Fuel for the fire: What drives me?

Is it really that important to you that you get home everyday in time to play that hour of videogames before your dad walks in the door to enforce the policy of homework before leisure? How about having dessert every night? Is that important to you? Or is it valuable? I think that sometimes we hold things up that should not be put on a pedistal. We learned in STAC to analyse ourselves for three core values. As soon as I heard that this would be written down and shared, the gears began to turn in my head. I wanted to accurately represent myself. I wanted to dig deep down, past all of the matieral wants and aethetics. I wanted to wipe away the veil and layers in order to get to what really mattered to me. My values, as do everyones, represent who you are at the heart, who you are as a person, and they are, at least to me, something that had they not been in place I may not even be an artist or someone with ideas as much as I would be someone striving to find these missing components to my life.

The first one I came up with was the ability to choose. Choice is definately the mosty important value of mine. Without choice we are no different that the person sitting right next to you. If everything is set in stone and controlled, where would be the point in living. Free will is not a gift, or a privilage as is said in religious scriptures, it is not God's Devine gift, it is human nature to choose and to debate. It is the right of everyone to make choices and in fact to act upon them. Certainly there are those who do not make what would be considered to be the most sensible or right decision but none the less we are left with choice. Choice of what to wear, choice of where to go, choice of what to eat, choice of when to breathe, choice to be who we are. Without choice could I be Zach, the writer, the actor, the poet, the teenager, the ANYTHING? I could be no different without choice, and what drives me forward is that ability to chose and to be my own.

The second that I chose was Individual Expression. People need to be allowed to exemplify who they are to who they please to show it to. We all need to let the world know that we are all different and we are all unique and that uniqueness is what allows the world to progress and function. That expression that may come out in my writing or your painting or his acting or her singing, the list goes on and on. This individuality is something that I feel to be beyond necessary.

Third, I chose Strategic Application. Oddly enough everything I do has strategy, underling webs of circuits and wires that must be planned and placed before excecuted, like a tactision I go about my life, applying strategy to how I view the world. More often I enjoy a process more than I enjoy the finished product, for example, a play, I love working on the play, I love rehearsing, I even love getting yelled at for missing my cue for the tenth time. The plays are no where near as satisfying as all of the sweat, blood and tears put into creating that product. I feel that often the process is overlooked or underappriciated when someone gets to the final product, like even now, after STAC LIVE. I'm sure that the viewers loved the films, but have givin no consideration as to how they were made. They do not comprehend the vast amount of work that had gone into making those films. The strategy, and planning and excecution were all more important, at least to me, than the film, even though I did rather enjoy both films.

Issues for me was a little bit easier, Because I write alot, I often notice commonalities within my writing. Most specifically, a blurring of the lines of reality. I greatly dislike writing strictly within fact and will take any opportunity to slip in aspects of fantasty and fiction, to pepper them over the writing that I have presented. I am a fiction writer, and so I do have the constant urge to push facts past their factual limits. I also often have to deal with Pariah in my work. The main character is often exhile in some way or another from where they had originally come from, whether by their own doing or by the fiendish interests of another, each time the character seems to be forbidden to return to where he had started and whether or not he defies this unwritten law of pariah. Not only those, but there was the issue of losing a loved one, whether it be death, or a break up, or even just a parting of ways. Strong bonds are severed multiple times in my writing if not all throughout it. I guess it adds to tension, I'm not sure, but I always see these things coming up.

Being a fantasy writer I have a hard time seeing those lines of reality, and this was a huge thing for me when I was thinking about my Koan. The idea I came up with for my own was: Where do the lines between reality and the fantastic blurr? This to me was one of the strongest question I have always asked myself in my writing. I'm not too sure whether it is a suitable Koan or not, all I know is that this question comes up more than once per piece if not every time I set to work artistically or even just generally in life.