Attack of the Intellectual Braingasms!

Is it possible to have an intellectual growth spurt? This is a question I have recently been pondering. Ever since I turned 30 years old in January. I have what seems to be a heightened sense of knowledge. I am able to pick things up faster. I am interested in higher levels of thinking. I want to know answers to harder and harder questions. It is quite a dilemma I have found myself in.

I used to take great pleasure in playing up the dumb factor. I found people expect less from you and also I don't have to work as hard. Plus, I was not working my brain. This I thought to be relaxing and a stress free way of living.

When I turned 30 though I took a good long, hard look at my life and decided that this naive way of thinking was not doing much for my life, nor my artistic career.

Back when I was in high school it was cool to not seem intelligent. One would be considered a nerd. So, I never applied myself to anything other than art and video games. I think this caused my brain to go dormant. I became numb to knowledge so to speak. Then, once I got to college I became in trouble because I had played dumb for so long that I forgot I was actually smart.

I forgot how to study. Or, rather did not even know how to study. I couldn't perform any higher levels of thinking that were required in many of my classes. That, and I was unlearning the whole," It's uncool to be smart" thing. Now intelligence was rewarded. I had to reboot my system so to speak. I failed many classes during this process and began to think I was actually not capable of critical thinking. When in actuality, I was just beginning to warm up my engine after years of just gathering dust.

A funny thing happened though. During my college years which was a decade I finally came to. I began writing more. Poems, essays, stories, ideas, and art concepts. Although this took nearly a decade my brain has kicked into full gear. Which is good because it took nearly twice as long as when I had not used it. I would say from sixth grade up until my senior year of high school I only used enough of my brain to get by and keep my primary bodily functions intact. Even my art had no meaning. It was all just eye candy.

My art during the brainless years was technically superb. I achieved a strangle hold on color theory, pen and ink, and pencil. But, my art was meaningless. If I wanted to draw a snake. I drew a snake. I just made it more colorful. If I wanted to draw a person. I drew a person. Just made the composition better. In essence, I was just regurgitating what my eye saw. There were no higher levels of concept going on. I never asked," What am I trying to say with this?"

As my brain awakened, so did my art. I work began to take on new techniques and at first I was trying to say too much. My brain was excited to start thinking again, but I had no focus power. I was all over the place. Once I realized I could incorporate thought into my work Pandora's Box opened. There were so many thoughts, concepts, and opinions on the world flowing through my head that I now had a new set of problems.

It took years of grasping my ideas and learning how to focus thought. Towards the end of my college career I had a good friend/roommate bring up an essential question to my attention. The question was simple, but one that I had never asked myself. He had looked at my recently complete portfolio and my subject matter was all over the place. Some was political. Some was religious. Some was social. Some was cultural. Other concepts were understood universal issues. His question that he posed to me was that of," What are you trying to say with your art?". At first I was confused by his question and I stared at him blankly. He asked again'" What are you trying to say with your art?" I replied, " I don't know."

What he was asking was not what was each separate piece trying to say, but in general, " What do I want to say through my art?". This was a difficult question and it has taken years for me to get closer to an answer. I think my current answer to date after looking at my recent collective body of work from these past years is...

I am trying to catalogue the current times and tribulations of our society and the world in general. So that my art will in retrospect cover the lifetime of my existence and the world in which I was both participant and observer. I will achieve this through commentary on such issues as America's fixation with celebrity worship. The displacement of roles and relationships on gender identity in the U.S. and amongst the world. Also, exploring dialogues on what I like to call "The Big 5".

1- War
2- Technology (science, math, and the mechanics)
3- Environment (nature, animals, climate, and population)
4- Evolution (or the lack there of) (social, culture, and language)
5- The dynamic of art (research & development of

These are the general conceptual subjects headings that all of my art can be categorized in.

All of this has happened because of the rejuvenation of my mind. By asking complex questions my answers have become more and more easily obtainable. Which in turn is making me want to ask more and more questions. Which is increasing my knowledge at an exponential rate. I feel like my brain has stored years worth of energy that now allows me to absorb much more at alarming rates.

I have learned how to learn. I know can be my own teach since I have opened pathways to my brain on how to receive new ideas efficiently without exerting more energy then is necessary. Which brings fun to learning which is an idea I thought never to be possibly.

The way in which I have figured out my learning style which I always new, but never realized. Is that if I am applying the knowledge as specific towards the furthering of my art or it's relation to me and how it can make me better. Then it becomes that much more easy to absorb. I am not even learning it as much as I am applying as a technique to further a piece of art.

So by pushing the boundaries of art. I am pushing the boundaries of my mind. For instance, by incorporating a theme of Internet technology for a work. I then do research on computer technology and find it quite easy to learn the simple logistics of binary coding. Before I would have considered myself simple to dumb to understand, but by seeing it's relevance to helping me create a more intense painting. I find my mind more open to understanding subjects to which before I couldn't or wouldn't take the time to learn.

Another example of this in a more abstract sense takes quite a long leap in terms of a logical train of thought. Although I prefer more illogical trains of thought because it opens up other doors. While still keeping open the usual one's. I find leaving every options open to investigation allows for one to reach the best possible solution that could other wise be over looked.

3 0r 4 years ago, maybe more, I decided to refer to myself as an urban monk; Or rather, The Urban Monk. I developed this persona not because of any religious affiliation, but because of my devotion and focus to artistic avenues of expression. In not so many words, " Art is my religion."
As I developed this concept of me as The Urban Monk I find my art has taken a more spiritually righteous path in my effort to explore and expand the idea of the artist.

By expanding my knowledge of art and staying open to all creative forms of expression my interests in literature has grown as well as my desire to explore writing poetry, novels, screen plays, children's books, apparel design, and sculpture.

To get back to my point on expanding my intelligence and furthering my understanding of what it is to be The Urban Monk I have justified that I will learn the Chinese language of Mandarin. So, I have began to teach myself Mandarin for no other reason than that of I want to see if I am capable of learning with some fluency one of the hardest languages in the world. This has been a slow process, but I am slowly beginning to learn.

I figure much like warming my brain up years ago. This too will not be a quick process because learning a second language opens new parts of the brain that again have been laying dormant for infinite amounts of time. I have kept this new venture relatively secret because others are quick to shoot down peoples efforts of evolution.

I say this because many have a learned behavior that after a certain age one must simply accept one's own limitations. Although, I refuse to accept this belief. I am determined to see how far I can push myself in the efforts of furthering the boundaries of myself and my art. If I erase can not from my vocabulary and instead say how can I? I believe my brain can digest much more than I have given it credit for.

After years and years of playing dumb all my life. It finally took my 30th birthday to think maybe this is a self condemning mind set for failure. I began to think the opposite. That maybe I can learn whatever I want. This thinking has pushed my ideas far beyond what I thought was capable. Now I look forward to see how far I can go. How far I can push. How far my art will develop. How far my imagination will flourish with better understandings of science, mathematics, and technology. I am interested in everything that heightens my useful knowledge.

Applicable knowledge pushes my art in new directions. My ideas are without bounds. My creative without confinement. My goals obtainable. Nothing seems out of the realm possibilities. All of this coming from someone who has failed so many English classes throughout my life. I barely graduated high school.

Now I am creating a manifesto on my own personalized style of art. Teaching myself Mandarin. Teaching children art. Creating books on art, poetry, and working on novels. All this and I only feel it to be the beginning. I feel their is a nexus of knowledge that I need to know in order to take my art to where it needs to go.

These are my thoughts. No time for television, unless it furthers my objectives. No time for the games I used to play. I still take time for myself and do things that I enjoy that do not make me smarter. Although while doing these things I still continually think of ideas and concepts often times inspired by the activities that I partake in. Which were meant to take my mind of of such things.

The switch has been turned on. The fuse has been lit. The wheels are turning. I don't know who's exactly driving, but I'm along for the ride as long as it lasts. Maybe this is just a knowledge binge I'm on. I have never had one. Or at least not as intense as this. Hopefully, it turns into a way of life. Life long learning. Enriching my existence and those around me. At the same time furthering my art towards something I have yet to imagine. This is one hell of an adventure and will maintains it's fanatical pace as long as possible. The days of dumb are over.