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Who are you?

You are the descendent of cave painters who thousands of years ago told the stories of the tribes hunt in pictures on cave walls. Paintings still visible today so long after those people have vanished – the art remains.
You are descendents of Michelangelo, da Vinci, van Gogh and others who struggled and worked so hard to perfect their art and became famous.
You are the results of thousands of generations of animals then people meeting falling in love and mating and creating more generations to do the same. Generation after generation. The result of incredible odds – genes mixing to create you the latest version –the latest link in a long long chain that will continue generations after you. The odds of everything coming together to make you are incredible. Vegas couldn’t calculate the odds for you existing. Even further back – the cosmic dust that had to form to create this planet – the particles that we are made of – amazing.

The wars fought. The genius’, scientists, writers, workers, inventors, believers that created this society, your beliefs and culture all added to make you who you are. Who we are.

And now we sit here in this room faced with what to do next. Faced with figuring out who we are… we owe it to our ancestors to do the best we can. We owe them and ourselves greatness. Harness the magic and mystery that put us here.

Complaining and fussing with trivial things distracts us from our mission, our purpose, our love, our dreams, and our potential. When you think about all that had to happen – the improbable series of events that put us all in this room together it is inspiring, it is awe-inspiring. It is amazing. You can be amazing. You are amazing. You are unique. One million million rolls of the dice could never duplicate you.

You are here to create art – a very noble and necessary sacred act. Something so special that our cave painting ancestors thought was so important they made paintings that have endured thousands and thousands of years. An activity so vital to a culture and society that we still do it today. I hope the work we do can endure. I hope that we prove ourselves worthy of this magic we have inherited.

That noble occupation. That noble obligation to create. Create something that never existed before. Just like you were created like no other thing that existed before. Created out of the same matter that billions of years ago came together to form this galaxy, this solar system, this planet – you.

Who are you?
You are an artist.

-Paul Yalowitz

One of my most beloved and humble teachers that I had the most wonderful pleasure of working under his mentorship. He’s such a goofball but then he has the most wonderful insight and says them right when you need them. I hope you can take something from this. 

(via katzupan)