A couple of days ago I posted ten of my "Texas Tales from a Lone Star" adventures. These were from my files from about a decade ago. Back then I was just taking photos, not video yet. I've been going through my files with the idea of creating more episodes to submit to Austin Public television. I submitted 17 episodes, 30 minutes each, early in this decade. Then I figured out their rules and shifting responsibility entirely to my shoulders through their policies I had to sign in order to use their studios, cameras, computers, and Final Cut Pro X editing software was a bum deal. I figured out my iPhone could take a high enough quality of videos and photos that I didn't really need to use all their rules and regulations to gain access to their cameras. My ideas didn't really require their studios. They mostly had people with shows who were broadcasting live, there in the studio, with minimal props, weekly.
I had my own ideas. I wanted to go visit places and create "windows" of what something was like. Truth. I film like this, naturally. I capture going there, exploring, and leaving. A complete "adventure." I also bought my own Apple computer and Final Cut Pro X film editing software early on. That made it much easier because I had to bear the responsibility for taking care of their Apple computer they let me take home for 48 hours. That was great but not enough time and too much responsibility for a very expensive tool. So I bought my own. Now I had both camera and editing. The software was really difficult to learn and that slowed me down a lot. Also, I have my PC connected to my Apple and Apple was designed, on purpose, to NOT be compatible with PCs. That slowed me down.
I love adventures and have enjoyed taking photos and videos and I've been doing it since 2014, all the time. I now have 260 short-stories on my website, in addition to my original books and music albums. I'm independent. I made that decision decades ago, around 1986. All my Chapelgate friends who were Singer-Songwriters in Contemporary Christian music were "trying to get signed." I thought about it and purposefully made the decision not to. I remember thinking about it and deciding, "I have enough money (my genius husband, Robin was still alive and we lived at Chapelgate) and I have my own recording studio (Robin had designed and built one of the earliest home recording studios in existence in the 1980's for me in my library in my Lodge log mansion on our cliff overlooking our Gristmill.) Our studio alone was around $50,000. at that time and our home, Chapelgate, was easily a million. I thought, "I'll just do it myself. That way I can write whatever God tells me to write."
I own ALL my work, have created ALL my work, myself since 1986 and from birth. By the time I was 18 I had a notebook with 1000 of my poems and songs in it. I used it to show my "talent" at a Tennessee Imperial Miss Beauty and Talent contest in High School. I won the talent (and 3rd in Beauty) and went to the Nationals where I won 3rd in Talent (and 5th in Beauty.) I was the MCHS Class Poet my Senior year in High School (and Class President in 10th grade). I had given myself the name, "Angel," as my pen-name, when I was 12 years old. I intended to write about God. Angel means "messenger of God's Word." I had found it in a book my aunt gave me, the year I was baptized. I planned to "keep the Great Commission" wherein Jesus instructed us to "go to all the world" - by writing. That was always my plan.
That is not how the industry is set up. It is not set up for you to be Independent. It is set up to locate people who are talented enough to create and then steal all their work in exchange for vanity and a few years of exposure. Then the industry even changed that model to make all creators follow a template that made it easy to steal their work, and replace the talent easily. That's why we have genres. They then used that system as a tool that allowed them to decide all the important ideas we have, most of which are wrong, and lead our thinking. I'm not like that. God leads me. He has my entire life. God doesn't follow their template.
So I wound up with all my writing and music over the course of my entire life. I own it. I never signed a single right away. I own every word, every note. God saw me and decided to use me to write his own story, which is how he and I worked together to figure out what the Bible is actually saying and tell you guys. I didn't know this is what God was doing with me for a long, long time. I just wrote, constantly, about my life's adventure. God wove it together into a masterpiece. Yes, a masterpiece. "The Chapelgate Adventure Series," is a masterpiece. It is documentation of being led by God and what he showed me. I had asked that question, sincerely, if there was something about Christianity that I didn't understand would he please teach me? That's my story, that's my body of work.
So now I find myself with a decade's worth of unpublished work in the form of my "Texas Tales from a Lone Star," stories, videos, photos, and adventures. There are dozens and dozens, all tucked neatly into files on two computers. My idea was to take the unpublished files and turn them into episodes and submit them to Austin Public television. I've been working on that.
Yesterday, when I posted ten albums of my different adventures ranging from visiting "Broken Spoke" to "Abilene Christian University," I googled how to take just photos and turn them into interesting videos. Pretty much, you need MUSIC to do that. So I started looking for how you get the music you need for the soundtrack. Boy oh Boy oh Boy do they have THAT area tied up with their manipulations, traps, and devices. In order to get music for just one 30 minute episode that is broadcast over television the cheapest license I could find, yes that's how it works, was $200. That let me use one instrumental song in one project one time in the US broadcast on television. I have hundreds.
What really made me mad was how they have complete control not only of the talent and money-making machine but they have weaponized it. They have an entire system in place to HOPE someone messes up and breaks one of their rules, steps out of line, and then they have an entire legal system in place to make money when they do. It is designed to attack and profit. When I realized that I deleted not only the ten new photo albums I'd just created on my Facebook page, I went back and redesigned my entire website and took the "Texas Tales from a Lone Star" video section off completely. (I just kept my "Texas Tales" short-stories.)
That is called a sacrifice of your cattle. That is called a free-will offering to God. That is what all the sacrifice laws are about in Leviticus. God teaches his priests, those who obey his laws, concepts that allow them to lead the rest of humanity. Heaven is over Earth. God takes me through situations so that I will experience them and then write about them. Yesterday, I simply did what I normally do, saw a problem, and solved it. I solved it with Leviticus.
That then led me back to a crossroads. Do I find another way to work within their system and keep my decade of work or do I toss it? I tossed it for now. I still have all my work, I simply changed direction at a crossroads. This happens a lot. God leads, I follow. That's how it works. I have 20 years worth of my previous writings, music, poems, etc. "The Chapelgate Adventure Series." So I could post that work for years. God put my attention back onto that work, for now.
Who knows what God will do in the future? It's sort of like how the Indians used to ride bareback on a horse that knew them so well they were one unit. The horse responded to the Indian's thoughts, subtle body movements, desires. God and I work like that. He lets me think and live but I do so within his framework, we are one unit, with him in charge, but with him loving to work with me because it is fun to create. That's the privilege of priests who understand Leviticus. I do.
So that's where I am right now, today. That's where all my albums went, look in my photos section, almost everything is now gone. I left my trip to Jamaica and Grand Cayman because it tells a story itself, looking out my beautiful room balcony from Miami back to Miami. There's nothing that can be outside of the limits of their system. I'm allowed to film my life at least to that extent, simply looking out my window. So I left my Cruise photos for now. They make me feel good.
As for what is next? I don't know. Maybe I'll just relax and give the horse that decision. We'll see. xo Angel
Copyright 2024 Angel Isaacs All Rights Reserved
Written May 16, 2024 at 9:06 am
