“The Big Stage” (Solving the difficult problems in an artist’s life while concomitantly having fun)

Fun while one is engaged in problem solving as I have stated in the title of this short essay is a central philosophical principle and purpose of “The Big Stage”.

Moving past all early episodes and life shaping events of my youth and early adulthood brings me to this present chapter of my history on the planet. I am a former college professor with a Masters Degree in Ancient History and a second Masters in Jewish Studies. I did an additional four years at Claremont Graduate University as a PhD candidate studying the history of Christianity. After some turbulent self evaluating episodes I began to distance myself from several religious paradigms that had informed my behavior and life choices from my youth up. During this period I became attracted to the entertainment industry and began managing a live music venue in Universal City Walk called BB Kings. Near the end of my tenure at BB Kings I became consumed with the possibilities the Internet offered especially career options and potential for enhancing the quality of my life. After being encouraged by the renowned record executive Russ Regan who suggested I invest in creating a video platform and integrate it into my business model, I began to live stream all club performances and events seven days a week.

Once departing from BB Kings, I began construction of a social network Internet video site with a Sri Lankan Indian by the name of Sathia Raj. Six months of intense trial and error with the construction of the site’s basic design and functionality left me financially ruined and spiritually broken. With my self esteem almost completely chattered I began a long journey back towards healing my severely ruptured self confidence.

It took three months of scrapping and struggling just to maintain a mere kernel of dignity, before my fortune unexpectedly changed course. Then, almost overnight, my desert of an existence began to rapidly look like an oasis. "The Palmer Room" found me, nurtured me and allowed me to regain much of what I had lost. Some might want to call it God's hand, a thought I tended to embrace. The experience gave me a intense desire to follow a path that includes redemption, admission, and conviction with respect to the value and utility of community participation. I decided to go hard if only for one last time in my life. I decided to give my intuitive judgment a more active role in my decision making. I have found in my present state that one should stand on what he/she believes they are best suited to do and do the darn thing in the face of all those that reject and discourage. I have to speak to myself first. I must be honest with myself. I also came to the conclusion that one of our primary objectives as humans is to be safe. It is only from a place of safety, at least in the mind, will I be able to muster up the energy to live; and by live I mean take the right course of action that is action that is most beneficial over the long term.

What do I seek? What do I think? What is my final conclusion about life today though perhaps it may change tomorrow? I think I should be happy. I think men should be happy. Specifically what will make me happy; what arguably makes men happy? To put it bluntly, my answer is "Fun". Life has to be fun! It has to be. I know that I speak for myself unless others want to join me. Since I am on safe ground in speaking for myself let me say that I now know that I can never truly be happy and have the fun I seek unless, my children are safe. I can never have real lasting fun if my family is at risk. This is the first community I speak of. Instantly, the thought has placed in a dessert again. Values changed, needs reversed, I find myself once again unfulfilled and in another kind of desert filled with fear, yet there is a difference. This time I’m armed with new confidence and knowledge of a road (there may be many) that can lead me out of my desert. From a collection of all my life experiences I have learned that in all probability, they’ll be another struggle and surely it will be up hill. I understand it now as one of life’s great constant truths; struggle is constant. Like the episodes that lurk in the shadowy past, struggle is constant and uncertainty hovers always overhead. Nevertheless, there is a confident readiness that has taken hold of my present state. I laugh just for a second, knowing once and for all that I must try to be content and grateful that once more I am entering another journey in life. Though mired with my fears and problems, I have been given another chance to apply a solution. Do you know what I will do? Are you rooting for me? Am I alone or are we connected. Are you facing a struggle too? At last, believe it or not, I am rooting for you to solve your problem too. Let try and do it this time because interesting enough, as I enter the later part of my life, it may be that our humanity depends on us to root for each other before we are whole. Wouldn't it be funny if that could solve our problem? That instead of rooting for ourselves we root for others. Imagine that.

Now I know that the previous sentence or even paragraph for that matter could have this blog entry; but I know that you know that this is supposed to be a blog about “The Big Stage” which clearly appears to have been forgotten. You may have been somewhat troubled by its omission early on, but I’m willing to bet that for the most part you quickly let that thought go and sympathized with me as I shared my biographical experiences. Let me point out that the Big Stage is in many ways connected to this story because it is about highlighting and emphasizing a platform from which one is able to freely share their voice; artistic or something other than artistic. I needed the connection with you. I needed healing; and I needed validation that my voice had a measure of value: that I might be taken seriously. I was heavily burdened and sharing my imperfect human condition has effectively calmed my spirit.

But there is something more I’d like you to know. Admittedly I owe you the same patience you’v shown me. I need to listen to your voice. I now need to respect and value your importance. That’s what “The Big Stage” is about. I’m listening. Get up there or at least start heading in the direction of the stage. Don’t run away from it. Can’t you see the journey that leads to your fun and perhaps safety? Yea it’s as struggle but that’s also the fun of it. It’s the way of the artist or otherwise, “what you have to say won’t have much meaning. It’s a grind. The way to the top of the mountain is a grind especially for the marginalized artist. Listen, they all grind. Actors, dancers, singers, performers in general: they take on the struggle, life chapter after life chapter, with no real end in sight. Then the great ones, great artists find a way to integrate their human experiences their struggles into their work by creatively transmitting through their art those familiar experiences that entertain our mortal senses; their grind resonates to us.

I have yet one last point to make in this entry. Though this article has included an address to the community of artists in their various categories my purposes are not fulfilled unless I narrow the conversation and speak directly to musicians or more specifically, bands, vocalists and solo musical artists. The Big Stage is assessable to you, and I am of the belief that the musician may have an advantage over the other artists’ categories. Why? I think that the musicians road to success is more clearly defined and success can be achieved by the artist’s own doing than any of the other members of the other artist categories. You see, though I have concluded that the steps up the ladder of success for all artists is riddled with constant struggle; and for the first time let me define and identify that a primary characteristics of this struggle is sacrifice, the advantage for musical artists is that they can empower themselves and proceed on their journey with the confidence that their problem can be solved by simply grinding, working hard and aiming their grinding efforts towards building for themselves a fan base. Think about it. None of the other members in the artists categories I have mentions have this luxury. The power of their fate, the success they seriously desire is primarily in the hands of another socially higher being. While on the other hand, the musical artist can find comfort that those he/she has to convince lie on a parallel plain assessable merely by asking. If an artists is seriously interested in the kind of success that will lead to financial security and respect than I say the musical artist can, through their own efforts, effect, and engender progress towards achieving incremental success towards their ultimate career objectives. Ignoring this axiomatic truth and merely trusting in circumstantial acclaim can arguable be no better than trusting the notion that you will find your fortune by playing the lottery.

The very purpose of “The Big Stage” is to elucidate this truth. The work hard ethic, though no more new as a viable means to success is one of the primary center pieces transmitted to all artists connected to the stage. Are you an artist? Specifically, are you a musical artist? Want to solve the problems that seem to prevent your forward progress towards enjoying a lucrative career as a musical artist? “The Big Stage” supports you if you are indeed serious about having a musical career. I am truly interested in supporting the self-promoting artist. I believe that as a community of united artists that the end our marginalized days are numbered. We can in larger numbers reach that lofty place of our dreams, solve our most immediate problem which has in recent years can be identified as the diminishment in available career opportunities.

Is “The Big Stage” claiming that it is the solution? Not really. “The Big Stage” claims that the clarity that is spouts can be used as an instructive tool for the serious musician; and by the artist’s own grinding efforts, guide artists to a more pragmatic work ethic that could very well better his/her odds towards gaining and establishing a successful career as a musical artist. Concomitantly, “The Big Stage’s” events have been deliberately fashioned to provide the artists with a playground from which he/she can experience great fun in the struggle to the top. You want to know what fun am I talking about. I can only speak for "The Big Stage" so here goes. For us it's fun to shoot a three camera quality video and hand the edited multi-camera DVD over to the band for free, and then to watch their looks of surprise while they marvel over the professional quality of both sound and photography. It's also fun and kind of satisfying when our professional photographer burns a CD of about 25 to 50 photographs of the band and again seeing their utter disbelief that someone or something is finally recognizing their musical contribution to the industry. It's fun to see the thousands and thousands of votes that exponentially move the tally indexes on our website and finally, what great fun we experience artist after artist call to say nothing more than thanks. We know you're having fun because we see it in your performance. It's fun having the freedom and platform to share your voice.

Why “The Big Stage”? It’s the talent

"The Big Stage" is a contest for vocalist surrounding the Western Region of the United States. I personally fashioned it to provide a platform for local singers interested in cultivating their craft and overall marketability of their craft. Moreover, I also created it to provide its winners a monetary award large enough to afford them an opportunity to invest heavily in themselves. Since I owned the venue that hosts "The Big Stage", I believed that I could turn it into a nice source of revenue on my off revenue nights. The truth is, while I was able to fulfill most of my initial objectives, I constantly lost money in large sums during the first two phases of the contest. There just did not seem like there were enough assessable vocalist for me to turn the idea into profit. Nevertheless, it has become increasingly more fun than ever. When I think about it, I realized that the fun part of "The Big Stage" had to be, in part, one of the reasons I created it.
Presently, I believe that the reason I am having so much fun hosting "The Big Stage" at "The Palmer Room" is perhaps two fold. For one, I have been amazed at some of the talent that has performed on the stage thus far. In fact, during the last finals, I decided that I would edit the videos that we typically shoot for the pleasure of both the artist and my company. While editing, I came across an amazing singing exposition that had been written and performed by a finals contestant named Diondre Jermaine. At first, I could not believe what I was hearing. It was like I was touched by something so special, so unusual, that it affected my entire being. I could not shake it. Here I was running an average vocal contest, when suddenly; the likes of a Michael Jordan stepped across the stage. He was young, youthful, confident, and had a great look. He was wearing a suite, bow tie, tennis shoes and an Afro pick stuck in the back of his head. It was sort of Urkel meets flava flav. And as he began to tell a story in prose, I found myself caught up as if in a trance. Then this Diondre Jermaine began to tell his story with a kind of melodic and passionate clarity that almost seemed as though he was intimately sharing his special world with me. If that was all, if he had done no more than whale about his broken heart, I would have embraced him as a gifted artist whom I would have loved to book at the club again. But hold it. He was not finished. The story was not over. Suddenly he arrived at a crossroad, and the tragedy began to unfold. Unbelievably to my surprise I felt he was re-living something terribly painful. As I hung on to each and every penetrating word, I was drifting deeper and deeper into an experience that was inexplicable, ineffable but effective. Then came the scream, a controlled melodic scream. It was magic, his music was magic, and perhaps I was changed forever.
Wow. "The Big Stage" had now become something more than I had first intended it to become. It had become something that I was unaware that it could become. It had become something special. Magic, real magic had come and I do not believe that anyone who heard Diondre that night, I mean really heard him, none of them could ever be the same. It was the kind of talent that changes you. It was the kind of talent that seems to make us better; better humans. It was magic. The reason I know it was magic is because I did not hear Diondre Jermaine that night. I heard him on the night after his performance. I was so busy running around that night that I hardly heard anything from any of the performers. Oh, but I had the cameras running and that's the second thing that makes this project fun.
Yes, I had the cameras running, and they captured magic that night. No, I can't stop putting on "The Big Stage" I can't stop filming "The Big Stage" because just like there was nothing like seeing Michael Jordan defy gravity and just like we could not get enough of watching his gift at work, so too I can't stop filming nor can I stop hosting "The Big Stage". It's the talent, it's the potential talent. It's the magic that might re-appear and I can't take the chance that I might miss it. I can't take the chance that I might also miss sharing it with you.