Heading into 2022 I made a decision to do more with my “career” as a performance artist/poet/writer/creator. I never really have a main title that I like to be identified as, but I would pick performance artist if I had to.
Though I will always be Assasin, I made a conscious decision the year prior to change my stage name to “Joseph Reuben Fuller” (which isn’t really a stage name because Reuben and Fuller are on my birth certificate). I wanted to be able to perform in spaces that Assasin won’t be able to.
Getting back into the performing ring was a real joy for me – both in the feature and the open mic department. I enjoyed the whole experience of getting my feet back in the game, getting praise from the elder poets/fans that remember me, the younger/up and coming poets that were new to how I get busy, and just the overall impact that poetry/spoken word has on me. There will be a time where I take the quotation marks off of the word career, and I feel that time will come as early as 2024.
I put my foot on the gas a little bit this year, and I was really able to see what I could accomplish by putting a bit of effort into the business side of my craft – Business side as in, getting paid on a consistent basis to perform, getting paid to write for others, uploading/recording content, and just overall being active instead of my usual performance/disappear for 2 months routine.
I would like to create a bunch of new pieces this year – this is apart from my projects- pieces in general that I will be placing into my arsenal. I will admit I was never a fan of hearing a poet do the same poem from 5-6-7 years ago, but I believe that stemmed from not hearing anything else from the poet(s) and wanting to see what else they had in the tool box. If the poem works and it’s solid, spit it today, spit it tomorrow, spit it 30 years from now.
I’ve been fortunate to have poems from 15 years ago still work and still be requested. There are poems that I know are decent that will never see the light of day on stage again, because I’m no longer in that mindset and don’t feel I can deliver it the way it needs to be delivered. The poems that still work have given me the ability to work on new material because I’ve built multiple feature sets.
I’m going to be releasing projects this year (I know) – I’ll make sure to not announce release dates until the project is actually complete lol--- I have projects that are already complete and projects that I have mapped out – but yeah, I definitely won’t be going this entire year without releasing multiple items.
Something simple as posting on this website on a consistent basis must be done… and it will be done
2023 I’m going to be building on what I did in 2022 – I know how hard I went and what came from it, so I know I have to go harder in order to transition to the next level
Stay tuned.