Flames On the Launchpad
Flames On the Launchpad
Welcome, world, to right here and to me and to wherever you may be. The calendars are calling the time September right now. The lightning bugs have left the lawns but the sun still hits my neighbor’s windshield just right to blind me at my desk between noon and 1pm. The littlest among us are dying off with the earth’s orbit and the burliest shine on like the summer’s only getting started. Just like the sun I’ve got a lot to blast into the world right now. But I think this time around it best to start with a piece of prose, with a piece of “Rocket Summer” by Ray Bradbury.
Rocket Summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.
Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.
The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land...
Flames I: Community
Like Bradbury’s people of earth a season of launches is laid out before me. The first ship to leave the pad is right here, right this, a brand new website of forthcoming independent work and offerings. It’s meant to be bookmarked and visited often, with new stories, essays, prose arriving regularly through “Meanwhile,” my soon-public serial publication. Updated regularly, too, will be an area of the site known as The Foundry, a space for a ship that’s been rising inside me for more than a year now: instructorship.
In The Foundry can be found offerings of service in the form of direct interaction teachings. These curriculums have been developed through my two decades of professional creative leadership, my own creative process, and things realized through my most transformational life choices and experiences. These are 1:1, remote offerings tailored to best serve the person I’m working with. Long-term visions for The Foundry include community building that can support group gatherings, creative retreats, and one-off seminars such as “Shawshank Redemption and the Long, Dark Night of the Soul.”
My 1:1 teachings are available for immediate signup. A first testimonial hangs on The Foundry’s wall, with more on the way, and with a couple of very ready people already arrived through the doors of “Foundations I.” Perhaps you, world, wherever you may be, are very ready, too—and if you find yourself in such a state, I hope you too, world, will sign up for a 1:1 course. Our coming together is a context in which we can explore the dynamics of your creative being and shine light on yet untapped creative abilities, philosophies, and parts of yourself.
Flames II: Collaboration
Because I’m emerging from The Foundry having finally pieced those teachings together, I can now put my creative studio services through some seasonal maintenance. For two decades I’ve worked with clients that include movie studios, TV networks, ad agencies, small businesses, publishers, and solopreneurs. That work will carry on, though I’m reworking my studio offerings with more coming in the form of less.
I’m as interested in collaboration and for-hire projects as ever. My talents and expertise are best utilized when helping people and businesses build a relationship with their customers through story and world building. My mission is to create with clients work of lasting value—image and word-based narratives that outlive trends and contribute meaningfully to the people on their receiving end.
I remain open with gusto to such creative and narrative projects, and to any number of roles ranging from creative director to narrative strategist, from motion picture director to boots-on-the-ground journalist. But my core studio interests will be narrowed to narrative strategy, content storytelling, documentary photography and film, and entertainment-driven narrative projects. New, interesting, and relevant work will be ready to share soon.
Flames III: Publication
But directions of old caught up to me this summer. Years ago I set out to tell stories of my own in formats and mediums that have spoken to me all my life. Novels, feature motion pictures, and fiction serials were what I once set out to create. I have detoured back to those roads, and in the coming weeks I’ll be launching “Meanwhile,” my very own serial publication.
“Meanwhile” is meant to be life-like, breath-like, and coming to you live from the universe-like. I’m certain of little else it’s meant to be—except written. Along with the ever-unfurling “Meanwhile” narrative will come an ever-unfurling “Meanwhile” soundtrack and exclusive “Meanwhile” stories for those who wish to independently support my independent storytelling endeavors.
Official announcements and greater details will be issued soon right here.
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Let’s Do This Earth Thing
I appreciate, world, your generosity in receiving this broadcast. I hope you are out there enjoying the spin of the earth as these waves move past you. Should any of them stick in place, please pass them along to anyone you feel they—or I—or any of the things I make—might stick to as well.