Notes to Self

I’m not fond of press releases in general. I find them to be full of PR hype and marketing babble, although they are good for getting numbers and addresses and contact information. Press releases about travel are not that usable for anything other than contact information.

What I do love are art exhibition press releases. Somehow this is one thing that most galleries get right. I learn a lot from art exhibition press releases. About artists I’ve never heard of. About their work. Where they went to school. I learn about the creative processes of other people. I learn about the kind of work a gallery likes to present in an exhibition. And, they always come with a usable attached image.

I can use art exhibition press releases. I rely on them. Travel ones, not so much. Although I don’t like to miss out on anything.

In the art world we learn that not everything in life is Top 10, or 5-Star. When we do our critiques at mid-term or finals, we would be laughed out of the studio if we said something was great – and we’d probably be flunked out of school if we told everyone their work was great. The purpose of a critique is to give constructive criticism, and everything in art, as well as in life, leaves some room for improvement.

I’ve carried this concept with me through life. Especially through my life as an artist and my work as a Quality Assurance Engineer.

With the coming online of twitter and facebook, with online rankings and reviews, there is more opportunity to spread the glory of being great around. The only thing is, that the word great now seems to have the same definition as the word mediocre. The word has landed in the same pile of useless words where adjectives like interesting have landed. In the art world, to tell someone their work is interesting is to tell them their work is meaningless.

So many times someone has sent me a great link and I click on it and read, something that may or may not be useful, but it certainly isn’t great.

If someone asks me what I think of something, I’m going to give them an honest answer. I feel it’s my job as a human being to be honest with my thoughts about something.

I’ve always felt a lot more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. I like directing, I like composing compositions, I like being behind the scenes. I like making people feel comfortable. So it was a surprise to me, when yesterday I found myself blathering like an idiot in front of a video camera about this and that and travel.

It was uncomfortable as hell.

When I have something to say I usually write it. I try and not waste my readers’ time by writing something just for the sake of having a post on any given day. I’ll go weeks without posting for that very reason. Yesterday in front of the camera I felt like I was a talking head, wasting time, not saying anything of substance. No details, only generalities. Not an in-depth conversation, just questions pointed. Not my usual jovial, rambling, circular way of telling stories, just me trying to think, and speak, in a linear way that is really frakking unfamiliar to me.

To be honest, I’m really tired of the topic of travel as a topic. I suppose that is only natural when getting immersed in a subject, when all waking hours are devoted to some aspect of a life’s secondary subject. I’m burned out.

Or maybe it’s like photography – years ago, way before digital when we were still using archaic film cameras, I stopped shooting. Not really because I didn’t like photography anymore, but because it had gotten to the point where anyone could shoot ok photographs. So why not change course (that’s when I became a painter) because I wasn’t really needed in the world as a photographer anymore? Even more-so now with digital format cameras.

Everyone travels now. Everyone shoots their own photographs. Now I’m connected through a social network of what seems like a gazillion members of the travel community who are travel bloggers first and whatever they are in their real lives second. Time for me to move on maybe, or at least think about changing course … or maybe just get back to my original intention and block it all out. Or maybe I just need to travel and get out my comfort zone, off of my laptop, leaving twitter behind.

On the other hand, I’m not tired of the subject of art. I’m not tired of being an artist. I was born to be one. So getting bored with it all or tired of it is not an issue. It’s not even possible. There’s always my next project to work on. My writing on this site started out being the observations of this one artist who travels. Artists are born with insatiable curiosity and observation skills. How better to use those characteristics than to continue to move on to new places, have experiences, internalize them and use them later in some self-analytical way? Travel also gives the opportunity to visit our creative roots, our artistic ancestry.

Even though most of the interview yesterday was a blathering blur, one of the questions I was asked was “How does travel change your art?” That one kind of stumped me, because I honed in on the word change. My reply, complete with a quizzical look and a tilt of the head, was that it doesn’t change my work. But what I didn’t think to add, or didn’t articulate because I was focusing on the word change, is that travel does influence my work, or maybe I should say that it does inspire my projects. I wonder how far I would have gotten into my latest project if I hadn’t been exposed to ancient Maya culture and their interest in the concept of time? Actually, probably pretty far, but the exposure took me even further.

This morning I feel the uncomfortable memory of the interview. It wasn’t written word. It’s not editable in a way that I would like to edit it. It’s imagery and speaking and choppy non-connected sentences. I will be surprised if anything good comes of it.

It is also … out of my hands.

A little technical note: I rarely have time in a day to check my web site stats. I do keep track of them, but it’s not a daily item on my to-do list anymore, now that the site has grown and twitter and facebook have also become so much a part of my daily routine. So I check site stats on the days after I’ve made an effort to show something to the world, to see just how many people have noticed …

Over the last year or so my site stats have been showing a lot of referring links from the biggies like stumbleupon, twitter, facebook, google, and now bing. But there is one other site that has been bringing me readers, one that is showing up almost daily in my referring site list, and not just with one click. So I thought I’d show some link love and give her a mention.

That would be Roberta Westwood and her Roberta’s Blog.

Roberta is “a doodler, blogger, traveller and all around free spirit.” Her home is in Vancouver, BC, Canada, but she’s traveling for a year. From the posts I’ve read, she’s been for the most part in Europe, checking out art, architecture, markets, and eating some lovely food.

She’s been on the road for about six months. Six months into her year-long travels. Her posts are short and sweet and usually include photos that make me feel like I am sitting next to her as she writes her posts. So take a moment and check out her blog and see what she’s up to today.

I’ve been tagged. Caitlin over at Roaming Tales has nominated me to share three travel secrets under the Trip Base Blog Tag. I tend to not like the idea of highlighting obscure places, because I’d like for them to remain obscure. But for Caitlin and the travel blogging community, why not?

My whole raison d’etre for traveling is to study, see works of art, architecture, and archaeological sites outside of my art history books, to study and photograph landscape, and to eat local food. So my three best kept travel secrets have to be listed under one or more of these categories. My three best kept travel secrets also happen to sit in plain sight.

1. The Maya Ruins

Any Maya ruins. Yes, yes, Chichen-Itza is now one of the seven wonders of the world, but even still, there are many Maya archaeological sites in southern Mexico and Central America that remain almost in isolation even though they’ve been “discovered” and uncovered and are ready for visitors.  If you’ve only been to Chichen-Itza, you haven’t yet been really immersed in the ancient culture of the Maya. Or at least not in its archaeology. Beautiful, mysterious, and full of mythology, there are number of sites where you can walk alone, or almost alone, through the jungle.

2. Big Sur

In the last thirty years I have traveled often up and down Highway 1 through Big Sur and in all that time the landscape has never ceased to amaze me. It has probably never been the same landscape twice, on any one of my road trips through the area. Most people drive from one end of Big Sur to the other as fast as possible – like it’s something they don’t really want to do, but want to tick it off of their must-see list. It’s like they are seeing the multiple hairpin curves as obstacles rather than nature’s way of getting them to slow down and look. And rarely do people take the time to camp and hike in the area. For me, even though I had spent a lot of time in Big Sur because I lived at the south end for a number of years, it wasn’t until 2002 that I stayed more than one night along the coast in Big Sur. It’s not only my favorite stretch of road to drive in California, now it’s also my favorite escape when I want a couple of week’s worth of camping in the off season when no one is around. Big Sur is a landscape artist’s dream and taking the time to really spend some time in the area is a peaceful gift to oneself like no other.

3. Winged Victory

How many people in this photograph are actually looking at Winged Victory? It’s like she isn’t even there. Invisible in plain sight. The Winged Victory of Samothrace is that one piece of art in the Louvre that is constant. Throughout the years, as the museum has undergone its changes, while pieces have moved, as pyramids have been built, Winged Victory has always remained in the same spot at the entrance to the Denon wing of the museum. I always look for her on my visits to the museum. She serves as a touchstone, a centerpiece, a starting point.

I’m nominating these 5 bloggers to share their top 3 travel secrets on their blog:

Caroline Wampole at RoadMuse
Cheryn Flanagan at DestinationTBD
Christine Cantera at Miss Expatria
Angela Nickerson at The Gypsy’s Guide
Tara Bradford at Paris Parfait

The final list of Top Bloggers’ Best Kept Travel Secrets will be published in a special blog post on the Tripbase blog and shared across the internet.

These travel secrets have also been included in the Tripbase Travel Secrets e-book series.

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