Rhett Kennedy Voices
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Art is fantastic and the fantastic is reality

6/28/2016

3 Comments

 

Talk to me long enough, and you’ll find out I’m a shameless quirky weird geek. Perhaps my only saving grace (and one that gives me social skills beyond my odd little click of associates) is that I know this, and I mercilessly poke fun of myself whilst I do the same for the world around me.  I delight in the world’s seeming oddities, and spare nothing (not even my sense of dignity and pride) to bring out a laugh or spark some form of delight with others through writing, debate, voiceover or illustration.  Because I adore the strange and the odd, I can’t help but smile at an interesting animal,  imitate a strange voice or accent, or be inspired by a mountain vista or drink in the sound of ocean waves lapping on the shore.

Being a lover of all things fantastic, I like to say I dwell in other worlds whenever I can. And yet, that is a bit of a fallacy. When I say that it’s not really other worlds I live in. It’s more like that I delight in the idea of the heightened experiences that this world has brought me. When I create, I’m really taking from our world and combining it with other aspects of it I love.

In fact, reality is my muse. It’s the fertile ground that must be planted and nurtured to obtain ripe fantastical fruit. The roots themselves do not seem fantastic however. The roots of fantasy and creativity are actually sturdy, earthy, and rock solid things. Although some branches can grow amazingly fast. mostly they take slow years to grow and nurture.  Wait long enough though and they will grow true. And that truth will serve you well when you seek the bounty of your creative garden.

This aspect of creativity should never be ignored. If one shuts themselves in too long from the world outside, the roots of one’s creativity will rot as our ideas swim in an increasingly tainted dirty fishbowl of muddied lifeless creations. Creativity will become unmoored from that which makes it unique to the individual. The uniqueness is that person’s experience to the world’s environment and its living creatures.

Our experience as humans are what we as artists need to grow and flourish. As such, we need to be in some fashion a gregarious lot. We need to consistently commune with the world around us to replenish our creative reserves. This process can be with other artists, family or friends, or even animals, be the birds or wolves or the family pet.  

The environment itself can also communicate to those who listen. A forest can whisper dreams to the dreamless.  A mountain can provide majesty and awe to the most jaded spirit.  The oceans can whistle in wind and wave to the faint of heart. But not if we don’t take advantage of what the world has to offer!  If we don’t experience the world, we cannot share our experiences with others through our art in a meaningful way. At best we become rote, and our art descends to a listless craft of recycling our old thoughts and dreams. Dreams that no longer apply to us and become stale and lifeless.

Thus what we have seen and absorbed will make us better artists. Our experiences and observations cause us to feel, and when we feel, we emote and then broadcast these experiences through whatever the medium(s) of expression we use.
Indeed, I have found, simply by virtue of living as long as I have that I am a better actor then I was when I was younger, despite my lack of formal training in between. Why is this? Because I have lived longer and been through more. I have been young, in love, and now I am older and understand both sides of that coin. I have loved people deeply, and I have also felt burning hatred. I have felt profound rage at people and societies ills, but also had moments of kindness that have been visited upon me and I have been fortunate to give others. I have seen friends and uncles and my parents die suddenly and watched them fade into nothingness from terrible diseases of the body and mind. I have been jealous of the old when I was young and now envy the young now that i am older. I feel mortality creeping up upon me everyday.

I have been through hailstorms and tornadoes and seen rainbows in the moonlight. I have felt the mists of waterfalls, and felt the hot sun scorch my brow. I have had frostbite, my teeth broken, torn ligaments, lung damage from a flu.  I’ve cried for death and laughed until I cried. Even as I say this, it isn’t from pride or despair or pity. This is in many ways a standard story. It’s a human story, and in many ways, the story of life.  My story is your story.  It may be different in the details, but the narrative is much the same. This engenders a connection, a relationship that you and I can share and take joy and solace in.

Furthermore, as artists (who are some of the most supreme observers of the world and our inner selves),  how can we not be changed by these events that have traveled through our souls? How can we not reflect and take these small sagas and not share them with others in some form?

As creatives, this is what we are made for. We are made to share what we are and have seen with others, and in so doing we fervently hope that these other people see us as reflected in themselves.

True, we may ply our art it in different mediums. Through voice and song, through paint, pastel  and pencil, or dance and storied letters. Our genres may differ. One person may write of southern debutantes, another of detectives, another of wars, and still another of wizards and unicorns.
​

And yet, it’s all in a way a disguise, a brilliant gauze to dazzle and obscure the fact that we’re all trying to convey through all of this a part of ourselves, our distilled experience through the filters of media and genre. At our most basic, we are looking for approval, and love in a sense. A place to belong and a place to share. A familial tribe of like souls to delight in, for the artistic children that reside in all of us.

So get our there, see the world, be part of it! And share it all with your fellow tribe of human beings.
​

3 Comments

Aaaaaaand....Breathe

6/19/2016

2 Comments

 
Hey there!  So this is just an update on my little VO biz. I haven't wrote in a while, so thought it would be a good time to let folks know what is going on! In short, I have been learning (reading books, listening to and practicing lessons from luminaries such as Pat Fraley), and of course, creating audiobooks!  I also have dabbled in e-learning and even cut a few voiceover tracks for a progressive Dutch Rock band called the Aurora Project. I am, in short, constantly busy, and have a backlog of projects.  I just started on my new audiobook project, On the Matter of the Red Hand.

Through this all, I've enjoyed each and every project I have been fortunate to work on.  I have even learned to embrace the audition process, and even though I haven't been fortunate to pick up any commercial projects (I seem to be continually growing towards more narration and possibly animation projects in the future, which is what I love anyways), I have enjoyed attempting the process to the best of my ability.

My next goals are to refine more. I'll soon be adding more animation/video game demos (all those auditions really help in developing the tools necessary to pursue that further), and also expanding my social media presence more. I have learned one of these well (Twitter), but I have expanded my base to close to a couple thousand followers, so I may dust of the YouTube account and start adding content there too.

The thing is, and I'm sure people know this, it's a never ending, always learning process. You learn one thing well, and find five more things you can shore up and develop. What skills are up to snuff? What can get better (well, you can always get better, right)? How about networking?  What is the plan? And what resources do you have to implement it?

For me, being at this only part time, presents challenges. On the one hand, I have a day job, so I'm not starving to death. On the other hand, I lack time, except in late evenings and weekends. I have to keep working on being very smart with my time. And I also have to learn the business more, and brush up on business skills (which was not historically my strong suit) Like many artists, I am more suited to being a creator than a small business owner.  Alas, I need a patron! Where are the medieval kings of old? 

It's one of the reasons I have been reading books on social media and time management and business as much (and sometimes more) than voiceover books. Creating for me (be it in voiceover or illustration or music) is relatively easy by comparison. But managing myself as a business with specific goals, marketing, accounting? A challenge. But I need to, and in some weird way, it's kind of fun. 

Learning such skills may not be what we aspire to initially, but there is a thrill to learning things that we have a trepidation to, and find we can do them after all. It's very liberating!. Not that someday I wouldn't love to delegate some of these tasks to allow me to make more creative content!  And yet by learning business skills, we are shown an excellent way of learning discipline.  Also, if you learn how to do these things for yourself, even when you delegate you'll learn at least 2 valuable skills.. First,  you'll learn empathy for those that help you, and secondly, you'll be much better equipped to know if the people you hire are truly helping and are good, honest and ethical in their dealings with you.

So these are my present challenges. At first it was setting up, then navigating, then finding work, any work. Then it becomes finding finding work that will grow and sustain a lifestyle until it becomes less a hobby that is treated like a business and becomes a business. And growing a network of fellow professionals that I can prove myself to and grow relationships with. And of course. seeking more guidance and honing my skills on a shoestring budget and squeezing formal training between projects. That is where I am now. I understand how things work, to an extent. But the next few years will be very telling. If I do it right, it will be incredibly gratifying. If not, well, it's just a little roadblock. I'll get there. 
What about you? How far along are you? How is it going?
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    Just a dude pretending to be a dude, pretending to be another guy. Also loves to illustrate, draw, and play Ukulele in an enthusiastic and untrained fashion.

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