I have always been different.  My behavior, my interests, just about everything about me was vastly different than the people around me.  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing unique about me.  I’m not bigger, smarter, stronger, but I’m peculiar.  Developmentally, I was slower than my fellow students and siblings.  I never really understood why folks did what they did? You must understand that when you can’t communicate effectively, your brain compensates.  For me, I became animated when I talked, trying to communicate with sounds and gestures to help my poor verbal skills.  Most people just laughed.

This difference lead me to see and perceive things in a different way on a different level.  I would take the little I learned and add it to my creative mind and I would get something unexpected.  My parents and teachers thought I was goofing off, but I was internalizing the new data and doing my best to comprehend it to be able to use it.  I was not a great student, but I never gave up and what came out of this effort was a type of original thought unique to me.  My disabilities lead me to new abilities, skills that made me unafraid of doing something new.  Luckily, over time, my foundational skills improved and my abilities in school matched my fellow students and even, eventually, surpassed them. 

Years of disability, followed by years of learning to function at the highest levels, has left me like a sharpened knife, shaped and ready to cut.  Then comes this ridiculous age of social media.  The age of copying others and taking credit.  A time of super powered marketing that takes anything original and squeezes it until nothing is left.  No matter where you are from, everything interesting has turned into Google news and a Facebook post.  America has transitioned from the age of originality to a society of copycats.  Americans used to be like Jazz performers, experts of improvisation.  We took numerous ideas and changed them into something new and different.  Now we can’t even copy well, and the idea of being unique has faded into the need to be wealthy. 

Where do we look for Avant Garde? To the young, the old, the brilliant and the disabled, where will the “NEW” come from? The music industry is dull! Nothing new, always the same: today’s music has no soul or style.  The art world? The same old boring things being sold for way too much money - no thanks!  Believe it or not, the “NEW” comes from both need and the death of the old.  Architecture is in an age of transformation. Is this where we find the idea of something being “One Step Ahead?”  Global warming and sea rise has created a major problem for life on Earth, but has also created an opportunity to change the old to something “New and Better.”

My creative path takes me to the “Old” and then to the possible, and I arrive at the now.  This feeling of improvising and creating is extremely stimulating and anyone who has experienced it knows the “Flow” and the boundless journey of what can be.  This process, like surfing an ocean wave, must be a marriage between yielding to the power of the water and the individual’s ability to ad lib as necessary.  The act of creation can’t be mechanical or planned, one must give up control and feel.  Then, and only then, can the force of creativity take hold and an act of creation can occur. 

School teaches you to draw inside the box and write on the lines.  Students are taught to read, write, do math, and other skills.  The act of creativity and exploration happens less and less each day.  As a disabled individual, I was required to be creative because I lacked the common skills that other children possessed.  Video games are even worse - they give the illusion of freedom, but each game is a closed loop and very little personal input is needed to be successful.

The age of originality was a period of breathtaking achievements and feats. Now, as a race, humans don’t do anything that impressive.  There is hope. The way architecture is adapting to the new climate reality, maybe individuals will learn to use technology in concert with old proven facts to create a new age, the Green Age.  Peace can’t come from force, and the Earth can only react to the choices of humankind.  It is our time to create a new garden of Eden! We have the power, but do we have the will?