John Lacey » John Lacey

Facebook Page

John Lacey — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:13:26 +0000

It’s fitting that I covered Julia Cameron’s thoughts on ‘real’ writers earlier in the week. I had my own personal variation on this theme. I had created a Facebook page about, well, what I showcase here – information about creativity, my own videos, photographs, writings and art. When I created the account I told Facebook I was a ‘writer.’ Much to my horror after the page was created the word ‘writer’ morphed into the word ‘author.’

Perhaps it’s a purely semantic game, but to me ‘writer’ and ‘author’ mean related but different things. An author is someone with a published book, surely? A writer is just someone who writes. I write, indeed I blog. It seems a silly reason not to make the Facebook page public but it was enough to keep it private for several months.

Today I decided to make the John Lacey Facebook Page public. There you will find photographs, artworks, blog posts, the Creative Concepts videos and more. If you’re interested you can ‘like’ the Facebook page here.

I must admit it was a little surreal looking at the Facebook newsfeed and seeing this…

Finally I just wanted to say thank you to Cynthia Harrison who has this amazing gift for leaving incredibly supportive messages on this blog on days when I’m struggling with things. Cynthia is the author of Your Words, Your Story – a wonderful primer on writing that takes into consideration a number of genres and styles of writing. Be sure to check out her blog too.

Metallic Scream

John Lacey — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:26:16 +0000

I’ve been digging into my personal archives this week. Perhaps I’ll tell you more about that next week… But for the time being I wanted to tell you about something I have decided to share with the world.

In 1999 during my final year of high school I released, Metallic Scream – a multimedia CD-ROM which featured original poetry, software, video and music. This was really the first time in my life I had composed music. I had finally, after years of banging my head against the proverbial brickwall, finally made some sense of written musical notation and frustrated with my keyboard playing abilities decided to compose and notate the music straight onto staves in computer software.

This isn’t the greatest music in the world, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it was a start for me. I still look back at it with a sense of wonder. Somehow I managed to do something I had convinced myself I couldn’t possibly do. It is amazing the power that first artwork (whatever form it takes) has. Now you can no longer say “I can’t play” or “I can’t compose” because there’s a dripping canvas or a verse or chorus or something to prove that such statements can’t be true.

Stream Online

[Note: For reasons I am unable to explain track 21 Udet Fell In With A Bad Crowd refuses to play in the flash player. Go to the song page to play it and read about the background of the song.]

Download via iTunes

You can download the tracks (as a podcast) from the iTunes directory.

Painting: Self-Portrait (Cartoon Happiness)

John Lacey — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:13:08 +0000

One of the biggest misconceptions I had about painting before I started doing it was that it was a completely two dimensional affair. While it is strictly true that the canvas board itself is flat, what I came to understand was that you could really build up a lot of texture within a painting.

The opposite approach to the Cruficixon painting (which I posted last week) with it’s very thinly applied watered-down (at times transparent) acrylic is to paint thickly with undiluted paint, as is demonstrated above. Though the more layers you create the harder it is to paint fine detail (one of the reasons this is so cartoon-esque), especially if you adopt the “paint one layer, wait for it to dry, add a second layer” approach like I did. This most certainly isn’t Alla Prima.

I’m painting myself here again in part because I like the idea of using myself as a symbol within my own work. But there’s also a much more practical motivation here – and it isn’t that I’m completely self-obsessed. If you haven’t figured it out by the images posted here I am a complete amateur. I’ve wanted to create images of people who I care about and in some instances I have done that but mostly they haven’t come out very well, and painting myself carries a whole less guilt if executed badly.

Painting: Self-Portrait (Romance)

John Lacey — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:15:36 +0000

Few things in life have annoyed me as much as this painting.

[Click on image to enlarge in new window/tab]

This is based actually on a frame of a JohnOfJordan video for Valentine’s Day. Hair slicked back, with a rose in my mouth (though given the position of the rose in the painting it probably isn’t apparent.) I just found it a compelling image and wanted to represent it in another fashion.

I did a quick reference sketch and then drew it again onto the canvas board. And then I started slapping paint onto the canvas board.

I don’t really remember much about how I painted this. What I do remember was an irritating inner critic who kept telling me everything I did was wrong. I remember being so despondent that I decided I would ‘sleep on it’, only to wake up twice in the middle of the night to try again. I splashed paint on and decided it was horrible and brushed it as widely and as thinly as I could. I tried to scratch off parts of it with a rag. At one point I splashed a coloured wash across it. Each time I had a feeling that I was making it worse but I couldn’t stop myself.

The thing that strikes me about this sleep deprived night is that I had no clear idea of what I was trying to achieve. Sure I was using a photograph and sketch as a reference, but I wasn’t trying to recreate that scene literally. No, I wanted to embellish it and change it. And the next morning I think my inner critic was sleeping because I began to see a lot of merit in all the different variations I had attempted the night before. They all seemed compelling, but I did feel hopelessly inept (and with good reason, I’m a complete beginner). Somehow I managed to put all the personal misgivings and fears and doubts aside and paint what you see above.

Sketch: Blake

John Lacey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:17:41 +0000

I’m always talking about creativity and what I’m working on. I’ve been using my burgeoning interest in the visual arts to illustrate some of those creative sticking points. The result of this is that people keep asking to see what I’m working on. Ordinarily I’m quite ‘gung ho’ about sharing whatever I’m working on (online) but when it came to painting I was really apprehensive about doing this.

When I’m feeling really anxious about starting a new painting – and this happens all the time – one thing I find that helps is to start with a sketch. It seemed sort of fitting then for the first art I share on this site to be a sketch.

This dashing young man is a friend of mine, Blake. I think it’s a good likeness, though perhaps not a great one. The nose is kind of wrong. But mostly I just wanted to embody the infectious smile that appears in the photograph on which this is based. I’m not sure I’ve reached that mark either, but of course I’m a beginner and everyone has to start somewhere.

The thing I realised doing this sketch was how the smallest little lines can completely change a person’s expression. You hear a lot about “laugh lines” on infomercials for beauty products (the general consesus in that context is that they should all be botoxed away). But it’s amazing how really very subtle things completely change how we might read a face.

Sophie B. Hawkins: Desires Borne Of The Grieving Process

John Lacey — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:07:09 +0000

I spent much of the afternoon writing and remembering, as part of the Heartbroken and Grieving project. It surprised me how vividly certain memories came flooding back. This paragraph from a blog entry from Sophie B. Hawkins seems particularly fitting.

Sophie B. Hawkins:

Memories, all of them used to be painful, I’m sure many of you can relate to this. There are some sad moments on the new album, for sure, loss and longing for the reasons things happen the way they do when the feelings are unbearable, but also there are new strengths and completely unsuspected perspectives and desires borne out of the grieving process. We don’t get people back, we can’t relive a more innocent time, but we can create circumstances to enrich new relationships that vibrate who we are now, and we can let innocence safely flourish within others, and live it in our art, and make time for our own innocence to erupt.

Sophie B. Hawkins, John Lacey and Gigi Gaston

Sophie B. Hawkins has been one of the greatest sources of inspiration on this planet for me. Her music helped me survive a difficult time in my youth and her Australian tour in 2005 spurred on my interest in photography. When she returned to the country the following year, she complimented me on my photography and her team used many of the photographs I took on her official website and in email promotions.

Does Google Love John Lacey?

John Lacey — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:30:48 +0000

Google works in mysterious ways.

Some years ago I used a local ISP as my web host and domain registrar. While the people there were nice and mostly helpful, everything had to happen manually (setting up a new MySQL database might take several days depending on their technical guy’s workload) and with a handful of different domains their fees were becoming remarkably expensive.

Eventually I made the switch to online (US-based) “do it yourself” registration and hosting services. There was a learning curve associated with this, but even figuring out how to set up a new MySQL database (for example) took a lot less time even as I fumbled around working out where things were located. However at the time I really didn’t understand the domain transfer process. I was nervous. My primary domain at that time was johnlacey.com, though I registered johnlacey.net with the new service primarily so if there was any downtime I would at least have a workable email address. I transfered all my web services over to that new email address. (It helped me a lot too since the previous email address with johnlacey.com was now obscenely overwhelmed by spam.)

I basically moved my haphazard blog to a subdomain on the new domain, blog.johnlacey.net. I decided to really pour a lot of energy and time into it. Some weeks I was posting a new entry every day of the week. I decided this would be a personal blog and that I would use johnlacey.com for commercial purposes (once I figured out what the hell it was I wanted to do with my life).

I commented in a lot of places, always including a link back to that blog.johnlacey.net location.

In all this time, johnlacey.com laid barren. Not a piece of content there at all. I recently resurrected it. I started writing about content creation and social media since they are things that appeal to me and things that I work on myself.

I don’t want to dwell upon it for too long but I should probably just tell you… There are thousands of people in the world who have the name “John Lacey” or some variant thereof. There’s an Australian artist (no relation) with that name. There’s an American Revolutionary War hero of that name. There’s even a television show from the late eighties/early nineties called “Dear John” whose main character has the name John Lacey. When it comes to my name as a search term, there is a lot of competition.

The thing that interests me the most is that both sites – the one that was basically abandoned for years and the one I pumped a lot of energy and time into – are doing well in Google. (The Australian version of Google has johnlacey.com in 4th place though blog.johnlacey.net doesn’t appear on the front page. The International/US version of Google has blog.johnlacey.net in sixth place, and johnlacey.com in seventh place.)

I took inspiration from the website of Alister Cameron (after we discussed it in a webinar session) and changed the permalink url to my ‘about’ page from ‘about’ to ‘john-lacey’ and linked to a lot of different web services I use with my name linked.

My version:
http://www.johnlacey.com/john-lacey/

Alister’s version:
http://www.alistercameron.com/alister-cameron/

I guess the things I’ve taken away from this process are two-fold.

Make sure your name (or business name or keyword/s) are used when people are linking to your website: I went to great lengths to politely ask my friends that when they do link to me that they do it by name. As long as you do this politely and explain your motivation (search engine optimization) people are usually happy to oblige. Of course when you comment on blogs this thing is automatically very easy because they are set up to link to the site you specify with the name you use.
Your name (or business name) are keywords; think about your keyword density: When I blog I scarcely refer to myself in third person. I will say “Today I set up a new blog at this domain.com.” I don’t turn around and say “John Lacey set up a new blog at this domain.com.” That would give the illusion that somebody else is writing my blog posts for me and that goes against everything the ‘personal web’ represents and of course it’s not true! But you still need to use your name in enough places for Google to associate your site with that term.

This is where the repetition of “John Lacey at Twitter” and “John Lacey at Stickam” and “John Lacey at BlogTV” (etc.) on the about page becomes so valuable. But what else can you do?

If your blog theme allows you to include the blog author name (and if it doesn’t easily, there are always hacks around this) on each entry, do this. If you include any photographs of yourself make sure you include your name in the ALT and TITLE tags. You can include a short bio on the bottom of each entry (if appropriate) that includes a link to your site within your name. For example:

John Lacey is a blogger, author and video creator… (etc.)

There is probably an opportunity here too if people are talking about you (and saying things that you’d like to share with your readers) to quote them on your site. They will use your name and in the context of that quotation using your name in a blog entry will be normal since you are not referring to yourself. Great for testimonials.

One Two Many (The Trendy Complex)

John Lacey — Wed, 27 Oct 1999 00:09:31 +0000

Track 1 on Metallic Scream (the multimedia CD-ROM project I created in high school back in 1999).

claim-my-podcast-in-podbean{scid-am9obmxhY2V5-ecid}

This relates to high school cliques in much the same way The Drama Queens (And Struggling Artist) does. I love the combination of the harpsichord, clavichord and piano. And of course the way the organ comes from nowhere for the bridge section.

Artico

John Lacey — Tue, 26 Oct 1999 00:05:04 +0000

Track 2 on Metallic Scream (the multimedia CD-ROM project I created in high school back in 1999).

I Know (Repetition For Emphasis)

John Lacey — Sun, 24 Oct 1999 23:58:43 +0000

Track 3 on Metallic Scream (the multimedia CD-ROM project I created in high school back in 1999).

Be grateful this is an instrumental. These are the actual genuine lyrics I intended to use:

I know you know, I know you know
Now everyone knows…

John Lacey » John Lacey

Facebook Page

Related Posts:

Metallic Scream

Related Posts:

Painting: Self-Portrait (Cartoon Happiness)

Related Posts:

Painting: Self-Portrait (Romance)

Related Posts:

Sketch: Blake

Related Posts:

Sophie B. Hawkins: Desires Borne Of The Grieving Process

Related Posts:

Does Google Love John Lacey?

Related Posts:

One Two Many (The Trendy Complex)

Related Posts:

Artico

Related Posts:

I Know (Repetition For Emphasis)

Related Posts: