"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.

Of Love and Hope: The things we cherish most

    As we all set out on this journey called life, and as we all go throughout our days, let us always remember that we are all on this crazy journey together. All we have is each other and that is all we may need to bother to remember. Instead of being angry with one another, let us look toward the stars and towards love and go forward in faith together never ceasing to remember that we all come from the same source; we are all brothers and sisters, and we are all searching for the same thing everyday. And if all we did was reached as far as could and looked inside of ourselves and found our human sides and hearts we could and will always find the only truth that really matters: and that is the fact that we are always searching for something and we are usually doing it together. Whether that day it is the truth or love or we are just searching for some glimmer of hope to keep us going to get us to our next destination in this life, we must remember that the best and most often place the Lord will answer our prayers is through another person just like ourselves! Friendship, hope, love, the things we yearn for everyday are right their for the taking! We must dare to disturb the universe, and though we may be lacking in our Prince Hamlet like stature, and though we may be the fool or the Polonius of our own lives, we must always know that we may be lacking in self confidence at times, even Hamlet himself, mostly all the time, or we may be the fool, that is the point of all this: That we are all just faking it, we are all frail, and we all may be scared or make unwise decisions, we are all human. And though Hamlet was the Prince, look at Polonius and some of Shakespeare's other great folly filled characters, they all hold some of the great qualities and most oft quoted lines of our lives and of the most quoted playwright of all time. Anyway to reach farther and move away from some of my favorite poets and authors, Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot, let us take a look at another great and oft quoted poet Mr. Walt Whitman: 

    

    Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) ... The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                     Answer.

    That you are here—that life exists and identity,

    That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

  

    We all have something to offer, we all are here for a reason, so let's just figure out what it is and go and do it! Whether it be to change the world or just our homes, the small and simple things can and will make a difference. For my message of hope today, I offer one final thought: Keep going, keep pushing, you never know when a mundane thought or message, or another mundane Tuesday could change your life. All I am saying is to stay open, you never know when lightning could strike.

    Thank you for listening to my musings,

    Your ever faithful friend on this journey,

     Brian Robert Gardner

    

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory"

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory," the great Ingrid Bergman has been quoted as saying. I wholeheartedly agree! Bergman, a Chekhov disciple herself, is great in the film Spellbound with the great Gregory Peck and of course Michael Chekhov himself as Dr. Burloff. It is a Hitchcock film and it is a wonderful thriller! I would recommend it to anyone interested in seeing classic film making and acting at it's best! I also was just watching the incredible classic film Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint the other night, which won an incredible eight academy awards including one for the great Brando himself and I believe Eva Marie Saint's performance as well as best picture. Anyway two other classic films to check out, another Kazan classic starring the always passionate and wonderfully talented James Dean as a young Cal Trask in the Steinbeck adapted novel East of Eden, "I don't know where he is, I'm not my brother's keeper," with a more lighthearted and fitting ending than in the novel and of course the bible itself. Dean's, Chekhov's, and Brando's performances are all brilliant, and I have to mention the great Montgomery Clift's performance in the gigantic silver screen classic, and a personal favorite of mine, now cemented in my brain, the film A Place in the Sun directed by the great George Stevens. Interestingly enough Brando said there was no way Clift wouldn't for his performance at the Oscars and while Brando actually voted for Clift for the award, Clift did the same for his friend Brando in another Kazan classic "A Streetcar Named Desire," in which Brando did end up winning for his ferocious performance as Stanley Kowlaski. So we go from "Stella!!!!!!!!!! to "I could of been a contender," to Montgomery Clift's scene stealing performance as George Eastman, In a Place in the Sun, where his character meets the wonderfully beautiful and fabulous Elizabeth Taylor's character for the first time, and the look and glance on his face will be cemented in silver screen history forever. Life imitated art in that moment, because even though Clift was gay in real life, and his character wasn't, he and and his character were mesmerized by Taylor's beauty and his face reflected himself being truly lost in the moment, and then found on the screen. Clift met the holy grail of acting in and at that moment: the truth. Clift and Taylor's screen presence are cemented as well in film history by being voted in and going down as the most physically beautiful power couple of all time to ever grace the silver screen. Anyway just wanted to share my message of hope for today in the best way I can!: through the art of film and through all of art meeting truth!

Thank you so much for listening,

Your ever faithful friend on this journey,

Brian Robert Gardner

Necessity: The key to life

Necessity may cut out the weak and uplift the strong, or it may just show you a path in life that you didn't know was there or weren't expecting to come at that time. It may just show you who you truly are, or it maybe the fact of life is that necessity rules all; and if all we need to do is look into our own soul and appeal to our human side, then that may be the final step we need to do to come to the truth. The truth of what you may ask; well the truth that if all we have left is each other, then that is all we may truly need forever.

Thank you for listening,

Brian

My brother Russell

My brother Russell had emergency brain surgery about 11 months ago. I had the privilege of being with him for 9 months of rehabilitation. Russ is truly the law of positive attraction in a bottle. In all those months with him at all the hospitals and at home I never heard him complain once. Not once. Not a why me? Not a anything. It was truly impressive to watch his progress from day one to where he is now; which is back at school where he has one year left on his masters of accounting at Brigham Young University, where this program continually ranks in the top three each year among all schools and colleges in the U.S. After Russell's two year mission in Brazil I truly saw a change in him, a change for the better. He learned how to work so hard and is now on path to getting married and his degree and I'm betting a wonderful life together with his soon to be wife Melissa. He still has to go a little bit farther in his rehabilitation but he is sure on his way. Anyway the point of this story and for today's message of hope, I just wanted to share with you the power of persistence and the power of positive thinking. And that is Russ. If you truly believe you will get better and be healed you will be. If you put out what you want from the universe and consistently strive towards it everyday you will get what you want. I have seen it in action. It was quite amazing to watch my younger brother teach me one of the greatest lessons of life. With his positive thinking and mindset nothing could stop him and nothing will. He had surgery to heal his tumor for good and let's hope it stays that way. Anyway as we continually search for answers in this world and from the universe about the why's and how's of life all we have to ask is one simple question is what Albert Einstein has said and that is this: Is this a friendly universe? And in spite of it all if we do truly believe that we will always be fine. No matter what happens here or there if we consistently strive to thrive in all circumstances no matter what is going on around us, and we always have the power of our own mind, just like as spoken about in book after book after book, especially in Man's Search for Meaning and As a Man Thinketh, you can overcome being in Auschwitz Concentration Camp in WWII and survive and be able to tell your story to millions and change people's lives always knowing that we can overcome almost anything by the power of pure will power. Obviously there are circumstances here and there, but I truly hope and believe that no matter what happens everything will be made right in the end. And if it hasn't been made right then it isn't the end. Keep striving, searching, hoping, yearning, keep going, keep rolling your boulder everyday whatever that may be, and I mean that in a good way not in as a punishment from the Gods, but always remember to dare to disturb the universe and fight for what you believe in. Challenge what is right and wrong, and never stop believing that no matter who you are and no matter the circumstances you have the right and willpower to change lives and maybe even the world forever. Look to the Savior and always strive to be like him no matter the circumstance. Keep hoping, keep believing, for tomorrow the sun will rise who knows what the tide could bring? Thank you so much for listening your ever faithful friend Brian Robert Gardner.

Stop Hoping and Start Living

Life is meant to be lived. Life is not meant to be spent hidden away in your room or your house. Life is meant to be experienced. We are supposed to be happy, joyful, free, and we are meant to defy gravity in all things. Overcoming fear comes with experience. Even though we have fear, we must go forward in spite of it and do whatever it is we are afraid of: that is the essence of courage. Be courageous as you seek out your hopes and dreams. We all hope for our dreams to come to true and without that hope we would have nothing. "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and a good thing never dies." "Get busy living or get busy dying." The film Shawshank Redemption can teach us many important life lessons including those two quotes from the film right there. As we continue on in this trek and journey we call life, we must strive to thrive and live in every circumstance that maybe given to us. Not to be acted upon, but to act for ourselves. "We were not sent to this earth to fail, but to succeed gloriously." Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the twelve apostles has been quoted many times saying that exact line in his conference talks. I hope to start to experience the good parts of life, the exciting things, the hopeful things. I want to begin to really fly and live my life to the fullest no matter what. Seize the day, carpe diem to the max. I want to become in tune with the universe and flow with it everyday. I want to be one with the almighty universe and let it take me on an adventure that was and is worth fighting for and worth choosing to come down to this earth and experience all that it has to offer. We only get one of each day, so it is finally time to start to make each one of them count. No more wasted days on health problems, or anything else. Leave the gray skies of depression behind me, and fight for the light that is just waiting for me to come unto it and live in it forever. I want to stop hoping and start living! I have so many ideas, and dreams, and so many talents and skills that I need to share with the world. I want to leave this world better than it was when I found it and came upon it. I know everything will happen soon and begin soon, I just can't wait to truly start living and truly start experiencing days full of joy and happiness from sun up to sun down. There is so much out there I have missed and I only have so much time to make up for all of those missed times and experiences. I want to fall in love. I mean really fall in love, head over heels in love. My oh my how grand that would be to love someone more than you love yourself. To care for someone so much that you are willing to die for that person. What a lifetime of experiences that are just waiting for me to begin and start enjoy them piece by piece, moment by moment. There is no point in waiting any longer, just jump in the deep end and start swimming.