Today we’d like to introduce you to Mykee Morettini.
Hi Mykee, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a creative person in general, have always been. Since I was a kid, I was acting, drawing, creating stories. As soon as I saw my Dad with a video camera, I was fascinated with it, and as an avid movie lover I quickly put two and two together figuring out that I could maybe make my own movies when I got older. It just became something I did. I’m neurodivergent and felt very different throughout my life, very much an alien. In my isolated youth, I turned to the arts as a way to sort of immerse myself into something that felt bigger than my little self, and gave me a platform to create worlds, basically. It gave me something to escape to. I grew up and just really expanded on that in all directions. I have a compulsion to want to express myself any way I can. There’s no real agenda behind it – it’s just the way I am. I like to speak, talk, I wear my heart on my sleeve. An isolated and lonely young life has fueled my need to connect, express and articulate the complexities of my inner world. I paint, I make collages, I sing and write/record music, I act and make films handling every aspect including special effects and music. Anything I can create, if I have the means and the desire to, I will get myself involved. I can’t just watch someone else do something – I’ll want to figure out how to do it myself. It’s fun for me to engage and put my mark on things.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not at all. I have yet to reach an audience. It’s been hard personally as well as I’ve been very lonely and don’t even really know how to GET seen. But I’m here, I’m visible. My style is bold and I have a voice. I know who I am, and who I am is just not everybody’s “thing”, but I refuse to make myself palatable if it’s disingenuous. That’s cringe to me. I am, if anything, genuine and pretty authentic and that’s meant I’ve been all too naiive in terms of just spending TOO MUCH of myself and my energy on the wrong opportunities, the wrong people, and getting hurt or burnt out. I would really love to be able to have my art have it’s space to be seen, my music, my films be shown to people who may enjoy them. It’s hard in this current media landscape because now EVERYONE does EVERYTHING and as someone who just feels put-off by the cold, tech world and the overall decline of originality, I just feel disoriented when it comes to finding a way to do what I do, but have it connect. Have it stand out, or even be seen and find the right place to dwell. I’ve shown myself I can do the things – create, really stretch my limited resources to extreme lengths and produce stuff I’m proud of, and I know I’ll just get better. But right now, it’s less for me about being “the best” or accomplishing anything specific or winning anything, and really just amassing a network and finding those connections, platforms and ways to reach people and have a dialogue. I create, I express… but the fun is when you can share – the music or films or art have a life when perceived and interpreted by others. There’s a reciprocity that’s really beautiful. I want that, because at this point, it’s become ever LESS important to me to even try to beat the toxic fast pace of this late-stage capitalist charade, and MORE important to do what I want to do, have fun with it, and expand on these things. I want to do showings with my art. I want to make films and videos that can resonate with audiences, be shown in theaters or something. I want there to be just bigger scale versions of what I’ve done in the past, but with the addition of actually reaching people. It’s just very genuine for me to want to share things I enjoy – even when it’s not my own work, as with discovering a new band or catching a show I really like and wanting to share that excitement and joy with someone else. There’s this very deep need in me – definitely linked to my feelings of alienation and loneliness – that I want to create dialogues and build bridges and communicate in all these ways. I want to have experiences with others, and cultivate this weird warped world of art and have my “thing” where I can channel all of my chaos. Yes, I want to make a living from all of this, or some of it, but it was never initially (or even now) about that. I’m very anti-capitalist to a nearly irresponsible level. I think I want these dots connected so that I’m not only having fun and reaching people, but able to live comfortably and invest back into bigger and better things going forward.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an artist, filmmaker, musician/singer, actor (sort of, but hope to expand on that more soon)… I think I just stand out even when I don’t want to. I’m me. I don’t know what to say. I’ve been told since I was young that I have “a voice” to my stuff. It’s just me. For better or worse, I just create stuff that compels me, and I tend not to think too logically about WHAT it is or WHY. I think when you introduce too much logic you muddy up the creative process. As far as what I do within these different mediums – I kind of do everything, or I try to. I don’t have money or connections so I’ve had to pick up skills here and there to make these things happen. When making films, there’s so much that goes into that – I’m writing, casting, shooting while directing, and often I’ve been the only “non-actor” there, just me and a camera and whoever’s acting. I try my best to get the best production value I can get with the absolute bare-bones resources. I think that’s a big strength with me – I didn’t have the luxury of money or people who did what I did to lean on, so I learned how to improvise and be resourceful and juggle many things at once – including doing effects, composing the soundtracks, audio design and all that. People ask “what are you making this for?” and usually my answer was “I wanted to.” As for art, that’s just something I’ve always done – and I tend to like to turn my logical brain off somehow. I don’t go into painting thinking about what I’m about to paint. I just find it on the way – I let things come through. I guess that also goes in tandem with the concept of “improvising”. I’m a very eclectic, alien type of person. Kind of spacey, feminine energy. I’ve been told I’m sort of “trippy” or “mystical”. I have a distinct energy because I’ve had a distinct and isolated, introspective life thus far. So that maybe will come through in anything I create because it’s not usually created with intentions of appealing to anything beyond whatever intention I had with the creation itself – like, I’m not creating things to appeal to THIS demographic or THAT trend. I want to keep the integrity of whatever it is I’m expressing, because sometimes these ideas are insistent! I sometimes just HAVE to make a thing a certain way, and there’s no real rhyme or reason that I can articulate verbally. The idea just comes through boldly sometimes, and if it’s a film I’ll know what it looks like, sounds like… I’ll have visions of it before I even plan out a story or write a word. So again, there’s that intuitive sort of flowy nature. Just really trusting myself and whatever I feel really compelled to express, and learning to try to question or stifle that less. It’s hard, because this world always seems to demand answers, reasons, structures that often feel suffocating or stifling.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
I think I really came to know myself through my first camera, and just turning to creativity at school (rather than doing my schoolwork) when things got really hard. I remember in 2nd grade, even before I had my first camera, I was really excited planning out some hypothetical sci-fi alien movie. It gave me something big to invest myself in. It gave me excuses or ways to connect to the kids in class because I’d cast everyone in the movie, coming up with characters and scenes. I’d be out at recess sitting by myself drawing and sometimes a kid would approach and say “what are you drawing?” and ask me to draw them, and I did a few times. It was a nice way to basically offer a little piece of myself, connect with someone in a very organic way, and I really liked when they were pleased with their portraits. I was a shy kid, and looking back I think with ADHD/Autism I knew I was a bit different, and I knew that people seemed to not really “get me” so I really celebrated those little opportunities to shine and share and really feel like I had my moments. Though a shy kid who felt really cast-out, I jumped at any opportunity to shine as long as I personally felt confident or enthusiastic about whatever it was. I loved, for instance, reading aloud my writing essays I put a lot of thought into – sharing narrative pieces in English class. It’s a double-edged sword though, because I’m sure we neurodivergent folk know that death-trap of setting ourselves up for disappointment or setting unrealistic standards for ourselves from that age – we teach people to equate our worth with how “good” our work is, and that will really hurt us later down the line. But at first, these were just really exciting seeds sprouting inside me, and I remember really perking up in those moments.
Pricing:
- I have rates offered only for video services at the moment on my website.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mykeemorettini.com
- Facebook: facebook.com/mordaciousfilms – facebook.com/mykeemorettiniart
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/mordaciousfilms
- Other: https://moonbearstartiger.bandcamp.com
