#powerstoryart 5
Move quicker. Speed over calculation.
Story Art by Jasky
An Australian Girl was a support keyboardist for local bands, she was hired to play for their live performances. She made little money, enough to pay the rent on her tiny one bedroom apartment. The apartment housed a single mattress surmounted by a pile of her clothes, and alongside it, as if rising above the rubble, sat her gateway to a better life. Her most prized possession — her grand piano.
During the bright hours of the day, she worked tirelessly on her solo album. An album on which she rested her dreams of one day performing to a sold out audience at the Sydney Opera House. But each time she completed a piece, hampered by her fears of it not being perfect, embarrassing, or incomplete. She scrapped it.
She went from Girl to Woman this way, tweaking her album daily and performing at bars and clubs for other groups at night.
Until one day, she heard a knock on her door and a handsome man sporting a crisp pinstripe suit stood before her.
He extended his hand and resting in his palm was a red and white coloured pill. He told her to ask no questions, he knew exactly who she was, and he was here to give her this pill which would allow her to make the right decision in every situation.
He handed it to her and turned to walk away, but as if to add to the drama,
“Pay close attention and learn while you can, because the effects won’t last”, and with those words he was never seen again.
The Girl rolled her eyes, assuming this was some illustrious prank. So she left the pill beside her piano. But each day it looked back at her. Her curiosity calling out week after week. So resist she could no more, and one day she swallowed the pill and immediately went to sleep.
The next morning, she cancelled all her gigs. She immediately packaged her album as it was and posted it to the leading promoters across the country — using her list she had compiled for when she was ready.
In the afternoon, she dressed in her most elegant white dress, and pretending to be a busker, she set up shop in the highest traffic area in her city — at the edge of the harbour, her back facing the Opera House. Instead of money, she asked the crowd to share a recording with their phones.
She created covers of popular songs of local artists, and many amazed by her skills, starting spreading her work. It lead to collaborations. Publicity. Media. Hype.
Amongst the ruckus, she made numerous mistakes, and each time her fears rose they were squashed by the speed of her movement.
2 months to the day that the man had knocked on her door, the Girl wearing her elegant white dress took a seat on a small wooden chair in front of the grandest of pianos. Colours of joy swirled around her. She was in front of a full house, as the opening act. Inside Sydney Opera House.
That night as the effects wore off, and her fear returned. She pondered. What had taken her 10 years to do, she achieved in 2 months. It became clear that she had always feared the worst case, which prevented her from taking action. But what she now knew was that the worst case was in-fact her not taking action.
Speed trumps preparation.
Story Art is a new genre of art, one that brings the two most powerful ways of spreading a message for the past 5,000+ years together — storytelling and art. Teaching great human truths and lessons in the simplest form possible. MORE…
This is the #powerstoryart collection — a collection of story arts on the greatest strategies to gain power and influence in a competitive world.
For the rest of the series, follow the journey on Instagram @sikkant.
