Devotion

I always dig devotion.  I use to have it.  Sometimes I have spurts of devotion for a project or learning something new but I can't keep it up at all times.  I use to play basketball everyday when I was younger.  I use to exercise at least four times a week.  I would practice speaking Japanese almost every other day.  I would try these things but I couldn't always keep it up, at least to a point where it becomes a habit.  I still practice these things but not as much as I like to.  Everytime I drive and its raining or snowing and I see a person running I think to myself, "That person is devoted."  Just recently, there was a story in national news about a personal trainer, Drew Manning, who purposely gained 100 pounds just to experience being obese and lost all the excess weight in a span of a year.  He did this to try to understand how people get obese and the body reacts to losing all that weight just so he could get a better perspective of his target customers.  That right there is devotion.

The reason I bring this up is there is an amazing story about an artist, Bryan Saunders, from Washington DC who devoted himself to his art.  Bryan Saunders has committed himself to doing self portraits while on drugs.  Not just one kind of drug, but basically any drug he could get his hands on, only when given to him whether they were from friends or prescribe by the hospitals.  He has drawn a self portrait while being on every drug known to man one at a time.

Here's just a few samples:

Bath Salts

Cocaine

Lighter Fluid

They say being on drugs makes you creative but this is beyond creative.  This is devotion to the craft.  It is a deep inside look to the psyche of a man affected by drugs. Bryan Saunders has put it upon himself to be the guinea pig of a very thoughtful experiment that could help society have a better understanding of drugs.  This may be dangerous but you can't stop devotion.  This is ongoing experiment and may never end since there are endless supplies of drugs and there are always new drugs created.

Take a look at the rest of his work here.