Back in the Saddle

Cool--cause I don't get upset / I kick a hole in the speaker / Pull the plug / Then I jet..

--Eric B. & Rakim

My brothers and sisters,
A long time it has been since I stepped up to the mic. A few of you will remember the halcyon days in Sea-Town. Shooting from the hip. Staring down the man.

Well, I feel like I don’t even know that person anymore—but rest assured that the same driver is still at the controls. I think it was the extraneous debris that got burned away upon re-entry.

I still have the same vision though. And it dogs me night and day. I see a world of global cottage industry. Of couture and thrift stores co-existing simultaneously—and valuably. I see an economy growing at full speed—expanding exponentially as the world’s most creative ideas co-mingle as their thinkers take a much needed nap.

I see business that goes deep instead of fast and far. I see consumers that demand essence—the positive vibrations that a whole bunch of musicians were talking about on a small island named Jamaica thirty years ago. And our top scientists are just getting back to today.

I see love and money. Money and love.

I see an emerging global class of artists unified around the creation of a modern ecstatic culture. I see people working fervently to expand the top of the pyramid. I see the pyramid inverting itself.

I see a new vulnerability. Kanye talking about “Jesus Walks”, Cam’ Ron insisting on pink. I see a new transparency—one that is grounded in both belief and questioning. A new humility—one that’s not soft. A new strength. A new way that accepts everything and does its damnest to create that in which it wants to live.

One that takes complete responsibility for both the moment and the future.

I see a new generation of leaders talking in new ways with new words.

And it’s not based on a dream—though that’s where it started. I read it in the management tomes of Peter Drucker. See it on the cover of Newsweek with ridiculous regularity. It’s being built down the street from my house.

It’s as if everyone believes but no one believes that anyone else believes.

And so we all end up staring at disbelief. Even as it evaporates from the globe.

Love what you love and ignore the rest. Ignore it as if your life depended upon it.

Love what you love.

Thanks for being patient with White G.


Love,

Eben