward into a new generation of art and literature and beauty and hope, and look forward to the new beginnings of time and I'll just say it straight up never look back, always keep our eyes and lives moving forward and never stop dreaming and or believing that one day, maybe sooner than you would think or ever even imagine that our lives will become one where we have stopped hoping and started living.

Thank you for listening to my message of hope for today, see you on the flip side, your ever faithful friend on this journey we call life.

Brian Robert Gardner

Faith and Life

Have faith in yourself. Believe in something greater than yourself. Go beyond this world's limitations and fight for something greater. Do not be afraid to dream big. If you find yourself not knowing what to do, just move forward and I promise the answer will come to you. If you lose, you'll come back, and I promise one day you'll win. There's no greater failure than not to at least try; give yourself a shot, there's no use standing on the sidelines anymore. Get yourself in the game by any means necessary. Don't hold back ever. Leave it all out there on the floor. Don't waste your time worrying about what others will think or even do, just go for it; stick to your gut and you will never lose. Have hope, faith, and charity, be good to one another. We are all in this game we call life together. We all breath the same air, we all are striving for the same things, so let's begin again everyday with that unyielding attitude of gratitude and never stop hoping or dreaming because maybe one day those dreams will come true. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Cards on the table, bet big and one day you will take the house. Odds may be slim, but just ask yourself everyone every once in a while, or maybe all the while, why not me?

Thank you,

B-ri.