42nd Street – Art & Business

Art

Most of my life I didn’t get art. On my rare visit to a museum (granted – I have not yet had an opportunity to visit a major museum) I would look at walls rather disinterested. On rare occasions I would encounter something I considered aesthetic or interesting. Most times I felt disappointed and ignorant – because I didn’t get what everyone else seemed to be getting. I also recall the last time I visited a theater play – it was a famous and well received play. I wanted to leave after 15 minutes (I didn’t). I felt like I was watching some cheesy, insulting comedy. At the end of the performance – the crowd stood and sent waves of applauds and appreciation to the stage. Again – I felt ignorant and stupid – what was I missing, why is every body cheering this lousy & uninteresting performance?

I was completely alienated from Art, instead of inspiring me it mocked me and left me feeling that I was not yet mature enough to appreciate it (everyone promised me that when I grew up I would learn to appreciate Classical music… still waiting). As a result I pretty much stayed away from Art. I felt is was “nice-to-have”, belonged to rich people who could afford it and had nothing to do with me.

Then in the summer of 2006 I met Shahar and everything changed. When I witnessed Shahar creating and performing I was completely engaged, mesmerized. It was magic. I was moved, I felt it in my heart and in my stomach. I was inspired and elated. I was pulled in and embraced by this magical force. Over the coming years I immersed myself completely in Shahar’s world, exploring in his bubble. From the beginning I encountered unbending faith in me, completely and utter confidence that I too possessed this magic.

I left behind everything I was ever taught & knew about art and had to fill that empty void with my own experience. My own experience has so far shown that Art is a discipline with a unique opportunity to reach into a precious quality of human nature – inspiration. Art, to me, is no longer “nice-to-have”, without it, life is empty and lacking direction. I reclaimed “Art” and gave it my own personal context – rooted in direct and involved experience.

Business

Business was one of the things I gave up when I embraced Art. Within a week from the day I left my job, Art, in the form of Shahar, appeared in my life. Ironically, artistic exploration brought me full circle and I again found myself approaching business, with a new disposition. I set out to share my new found inspiration with the world through SweetClarity. Since then I have been re-involved in numerous technology-based projects. They all come from my heart, they are all with a sense of purpose and so far they have all completely failed as “businesses”.

During a recent conversation with Andreea I shared with her an observation I made about myself. I observed that almost all of my attempts to reach out and connect with people have failed. I have consciously made a choice and an effort to ask people for help (this is not something that comes naturally to me) – and so I spent time and effort in seeking and reaching out to people – many people. Most of the time  there was no reply, and when there was a reply, it very rarely translated into any action (a very few times it did, and I am immensely grateful for those people and those times).

Granted I am an intimate person, but this was an intense experience. So I came to a conclusion that this is probably something of my nature, that I am not a “people” person. Lucky for me Andreea can spot bullshit from a distance – and she objected. She said that I thrive when I am with people – this doesn’t happen much – but when it does I enjoy their presence and they enjoy mine. It was the “art story” all over again – this time I found myself mixing with an irrelevant crowd online. I am still hard at work trying to reclaim business as a personal experience and giving it a personal context.

42nd Street

I started tap-dancing when I was 11. Around that time there was a broadway musical hit called 42nd Street – filled with tap dancing. My parents saw it when we lived in LA but didn’t take me, and regreted it. Some years later in my late teens, when the show came to Israel I went to see it. It sucked. It was a 3rd rate traveling cast, it was lifeless and uninspiring, the sound was terrible – I could barely hear the tap-dancing. It was a business operation pretending to be a mythological broadway show.