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My Life As Jacque Cousteau

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No, I'm not an oceanographer, a scientist, or an inventor. I like the water well enough, and I’m certainly not afraid of it. Boats are intriguing, the open ocean is spellbinding in all its forms, and snorkeling is okay. Nothing about the salty wet equivalent of space draws me in quite the way it did for Cousteau. On the other hand, I have my own world of fascinating mysteries I can’t wait to explore. This is the world of cinema. Herein is where our stories overlap. Truthfully, I could have used any person whose name is synonymous with their work: Walter Murch, Amelia Earhart, Ansel Adams, to name a few. Cousteau was on my mind because I began to wonder if learning more about his subjects somehow made them less desirable. Before I begin delving too far into this original question, let me lay the groundwork. First of all, I know many people who watch movies simply for the surface of pleasurable eye candy, and certainly many films go no further than this superficial layer. For me, ho
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Finding the Artist Within

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Every artist struggles within himself to find his voice. Be they a writer, a painter, or a filmmaker; their voices lie deep within them -- a fossil hidden within rock. And as the archeologist must break away earth to find the beauty within, so must the artist. This is never easy, always painstaking, and many times never accomplished with success. The problem is different for each artist. We are all unique, and must determine by ourselves the best approach for success over our internal conflict. The problems are many: do I obey the rules or break them? which one's do I break? should I imitate those who inspire me? do I have an original bone in my body? is this worth doing? Is it worth doing? That's the stumbling block for most artists who seem to have forgotten why they loved their art to begin with. Perhaps, after trying to make ends meat with their talents, they became burnt out, ashamed of how they commercialized their skills. Or perhaps some lost their passion after
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