Zak Shareef's Blog, page 3

The Photographer or the Artist

There is a difference between an artist who works with a camera and a photographer. The difference may not show itself in the images produced by the piece of technology someone employs. The difference is in the person behind the camera. The difference is in her motivations. It's in his efforts.

The Photographer documents a world of shallow beauty. The camera becomes the frame with which she elevates the mundane to art making a ready-made of anything a lens can capture. Whether shooting a war or exposing the hidden value of a desolate parking lot, the Photographer is always hiding truth, burying it beneath images. Images lend themselves to the viewer's whim. The Photographer does to the world what the Wedding-Photographer does to love.

The artist with a camera, though, is still an artist. His work may focus on beauty, but he never disconnects that beauty from the horror with which it was birthed. The oppositions through which we come to know and feel the world are muted and skewed toward Real-Beauty in the work of the Photographer. The Artist is concerned with Truth, and Truth is expressed through fiction not as Reality. The camera can be bent toward this end, but it's inclined to manufacture reality, to frame moments into consumable bits of beauty.

The Photographer hides truth and all that makes art Itself beneath the paint on the wall onto which these framed and pretty moments have been hung to form that gallery known as Reality which supports a worldview that is entirely empty of the kind of vision by which the artist knows himself.

angel

I always looked for redemption
in a sweet girl's caress

until My i opened
far enough
to feel
           your touch
tighten
           and scratch
                  its way
                    to my
                  release

an acoustic tear

I love "I'm Still Your Fag" by Broken Social Scene.

I feel such a sweet, slow pain listening to it. The entire song sounds like the tears I was too scarred to shed over several girls I wish I'd cried because of. It expresses exactly that pain which I associate with most of those experiences I've had which contribute to my understanding of romantic love, and yet the narrative is one that is entirely alien to me.

I regret the limitations my heterosexuality places on me, but they seem to be firmly there. I enjoy toying with the boundaries of what I've been taught to think of as myself, but forcing past this particular limit would be an insult to those who've struggled with their own sexual identity.

This song does something art ought to do. It takes a unique experience and makes use of the universalizing potency of aesthetics to expand the intimate into the accessible.

Thank you for writing, recording, and playing a sadness I could never express myself.

Check the other Blog

"Intelligence itself doesn't matter. Just what you can make happen with it. Lovely lesson for the little ones, JK." http://viafolly.blogspot.com/2012/09/...

Reviews

I'm still working on the novel, but over the last month or so sales have dropped off on the two novellas. I'd love to get some new positive reviews up on Amazon, and I'd really appreciate it if you could vote for the existing 5 Star reviews as helpful (and maybe vote that the lower starred reviews were unhelpful).

http://www.amazon.com/Zak-Shareef/e/B006M6C16C


Thanks,

Zak

Draft of Prologue to Novel

I've made a dent in the novel and I'm starting to question my choice of tense. I originally wrote it in present.. Then, I switched to past. I'm thinking about going back to present. The links below are to drafts of the Prologue. One is in present tense. The other is in past.

Let me know which you think works better.

Present Tense

Past Tense

Yes, Tim will be in the novel

For those of you who have been asking, Tim from the free short story, A Wizard's Flame, will be in the novel.

A Magician's Purpose Is Available

Download from AmazonDownload from Smashwords





Wands are for pretenders. Staffs for the impotent. Magic is an Art, and the only thing a real Wizard uses to create is his mind. The Awens are a family of true Wizards with a reputation for greatness stretching back millennia.

Unfortunately for him, Marcus Awen is only a Magician. Denied his heritage as a Wizard, he joins the Guard, a group of elite fighters who use their Magicians' magic to kill rogue Wizards.

Marcus is forced to reconsider his recent decisions and lifelong assumptions, when he gets sent to look into rumors of magical abuse in an Independent Zone, one of the few places on Earth where scientific development was not restricted when magic became readily accessible early in the 21st century.

Novel

I haven't posted in awhile, and I've gained more than a few readers since, so I thought I'd do a brief update/intro.

I had an idea for a novel over the summer. Well, I had an idea that turned out to need a novel to tell it, but I hadn't written anything for a long time. So, I started with shorter pieces that would help me flesh out characters and the world they're from.

Joshua Awen is the main character in the novel. The bulk of it is set about a decade after A Wizard's Role. I wrote a lot of the novel before I started on the stories and novellas. I have a ton of re-writing and expanding to do, but the novel's a priority from here on.

I'd like to find a traditional publisher for it, so if anyone who's connected to the industry liked A Wizard's Role, or does like A Magician's Purpose, or even enjoys the short stories that I'll soon start to post on the site, please email me.

I'm not going to into any details on the novel just yet. I'll post some over time. As far as the release of A Magician's Purpose, it should be out in a week or so. It's done. It has been for awhile. I just need to get it edited, and that's taking longer than I'd hoped.


I hope everyone's enjoying the New Year.

--Zak