Shirt.Woot

Slydon wrote:What does it take to make you leap before you look and experiment in an unexpected direction?

for me it takes trusted curation to keep from wasting too much energy on a lost cause.
e.g. The dude who turned me on to Woot also turned me on to RadioParadise. Awesome eclectic Internet radio.

Slydon wrote:What does it take to make you leap before you look and experiment in an unexpected direction?

Frustration. Insomnia. Or just a nudge of an awareness that the things I'm working on are starting to feel like they need rejuvenation. Which means a different mix of what I listen to and look at and draw inspiration from.

I am more inclined to experiment musically, just wandering around Twitter + the internet looking for new to me stuff. Or writing down a band name from an album or concert review and searching them out. Or trying out another band signed to Blackheart Records (currently cycling through The Dollyrots). With movies and writing: I'll give new things a chance but if they don't grab me during the first five minutes or three pages, that's it. Like j5, recommendations can encourage me to give something a chance. I've picked up a few good ones here.

I am always trying different stuf. well, not so much musically. recently my daughter left a picture she'd drawn of part of a lion's head that she'd drawn with white charcoal on black paper, made me realize there was a whole different way I could draw stuff. SO, I've been exploring charcoal for the past several weeks. may not get anything out of it, but I might.

Youth.

20 years ago every I tried was new.
10 years ago I didn't care if I lost a little of this or that to try something new.
5 years ago if it didn't inconvience my family I'd try something new.

Now I do only what I need to, staying to the things I know, and saving up, because in about 5 years it'll be my son's turn to have everything be new for him. Also, I've had 20 years of experimentation, I know what I like and why I like it now, less need to step out of the comfort zone.

goldenthorn wrote:All the time.

I love recommendations from anyone and everyone about anything, everything. I do need a description of why that person thinks that thing is good/worth trying, but so long as it sounds interesting or at least like an interesting experience, why not? Sure, I have preferences towards which I gravitate. But I'm learning with age that the things I end up loving most are those towards which I've been most dismissive/skeptical/frightened. So at this point, I prefer going out of my comfort zone. Different stuff is awesome stuff. Scary/trepidatious-making stuff is healthy!

There are limits, of course, on things not art. And it absolutely depends on my mood. Bad, sad mood? To hell with you and your ideas/things, not trying it. (Though I'll remember it for later and then never admit that I rejected it in the first place, because shutup I retcon and I like it.) Normal/good/any other mood? Sure, lets' hear about/try/get me/go to that new thing!

... so "trying new things" is your comfort zone ...

no1 wrote:... so "trying new things" is your comfort zone ...

heynow

I have a comfort zone?

Cool.

In terms of music--I participate in a couple 'group compilation' things on Spotify. One person comes up with a theme, everyone adds, I listen to them all. Keep what I like, move on.

In terms of food--willing to try anything, but have to go carefully due to allergy issues. Stupid sulfites.

Artistically, I don't create, so don't really have a style. I don't think there's a type of art that I don't like looking at, although there are definitely some pieces I don't appreciate.

Mavyn wrote:I don't think there's a type of art that I don't like looking at, although there are definitely some pieces I don't appreciate.

are snuff films art?

no1 wrote:are snuff films art?

That would be a...media...that I've never seen, so my comments wouldn't really apply. Lots of stuff out there that I've never seen--either by choice or happenstance.

I write plays, and I definitely like to try out new styles and topics. I like to use shorter forms like ten-minute plays to just have fun and play around with (no pun intended) new and different styles without having to worry about sustaining it over a whole two hours.

But then sometimes things happen where you THINK you're writing something different and it turns out to have your signature style stamped on it after all. The full-length I just had a reading of was about nuns and inspired by real-life events. At first I thought it was different subject matter and more serious in tone than my usual style--which is mainly dark comedy and lots of different types of family dynamics. It dawned on me in a workshop about two weeks before the reading that "oh no. This is basically a family play, isn't it?" and THAT'S what had been feeling so off about the dialogue. The nuns were like a little family, but they weren't relating to each other as if they were. So I had to go back and revise the whole thing to sort of "make it sound more like me" in the two weeks leading up to the reading. And I think it worked a lot better because of those changes. So sometimes you have to recognize when you need to come back to your comfort zone if that's what the specific project is calling for.

I find the idea of a "comfort zone" to be a confusing concept. As a developer, the last thing I want to do is to develop something similar to something I've made before. It gets monotonous and boring after doing it just once or twice. I would much rather develop something completely new and different from anything I've been involved in before. I understand paying the bills and doing what needs to be done, but to want to stay inside of a box you built for yourself is completely foreign to me.

bluchez wrote:I find the idea of a "comfort zone" to be a confusing concept. As a developer, the last thing I want to do is to develop something similar to something I've made before. It gets monotonous and boring after doing it just once or twice. I would much rather develop something completely new and different from anything I've been involved in before. I understand paying the bills and doing what needs to be done, but to want to stay inside of a box you built for yourself is completely foreign to me.

hmm, that's as a creator. do you do the same as a consumer of others' creations?

bluchez wrote:I find the idea of a "comfort zone" to be a confusing concept. As a developer, the last thing I want to do is to develop something similar to something I've made before. It gets monotonous and boring after doing it just once or twice. I would much rather develop something completely new and different from anything I've been involved in before. I understand paying the bills and doing what needs to be done, but to want to stay inside of a box you built for yourself is completely foreign to me.

hmm. Maybe "comfort zone" is the wrong word then for what I was going for. It makes it sound worse than how I mean it. More like "signature style/sound" or "recurring theme." I love to write about different subjects in different styles. But I also know there's a signature "me" sound that would make whatever I write sound different from whatever my friend would write, even if we were both writing about the same thing. And I know that what was missing from the previous draft of my play was more of the "me" sound. It was too generic, as if I were afraid of giving them any life because way back in draft one two of the characters were inspired by real people.

That particular project needed more "Colleen signature sound" in it. But the next thing I write may need something totally different to fix it. I want to do something a little less grounded in realism next time because I need a break after all the drama.

So, definitely creating yourself into a little box is not good. And doing slightly different iterations of the same work over and over again doesn't do anything to challenge you as an artist.

And I basically know that I'm never going to have any hope of paying the bills in this line of work.

februarystar27 wrote:hmm. Maybe "comfort zone" is the wrong word then for what I was going for.

Also, I know the subject thread says "comfort zone" and that you weren't jumping on what I'd said. Just figured I'd clarify in light of your thoughts that I wasn't a fan of creating 20 different family plays just because it's easy.