Rhythm, Blues, and Controlled Chaos

Practice Mode | 022

Sep 02, 2024

Finished my first painting titled ‘Rhythm, Blues, and Controlled Chaos’ about a week ago, during an intense need to create. This confrontation of sorts about reestablishing my relationship with basketball has been knocking at my door for a minute. This piece was the turning point of me taking the game into my own hands, so to speak. Because that’s what greats do; overcome. This new perspective has improved my ability to detach from expectations of what was, is, and will be in a very realistic way. Acceptance, detachment, gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, grace, etc are all strong ways of maintaining high character through urges to rebel from frustration from tough situations. What you do when no one is watching, and for those who can do nothing for you is a good way to gauge where you’re at in regards to those things.

I mention this because basketball is a place where you can’t hide, and requires a lot of vulnerability to be willing to fail everyday, while your success is solely dependent on your performance. Being a good teammate and/or person can elevate you but honestly talent, athleticism, potential, and most importantly production get priority. Understanding the way my career trajectory went does not reflect who I am personally, nor. represent my skill or talent as a player. For a lot of years these things were very difficult to accept because my input never matched the output. This was my meal ticket, my way out of poverty that was going to change not only my life, but my families to not have to work so hard to get by, and the one passion I had seen through for over 25 years. Sadly, I was (like many athletes) told I couldn’t focus on anything else but basketball if I wanted to “make it”, and even when I did that “making it” was far from the results I was expected to receive. A career full of unexpected road blocks and a career-ending injury in China left me feeling like not being able to breathe. Trying to transition to life after sports has often felt akin to being a fish out of water.

Pharrell published a book titled ‘A Fish Doesn’t Know It’s Wet’, and created an annual music festival called Something in the Water (story about Fam-Lay later). Aqualad from Young Justice is one of my favorite animated characters because of his unwavering commitment to leadership. Bruce Lee told us, “Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water.” My favorite song by Little Dragon is Water, and on his newly released track, ‘Tailor Swif’, with absurdly creative visuals, A$AP ROCKY starts it off saying, “shoot my shot, get her wet, bet that’s all net.” As the holder of the 2nd most 3-point baskets in Long Beach State history, my jump-shot has always wet, quite literally (and often) hitting all net. In honor of Splash Brother Steph Curry and ice cold shooter Sabrina Ionescu’s 3-point contest dual during the 2024 All-Star Game, I created a collage project called SOME EXPERIMENTS WITH WATER. Hailing from Salem, Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, I know a lot about raining threes. Our world is 70% water, Andre 3000’s incredible flute album - New Blue Sun - is a metaphorical sound bath, also here is him impersonating water drops. Lastly, a week into learning French I’ve found my favorite thing to say “w”, which is pronounced “doo-bluh-vay”, literally translating to “double v”. I had an epiphany when I didn’t just realize life was meant to be fluid, but accepted it as a way of being. Paradoxically, the way to unlock this was by letting life flow around me by being the rock in the water. This metaphor held power in it’s stillness, taking a break from constantly adjusting to life around me, and left me empty from pouring more into others than myself. Being grounded in found principles and accepting what I can’t control created a healing through letting others meet me where I stood, and having peace in what isn’t for me passing me by. I’m content holding form of a rock in water indefinitely.

Now to the good stuff, if you’ve made it this far thank you for being here. I’ll share the meaning and a few photos of ‘Rhythm, Blues, and Controlled Chaos’. These are what I shared to several friends, so below is an unofficial and unedited artist statement. There is also a clip from the show winning time that provides context an exact lens of how I have always seen and felt about the game of basketball. If you can, take some time (revisit) and explore all of the hyperlinks throughout the post, everything is a bit interconnected to the sources of inspiration for this piece and my overall creativity. The full videos are at the bottom of this post to access as well.

Basically the music notes framed as a basketball court represent a multi-layered experience. One being the way I view basketball as a sport and it’s ability to build globally connection through play, the other my personal relationship between music, rhythm, movement, and spontaneity within my playing experience. I have been a conductor embodying these things through my own expression, in this duality the court represents me from an abstract lens, while also depicting my personal relationship as a maker of melodies through movement. I used charcoal to make the court to give it that raw texture and imperfection, which is a key part of my life practice. Controlled Chaos was a nickname a guy gave me in high school because he said when I played it looks out of control to the average fan, but if you looked closely you could see that I was fully intentional of everything I was doing. In Costa Rica, I earned the nickname ‘The Wizard’ - to the idea that they way I moved and played carried an essence of magic and flare - finishing the season with a championship and MVP award. These elements of showmanship have been passed down from the greats I grew up watching, basketball was always a way of showcasing your individuality and unique style. Basketball is a collective symphony, truly like poetry in motion.

The colors are layered in a way that puts the cooler emotions on the external and the more intense closer to the action. The colors represent the fan experience with implied movement where throughout the course of a game you’ll be at one point or another on the (color) spectrum emotionally. But it also is hinting at the relationship between players and the external transfer of the radiating energy the fans/audience absorb from the players passionate performance. Just like attending a concert, symphony, or listening in headphones - ARTISTIC TRUTH OPENS MINDS. I believe and creativity is a catalyst for epigenetics in our collective dna, hence A.T.O.M. The studies from the fortuitously titled article, ‘Wonder symphony: epigenetics and the enchantment of the arts’, from Environmental Epigenetics Vol.10, Issue 1 (2024) has the scientific research to back my claims.

Lastly, (but not wholly lol), since the court is a representation of my experience, its communicating the way I’ve maintained a presentable digestible cool, calm, and collected exterior but the closer you get the more intense the emotion gets and feels. Men are taught to contain emotion and generally only have sports as a safe space to express their true and fully vulnerable emotion. The color psychology engages the viewer to look inward at what emotions the piece elicits within them, while also referencing the inner rage that has been well documented in relation to being Black in America. This is the same color as the music notes and the charcoal court as well. The most profound engagement with this complex fusion of emotions has been to unleash everything I have inside myself through play / expression / melodies of movement in basketball - or what some may call JAZZ. And at the end of the day regardless of how you feel you have to perform (survive), we have to be resilient and make beautiful music (life), use the adversity we face as an ingredient for making magic.

My vision is for this piece to transcend basketball or sport, but to speak to the greater connection we have through expression in movement, rhythm, love, and spontaneity. For us to understand our broader connection to one another in shared literal and figurative space. Regardless of the chaos of the world around you, and all of the emotions surrounding, find a way to channel that into something special. Even if it’s big or small, whether you’re at Cameron Indoor Stadium, a coffee shop, or in a room of 10 - what we do is a reflection of who we are inside. Like listening to music, basketball has been my life’s most cathartic practice - I hope this inspires you to soar deeper into the well of your souls potential. We are writing our music and expressing our melodies in real time. Until next time, Salut.