Calling All Artists, Calling All Artists

Part 1

Imagine you are a highly paid editor for one of the most reputable magazines.  You love the hunt, the blood, the words, and manage to find time in your busy personal life to contribute a solid article each week.  At times, your state of mind has been diminished, leaving a void open to failure.  But you’ve persevered, and you’ve grown wise.  Beyond your state of mind, beneath your shoes, is the pavement.  You’ve hit it, sometimes face first.  No one can say you haven’t earned your scrapes.  Beneath your shoes is the state in which you live.  The state of Michigan.

This week, you’re going to expand the magazine.  You won’t refuse the unions wanting their money and security, nonprofit organizations chomping for a taste at “real” business, or the circus of individuals ready for the show. Because they will all arrive once you act on Michigan meddling.

The expansion is necessary.  You’d like to maintain your readers’ attention.  Stay out of local politics and the printing of “ultimate decisions” or flashy ideals, as you have.  Stay within the logistics, entertainment value and respect of cinema.

Somehow, you have lost readers at the peak of this year’s topics.  This time, this spread, anything goes.

Planet Ant

Now, you make the calls to see who is interested in your endeavor.  The magazine is branching out.  (You’ve recently added a store … ad.)  The magazine is going to tell its readers, its Michigan-based fans, they have to stop pretending.  What are we going to do for the Michigan Movie Madmen?

The few close companies don’t seem to respond (to calls, emails, etc.).  The artists who you’ve known, who’ve expressed interest, are having trouble committing.  (They’re having trouble committing to your magazine’s subscription and purpose as well.)  The groups of talent, graduates, coffee shop supporters and fresh digi-heads are waiting … on Craigslist.

Meetings end, but an update should follow.  A CD or DVD should be cut.  An outdoor event (be it a theatrical play or concert) should develop.  Where are the hungry Detroiters?  (On Craigslist?)

The Majestic

A rejection is a step toward acceptance.  In this world of saturated advertisements, you still need to advertise.  Possibly, someone to advertise for you.  But someone to believe in … an idea.  There are tickets to sell.  A performance to give.  An audience to entertain!

After your email blast, magazine subscriptions continue to drop (including an incomprehensible plunge in the approval rating of your previous human achievements).  And your ulcer rises to your chest.  That busy personal life or yours is affected.  That state of mind, that state of Michigan, isn’t going to give you anything.  You’re going to have to remember why you started this … magazine.

Part 2 (flashback)

(February)I found myself reading while walking and literally heading for a man in the streets of Detroit.  Shadow Klan began to speak of “Star Trek” and rearranged idioms that could apparently rhyme without sounding alike.  A rapper, an artist named Shadow Klan.  I had bought his CD two years ago to support, to tell him I believe in his never-giving up.  I told him this with money.  He accepted.  I found his appreciation profound. I found myself, before this wild and fast Shadow Klan greeting, receiving two rejection letters.  Not a single film festival has accepted my film.  I find myself not wishing or willing or wanting to keep this to myself any longer.  I found myself filing the rejection letters under “M” for Michigan.

The Abreact

I found myself being rejected by my homeland.

I found myself, last night, laughing at the Saturday Night Live spoof of Clint Eastwood’s commercial.  Super Bowl Sunday, I had found myself wondering what commercial I was missing, being in the kitchen, hearing Clint’s voice rasp about recovery and coping skills.  Now, after the SNL skit, I knew the commercial’s intent.

I found myself eating Paczki’s on Fat Tuesday and failing to remember Ash Wednesday.

Later, upon Wednesday, I would find myself being greeted by a school mom with a dirty (or is it cleansed?) forehead.  She had gotten her ashes from the church across from us.  I was reminded.

I found myself in an empty church.  (Not really.)

I found myself in a fairly-empty church and found it easy to pray.  I found myself asking if I was being called upon.

Because days earlier, when I had shook hands with Shadow Klan in the afternoon sun, I had wondered if he was my guardian angel.  Was he here to remind me of the fight for art?  The fight for self?  I had gotten rejected by Detroit (Michigan, to be exact).  Soon after, I was thanked and appreciated, as a human being, by the fast-talking, pavement-hitting poetic rapper.

I never found myself enjoying rap (ignoring a brief two-summer respect I felt for Eminem), but I’ve always found myself rooting for Shadow Klan.  For years, he’s been selling himself.  (In Shadow Klan’s earlier days, he sold rubber banded cassette tapes.)

Two years ago, soon after my purchase of the artistic rap CD, I found myself developing an opinion of Shadow Klan, which says something for his hard work.

And I found myself, I’ll admit, truly mulling over such a thing as an angel (Shadow Klan for now).

Just before my quick ash grab in church, I saw who I could be; and I found someone (me) wanting to help the artist.  Many groups have brought other groups together.  There may be nothing new to this epiphany.  But I did, however, find myself ready to fight.

I found myself today.  I will find you, the artist, all of you, and bring you out into the open … if you find that worthwhile.

Part 3

Encore Michigan

If it helps, imagine that highly-paid editor.  That magazine.  That spread.  But whether you are the editor or the supporters, respond.  Remind people you have a phone, a VOICE.  If someone, somewhere, is going to produce a variety show (say in Allen Park, MI), let’s make it unforgettable.

The state of mind: Now.  The state of place: Michigan.

NOTE: I recently reminded Mr. Forman that Hollywood was once Hollywoodland, nothing more than an area for a housing development.  Downriver can, too, become the next “thing.”  He then reminded me that we should stick to a local circumference of advertisement … to start off.  Good tip.

To be involved in our ARTISTS PAGE, please contact me personally at dan_jones1@aol.com

To read other articles by Dan Jones, check out the Movie Attractions website.