Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Students Reading The Alchemy, as discussed by David Mack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMWU5iyegFo
I hope they enjoy the story, and I hope they find something useful in the story that can
be helpful to them, not just in terms of art or writing, but in terms of where they’re
going in their life. Maybe there is something they can find practical and applicable inside
the story. I’ve been doing Kabuki for close to 20 years. I’ve been doing comics for
about 20 years, a little over 20 years, and when it came time to do The Alchemy, I felt
like I developed a certain amount of principles for myself that I was able to use in my work
and other areas in my life to work at maximum efficiency and capacity. And you always want
to be on your “A-game”when you are working and I felt like I was able to encrypt a lot
of those principles inside the story of The Alchemy, and also some ideas of how to figure
out how to get to certain places from it. So, as it’s chronicling the character learning
certain things, there are some of those “real world” things that I kind of arrive to from
trial and error that the characters arrive to in the story as well. So, in in a lot of
ways, The Alchemy is a book that I kind of wrote for that version of myself that was
maybe starting college at 17 or 18, and would maybe possibly validate some of the dreams
and ideas that I had at the time … but also give me some kind of insight as how to actually
makes those dreams into a reality.
Just beginning college, you get the sense that there is kind of a system and what you’re
asking yourself and other people in the system: “What is expected of me in this system?”
And I think really what you kind of need to ask yourself is: “What would I like to get
out of this system? What would I like to get out of this process? What would I like to
get out of these classes that will be useful and helpful to me?” And when you look at
the classes and going to college from that lens, or anything that you are going through
for that matter, you know, it gives you more of a laser point towards your goal of what
you can glean from what you are going through and integrate that into a useful way towards
what your goal is. And at the time you kind of think that you have to sort of fit into
the system and accommodate your ideas and dreams into the system, but I think the more
you do things, the more you ask yourself: “What do I expect to get from this and what
can I get from it?” You start to realize that you and your ideas have an influence
on the system and have an influence on your environment. And once you’ve come to that
realization that you have the influence on your environment, on your own culture, on
the ways things happen, you’re not just an inactive participant drifting along. You
are an active participant contributing to your culture and making your culture and contributing
making the system that you are a part of. Then it kind of gives you a responsibility
to be conscious about that and then kind of make that happen. Well, in a way this is one
of the themes from The Alchemy story and something that I probably would’ve benefited from
at that age. If I could give this book to myself at that age … it’s a book that
I would’ve found very, very helpful and motivating and inspiring. So, if students
are anything like I was at that age, maybe it’s something that gives them some kind
of crystallization for what their own dreams and ideas are.