Tomorrow begins one of the most personally outgoing projects I’ve ever engaged in – in my whole life.
I won’t use this space to promote it – if you want to know about it, you can read more HERE – I want to just take a moment and breathe here with you. It’s a huge commitment I’m making in this project – to share, in whole, the creative process I go through - in every way I can, for an entire year.
In some respects, it is completely freeing – having other people in this creative space with me, in a place where I normally exist alone.
At the same time, the responsibility of making this commitment for a year is daunting…humbling. I know I can see it through, but seeing it through and truly putting enough effort into it that, in the end, I personally feel that I’m honoring it – are two vastly different things.
All that self-doubt having been expressed… I am totally JAZZED!
Just the thought of embarking on a year-long adventure of recording three whole albums – with friends along for the ride – is very exciting, indeed.
Equally exciting and scary is the prospect of opening so much of myself behind the scenes. It’s WAY easier to just finish everything, and THEN put it out. WAY harder to lay it all out for everyone to see. But way more interesting as well.
And in that vein – here’s just a taste of that:
I haven’t decided on ANY album art to date – something that will be shared in this new project. But in order to even start a project of this kind, one has to have a graphic representation of one sort or another.
To get the project started, I created an initial graphic:
The final - click for a big version
My honey doesn’t like this graphic, by the way. But it feels right to me – it appeals to my sense of narrow depth of field and iconic-ness, so I’m sticking with it for now. I love that she cares enough that it actually matters… even if she’s wrong. 
And here’s where I pull back the curtain – here’s how it started:
In da kitchen.
Yeah – no preset lighting. No makeup. Hell, I was sitting on my kitchen floor, and the light streaming into the window was so lovely… so I sat there to take a picture – and the dark line separating my eyes was a simple spine between two window frames that happened to cast a shadow on my face, so I grabbed it – all I did was move my head ’til I got it in the right position – I shot a bunch of pics, and hung onto ‘em ’til they came in handy – which is now.
The rest was just messing around with graphics. Such is art sometimes. Most times, when it’s true – it’s not forced… it just happens. Like above.
(The art from my last album started as just plain messing around, BTW. And in the end, it was not only totally representative, but folks LOVED it.)
And Lord knows if this image will end up actually being an album cover or anything… but when it came out, it resonated with me enough that I had to stick with it. And so I have.
And with that… I’ll have to leave it here – night calls. Tomorrow is a big day – my latest interview with the Bugcast airs (which announces this project publicly for the first time) , and I committed myself to having Four For 4 out there in all forms by the time it does. So it’s going to be a long night. Coding, e-mails and more posts to deploy. Yee-HA!
Thanks for reading this. It might not mean much to you at all, which is totally cool – but I am in what one might consider a personal creative eclipse – and it’s a blast having you along for this part of the ride – I’m very, very grateful. So thanks ever so much for coming along.
Be well.
Love,
