What is wrong with 2016

Is it just me or is there something going on? Every time I dare to brave the news (which is fairly frequently) I seem to be greeted with the news that yet another icon has died. So far this year I feel as if I have lost a good 30% of my own personal icons. Rickman, Bowie, Corbett, Wood and now Prince, it feels like everyone is checking out of planet earth.

But to be truthful, it isn't just celebrities that seem to be dropping like flies, it's in my day to day life as well, in January alone I ended up at 4 different funerals, some not unexpected, but some were too young, and heard of a further 3 connected with friends. It has me unnerved to say the least. I dread hearing news I know I can't deal with, but with this pattern I am half expecting it.

Which raises the question, what has gone wrong this year? Is it the backlash of weird weather culling the weak? Some astrological pattern as some papers have dared to report? Or even the rapture (check revelations). Or is it simply we are more in contact with the world and thus obtain the news with in an obscene amount of time from expiration. And yes I do mean it like that. Much as I like to be in tune with the world, some of the speed of reporting deaths of a celebrity feel to me like complete intrusion. We are almost notified the moment the poor person passes their last breath.

In some cases this is so sudden and unexpected that those around them don't even have the time needed to collect their own thoughts before half the world's media is camped outside their respective residents and demanding a sound bite. Hardly the most respectful way to conduct the report, or even notify what in many cases seems to be news of emotional influence.

While what seems to be happening this year is a major blow to the arts world, the way the media is choosing to document it feels like it is cheapening the whole situation. Whether you knew a person or not, their influence on a person can not be measured on mass. A song, program, play even film can hold quantifying memories to an in divulge, and to just throw out the news dead, without substance or quality reporting is to disregard any emotional investment. Now I am not saying we the paying public have rights on the private lives on anyone in the media eye, in fact far from it, but we have the responsibility and right to pay homage to the loss of talent without it becoming a media sandstorm of who has the best tag line. At the moment I raise my hat to the family of Prince, who have embraced the mourning fans and allowed them to share the grief of loss, whilst still managing a private cremation. Yet others haven't been so lucky and instead are overwhelmed by the news and media circus that seems to accompany it.

Like I said I follow the news as avidly as the next person, but having been touched by grief myself this year, I can't help but feel sick at the treatment the press are giving, to get the headline. 2016 seems to be a bad year for loss, and for that we can do little other than pay our respects regardless of who it is. Let's not also make it a year of greed, remember one persons headline, is another's grief and despair

Get interested

Since January I have been pushing myself to read even more than usual. Which apart from leading to an epidemic of books all over the place, has thrust a few people into my awareness. People that until last year  I may have only had heard of in passing and they in turn have created a domino effect on my literature boundaries.

Let me be clear I have always followed the arts and written since I was aware of such things (which according to my family was aged 3). But some how I had managed to miss the surname Franco till this year. I don't know how either, but I have a feeling this is going to divide my audience in half as especially James Franco seems to have a marmite affect on people, they either want to bed him or gag him if you follow social media. But having read what seems to be a mini library of writing, there isn't just one artist in the family, they all are in various mediums, whether it's author, artist, actor or director, and in some cases all the above.

So having started with one book, it lead me to a collection of writing, then other authors in the family and now completely unheard of authors that were inspiration to the first works..  That said this trail has also lead me to u tube and no not a load or illegally ripped movies, but instead book talks, university lectures, q & a sessions and similar. All of which reminded me I have an unfinished degree (blame my health), and my own paper forest of unread work that is cluttering files and doing the sum total of nothing except collecting dust and tripping me up.

Now I don't claim to have the talent of the multi degree holding man, or for that matter the outlet to publish it, but I do have the right and possibly the responsibility to give it the chance to see light of day. I also now am able to look back on said work and realise just how my own style has changed the more I have read and the more I have been exposed to . Leaving me with the question is not art in any form the right any one of us has to document our journey and share with others? It may result in nothing, but then again it's not my call to make, but the audiences.

In four months I have had my mind blown by poetry not unlike from my own thoughts, seen art work I would happily hang on my wall and live with daily, I have also had my faith in the human race disintegrate as I see the abuse and constant analysis of one persons sexuality rather than discussion of their work. My views on sexuality are well documented, and I'll say it again, that side of their life has nothing to do with general public, as it doesn't define a person. All these points has left me in a quandary, whether or not to bite the bullet and send my own work out into a world, that in the one hand loves success, and yet in the other wants your very soul for the honour. I would love to share, to get my work seen and shared, even help someone via it. But I don't want the grief of my life blasted on social media for every troll to think they know better. That however is my decision to make, and I believe it is one that will be made in the next month or so.

What I have taken away from this little discovery is the very fact  that we should never stop learning and growing. That what we are now is not all we are. If that was the case we would all leave school at our respective ages and just go through the routine of living till we died, no progression or development. It is the people who constantly push for more that history favours, those who ask the unanswered  questions or take the uncomfortable path.Just because you are an actor doesn't stop you becoming an educator, a writer or a painter, or because I am stuck grounded by my own demons, doesn't stop me reaching further afield, wanting and fighting for more out of my life. I may not be a position financially to finish my degree, but I can keep reading and learning extending my own boundaries till I find a place that is right for me.

If you were to ask me now what the best thing I learnt in the last four months is, I would be hard pressed to narrow it down to just one thing, but if you ask me to share anything from what I've learnt it's the quote below.  Love me or hate me for it I can honestly say I am very pro James Franco, in all his work, purely because he is an artist in all senses of the rules. A person who is prepared to take the rule book and shred it, which in reality is the real definition of an artist. Some one who makes you question your own viewpoint on life and society whether it be sexuality, equality, addiction whatever. If he makes you uncomfortable, maybe it isn't he the artist who is at fault, but you the audience who is too stuck in your ways.

What I do next, well that's to be determined, my discovery of self, but may I suggest a little trip outside your comfort zone could be very enlightening.

"You want to get interesting... get interested" James Franco