Learn to fly

I build my tower

And though it sways like a flower

I build higher

Into the sky

I jump hoping to god i can fly

But if I die

My children can build higher

And hope to god they can fly

And if you die before you have children

People will always wonder why

Oh why did he try to fly?

Ah, but then

Who are we to say a human cant fly?

If they believe in their heart they can try

Then they will look to the sky

And learn to fly

Abstraction process

A master piece of Picasso's art, "The Three Musicians" is one of my favorite painting. Recently I have been inspired by the concepts of song sampling to be applied to art. In song sampling, a musician eletronicly breaks down a song into phrase that he assigns to keys on a keyboard to be rearranged and mixed in new ways. The sampled song often doesn't sound anything like the new product. Using photoshop you can break a picture down and recreate it in a mind-boogling number of ways. This is just one of them

In the ever progressing effort to innovate on something innovative, I have applied a photoshop abstraction method to the three musicians. In abstract paintings, the use of rigid lines is rare, so I want to rid myself of detail. I used a blur filter and brush to do this. The next step was to change the color scheme. Here I used blue and orange as the dominates, by applying the charcoal and chalk filter. After that filter you're left with gray, blue and orange as the only colors. To add my secondary colors, yellow and purple I used a color replacer adjustment to remove colors of gray and replace them with those. Than I went to town with my smudge tool to get the desired level of smoothness and blur and other effects like that. Finally I added a point of interest, a vector shape stripe orange blue, purple, and yellow to the mid-left.

A Stranger in Frown Town

Summary of Decoded

 Jay-Z wrote the book "Decoded" about his life and the Hip-Hop Industry. It was released in 2010.

Born 10 pounds/greatest spitter of sounds/as a kid I fought rounds/of rap battles in the streets/on playgrounds/made my own sounds to rap on/My story ain’t no once upon/a time to tell the greatest tale rags to riches/made it rich but never scrubbed dishes/instead I stood on street corners/never had no owners/From drug dealin/to word wheelin’/this is my faerie tale

Momma bought me a nookbook/I aint no crook/ just a black poet/ I know it’s hard to know it/when I rap about hustlin’ and dealin’ and my friends who be stealin’/Let’s make this clear, those things were never my mission, just a product of my livin’ condition/where everybody be snickin/

I never grew up wishin’/to be on the streets d-dealin’/just telling you my hustler story/swear I ain’t trying to make it out as a glory/what I’ve done is done/my song isn’t going to corrupt your son/You don’t cover up the truth to make it go away/I got some more to say

I use language to represent/all the anger and rage we got pent/from living in poverty my whole life/My daddy don’t even have a wife/left me alone to watch my own/that hurt worse than any stone/but to make matters worse/that same curse afflicted all my friends/No father in the lions dens/

I know mamas don’t like my N-word/they don’t realize I was an A-nerd/Photographic memory as sharp as an arrow/the path I walked is kinda narrow/No room for the dumb/under the music industries thumb/don’t ask me how kayne got here/he’s from some other atmosphere/

My audience ain’t no PC mommas/ it’s the poor in the Bahamas/the poor in Brooklyn/So I use the N-word/and people scream it’s absurd/I’m just telling it like it is/so just sit and listen to me Mizz/censorship doesn’t make it go away/Do you understand me Ok?/if you can’t handle my story/can’t handle when the world gets gory/we gotta fix poverty/That’s the center of my harmony/the projects are scary because the rich made ‘em like that/we band under the gangster hat/for protection from oppression/my art is a confession/of the truth/This ain’t weird Al spoof

I had bigger plans than school/had an Industry to rule/stood on street corners and rapped in my head/Barely talked, people though me brain dead/two choices/The drug dealing road/that can leave a man oh so cold/Or roll in the hip-hop mood/and risk having no food/Didn’t know which path to take/tried to quit but dealing is like charming a snake/if you stop ya get bit/I couldn’t risk a quit/my crew told my rapping was for the fool/my band told me drugs were a death tool/which way to go/I didn’t know

With a ratatat my supplier was dead/Shot through the head/balls in his own mouth/I left before things went south/I knew it was time to stop/time to embrace hip-hop/My homies dragged me to labels/But I got dismissed like a books of fables/So I opened the R.O.C/opened it for Nigz just like me/Local MC’s can see the good things in me/We spent the summer producing an album/I couldn’t fathom that I had just launched the biggest rap label/my CD took off like a cable/car I knew was going to go far

I wanted to stop after the first/but poets have a curse/the words just keep coming/the tunes I’m still humming/The world wanted more/I went on my 2^nd tour/My first was with the MC kane/He knock rhymes out like a bowling ball in lane/before long I launched three records/Reasonable Doubt, The black album, Life and times of Shawn Carter/Now everyone knew who was smarter/Those that rejected me wanted me back/change labels now was totally wack/I was going to be the guy/Just saying my name got folks high/My raps were in demand/even by those without a tan/I had transcended the racial barrier/Flew over like a harrier/Rags to riches/I Never scrubbed dishes

Now everyone knows my name/my success opened a whole new game/National figure/grew out of a quiet clever nigger/I’ve put a president in office/Inspire the youth to be pompous/I might go down in history as the greatest rapper to ever be! My name is Jay-Z

In Remembrance

As we set out on this journey, young and bright,

We did not have a clue of this plight,

What I believe, as many others portray

That we were wiser than we are today.

I never thought it would come to this,

ruining the purity of our bliss,

So innocent, just so fine,

our thirst for wisdom was absurdly divine!

Our quest went sour, our quest went amuck,

once we started using the profane word ____,

It is not cool, it is not right,

so stop, or I'll leave, I just might!

So, my fellow comrades, as I say farewell,

please check your heart as it spouts from your well,

For even as the vulgarity flared,

I remember the great times we've shared.

This is our Decision to Live Fast and Die Young

like really, "live fast and die young" is the way the go.

From the moment we are born, we are constantly approaching death. It sounds grim doesn't it? Not to get too distracted here but...

During my time playing competitive magic I've learned a lot about life. In magic for every strategy their is a counter. People will put cards in their decks in order to beat your deck. In response you can do three things: change decks, counteract their counters, or ignore them and make other elements of your deck stronger. Often times people will fight strategies using ineffective methods, they try to directly fight what they see as the obvious solution. The best solution to most strategies usually involve creative thinking.
End Aside

We are faced with death on every front from the time we are born. Disease, Violence, Natural Disasters, shit hitting a fan (to reference Airplane), the list is endless. I once theorized that every physical object could be used to end life. (Wipe Cream is scary!!!) So when faced with these problems we learn to protect are selves. Death is one deck, we are the other. We see death playing lots of cards that kill us, so in turn we add lots of cards to protect ourselves. In the end we end of with a deck that can never win but instead can only survive. Unforntately death has this one card called "time" that will kill anything that lives for a long time. This directly parallels real life. Death is stronger than any amount of protein shakes, vitamins, workouts, or anti-aging chemicals. While flood insurance will help you rebuild after disasters, death will kill you eventually. You can't beat death.

If i concluded my article here, things would feel very grim, wouldn't they? The good news is that this new knowledge can be used to make you happier (YAY!). Because the risk of death is 100%, every thing that can kill you isn't actaully going to end you life, as you were fated to die anyways.

Risk and reward generally scales in a direct relationship, as as the risk of death of already 100%, their is nothing in this world but rewards. Lets say you enjoy painting, but you could also make a reasonable living computing numbers for some business or another. As a painter you're unlikely to make very much money at all, with a small chance of becoming enormously famous. (Think Banksy, modern day artist who brought street art to the public eye. His paintings sell for a couple hundred thousand. He could piss on a piece of paper and sell the thing for atleast $50,00) As business person who doesn't ever do anything fun except buy new a house, and they realize that life is out to get you, as the bank forecloses it later. The painter is the riskier profession because you likely not be able to make much money, starve and die, but that was already going to happen, eventually as i proved earlier. Let me demonstrate another example, owing a business. This is actually the perfect situation to showcase Risk-Reward relationships. The simple explanation of owning a business is often "All the profits with all the risk". This is exactly what you need to do with you life, I think everyone should try to own a business. We always hear about these crazy success stories like the people who invent Facebook and Google, now millionaires. "But really, is everyone going to be that successful?". No of course not, just make sure to invest everything into making it a success. If your business crashes, you die, but so what?!?! Like it's not that you've lost something you weren't already going to loss anyways. Think Romeo-Juliet type commitment. I'm one hundred percent serious about the dieing part. Think about the possible outcomes:
1. Crazy success, the ability to do whatever else you want to do with your life.
2. Moderate success, that good feeling you get from owning success.
3. Failure and starvation, I hear heaven is actually a really nice place.

None of those are bad!!
So in conclusion, take risks because once the risk of death exceeds 100% you have nothing to loss.
You have nothing to loss from the day your born. Never shoot for a moderate living. Shoot for the ridiculous.