Let's Make It Rich, Spike!

I've been in the lab, with a pen and a pad. If I can't make a hit with the ALL*MIGHTY, I might not have one in me. But so far so good. This home recording stuff sounds killer. Just make sure you get the good stuff. Who knows I might have a podcast in me as well. I think I need a studio intern. The most important thing seems to be decisions about the feel. What kind of presence I want to bring/deliver. In youth culture this is called attitude, but in whatever it is that I'm making that doesn't really apply. It is an attitude but not in the classic Bad Brains' sense.

I had the inkling on my way home from the gym yesterday to do the western culture breakdown as short as I could. Something along the lines of: we crawled out of a tidepool, lived 14 years and got sick all the time. It was hard to feed ourselves and even harder to find the peace and contentment that we knew we could have. We thought nature/god was remote, stingy and vengeful. We started acting on that premise.

With limited resources we became enamoured with competition as a way to best value and allocate them. This worked for us and we took it world-wide. We no longer even think of competition as a thing, or scarcity as something that could be objectively true or false (or have anything to do with how rich and plentiful we've become)--so deep in our selves they are.

But eventualy, an overabundance of any element in a given ecosystem lessens it's value. Even water and oxygen can become toxic if they're over represented. So have our notions about scarcity and competition.

As we are actually creative beings, made in the image of the universe (which is a creative place), we create in accordance with our beliefs. In a sense, our beliefs are our most powerful tools--and the work we do always bears their indellible mark. The more we focus on competition and scarcity--or respond to our fear of them--the more we create the need for them. It's not that a perfect world wouldn't have them--far from it--it just wouldn't value them above their true worth and value to us as material, spiritual and emotional beings.

Right now we're in the process of driving the whole world crazy because having enough for one lifetime in the bank isn't enough for us to go do what the fukc we want. Because we are afraid of starting to live the "better life for our children" that our people have worked for for ever. So we pass it along again--redundantly and ridiculously--and spoil our kids and pets. And in the process, we make the adult world--our lives--vapid and meaningless, we enshrine anything a child wants or does does as beyond reproach, belittle anything we want or do as shallow or inappropriate. We even call our joy our "inner child"--held captive by the outer adult?

Unfortunately, whatever we call it, we're making love itself--that which exists at our core, beyond all other premises (including competition and scarcity), that which the entire universe rests upon--respond to our beliefs. That it be scarce and that we have to work to be worth it, or earn it. Or that it's available for only a few. This is as true with our time and feelings as it is with ozone, fresh water, and normal weather. We are insisting our view of the world past it's logical use. (And, it's interesting to note, past what even we want! No one wants to work 80 hours, watch tv instead of enjoy intimacy, cut down beautiful forests, etc., yet we all do--acting in someone or something else's name.)

These western beliefs are rooted in the mind. We've chosen half the world and it's action, rational thought, and doubt. The way to combat/relax them is with faith, which it just so happens, the east has in toxic quantities (if you've ever wondered why westerners love India when there's not even a place to use the bathroom, let alone treat women as people or feed everyone, this is why--they lock in on it's ridiculous, anarchic, deep and beautiful, coming off the rails, backward-ass faith).

Now, the good part, how do we reconcile this? How do we merge with the eastern goods? We do what we've always wanted to do. We go to India. We study that which we love--hip-hop in my case--and ruthlessly apply it's lessons to our own life! We get funky. We get white until we can say it loud, I'm white and I'm proud! (My friend Claire, in the early days of White Gold, once wrote White Love on a piece of paper and gave it to me--even though I was already fighting for White Gold, it scared the shit out of me. But I was happy buying Black Love incense a the corner store (as a joke), and happily owned Barry White's album White Gold (with the Love Unlimited Orchestra?).

Periodically, when I'm at the gym, usually on the damn elliptical machine, my iPod gives me James Brown's "Givin' Up Food for Funk!" My point here is, that if black people in the 60s, under Jim Crow, under the threat of bodily harm, actual bodily harm, spiritual dissconnection, mental duress, and systematic denial of basic human rights were giving up food for funk and living to tell about it, have us pay for the story, and enjoying it themselves, why the hell won't we white folks give up anything for anything? Beauty? Love? Killer sex?

I was e-mailing my old friend Peter Berry the other day (a much better guitarist than I--our first band together was The Poor Boys--so hungry were we doctor-and-lawyer's sons for what we saw as authenticity)--anyway, I was e-mailing him and thought about the Janis Joplin lyric about freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. We had a lot to lose. We had a college education lto lose, beautiful, large houses on nice streets; beautiful, well-educated and kind women.

Anyway, back to what we do. We take what we have--all of it--and head straight toward what we want. We cash a few checks for living like we've done for survival this whole time. We have (much, much) better sex--and give it the time it deserves. We reconnect with our guts. We practice doing what we want to do first--when we wake up Monday morning--and doing what we have to do last (or later anyway). And we build a discipline that supports that. We re-arrange our priorities. We learn how to discern what it is we actually want. Because most of us have no idea. We feel how to feel.

We step out on faith. Again and again. We're not going to be right, cute, or perfect the fitst time. Maybe not even the fifty. In fact it might even be horrific. Read The Love Artist and it's as much like looking into a blast furnace filled with the most god-awful muck, brutality and tar as it is meadows and moonbeams (sorry new age smilers). But if we let the truth be the truth long enough it won't fuc&*@# matter. And it gets radically more beautiful. And beautiful feeling. And every person who stares the shit down is a historic line that won't have to. (If you really can't go on for yourself, get real for your kids. Otherwise it's whoever out-punks Napalm Death for them. And that takes years.)

We're alive. It doesn't look like a screenplay. We don't know the ending. That idea about wearing purple suits everyday might actually come into play. And you might be scared when you start. You might even catch a little grief.

I've been doing this so long I'm basically bushed. But it's a much better bushed than the type I had when I was running a successful graphic design firm. It's a bushed I can live with. It's a temporary bushed that's building what I know is true not a depleted from fluffing that which I know to be bullshit.

I have no idea if anyone who thought I was a writer when I wrote my book and a painter when I was painting now thinks anything about me at all. Now that I've converted my studio to music. I have no idea. I don't even know myself. I haven't sold shit if that's going to be the marker. I never got a show with my paintings. My last band practiced for a year and a half and did one show before falling apart. My book came out in 2000 and I thought it would be all I could do to protect myself while it took off. (ROFLCBICCS--Rolling on the floor laughing, convulsing, burried in credit card statements). I couldn't even get the lame "alternative" paper--who's writer said he liked it--to review it--so little irony it had (I thought they'd like the bile and sense of entitlement, if nothing else). I've sent out query letters (e-mail and regular mail) to probably 150 agents. Sent books and chapters here and there. Nada. Nothing. No love. No fucky-fucky. (There was even another book called The Love-Artist that came out during that time).

But you know what? I don't give a fuck. I know it's either me that's crazy or "them", but I've tried caring about what "they" care about (they don't really care about it, they just do it and will try to kill you mentally, emotionally or physically if you don't--just like you do to yourself).

Plus, it doesn't work. My dad already tried it. Had the family, had the house and car, took the photos on the side after putting in his 8 hours. Brilliant photos. It's just not enough these days. We've got to connect the wires. Our lives are going to take the whole thing. We've got to turn it all the way around and the quicker the better (although part of turning it around is reallizing we can slow down--the trick is to take as few half-steps as possible, believe the whole dream).

If I have to go out like the guy in the obits today--the inventor of the TV Dinner--then you can sign me up to be first in line for the unloved, alone and unrecognized line. I just don't give a fuck (I also know how far we've come since the 50s--in 40 years it'll be the guy from Whole Foods--that's who I have to take more soul chances than). If god tells me to go pretend I do to put food in my mouth--or even a roof over my head--I will. But he's gonna hear about it. Plus, he has taken such remarkable care of my quasi-deserving ass for so many that I now actually trust him. If I have to do more design or house-painting or whatever, it'll probably be to focus my relaxed and sometimes wandering ass. I may be somewhat borderline, but at least I've got Mackie 824s and a Motif es 8. A good tube mic will do wonders for any temporary artistic feelings of marginalization. So will good food, exercise, flossing, shaving and clean sheets. I use it all. (I actually had a dream I would do well to note: in it it was clear that I enjoyed what I was doing right now and was later a bit jealous at how much free time I had and how creative a period it was. There's something about wanteing to get laid--wanting to share the magic that we have--that can mightily disrupt what we're up to. I pretend that we can do it all--and I heartily believe that we can do much more of what we want than most of us currently do--but the truth is that we make choices and pay with our life every moment. You may find inspiration in Beyonce's arms but you ain't gonna write your next hit there. Witness Jay-Z turning to the business of music.

So what? I don't know. I've almost got my first song down. I still need a Numark CDX to drop some scratches in. I've already negotiated a rock-bottom price at Guitar Center. (I also have a form that can withstand a woman's love and get stronger in proximity to it--and children. When I was writing with less vulnerability--more counter-culture--that love threatened my access to the "grist"--the truth, I though--of life. Now that I've let that shit--literally--go, I don't need drama or unhappy "realness" to flow--though if you bring it I'm happy to dispense.)

I've still got one book out--being read by a friend's agent. I called him today and he said he'd put it in his bag. It should make great NYC subway fare. The real shit baby! White author--half-naked on cover while alive! We thought only the dead white guys made it on the cover--maybe their profile. Bring it, bring it, bring it.

And then there's Spike.

Mr. Jonze. Come on baby! Me and you rich--we can't front this blue-collar punk shit. It was fun while it lasted but let's drop the truth. We money. Let's make money shit. Let's tell the real story. We weren't starving artists. We just felt that way. We chose to be dirty and sad. Doesn't mean the pillow wasn't cush. And the ass wasn't killer. Shit, if Biggie can make a career on two-bit hos (admittedly, "who drive Volvos and Rodeos"), then we could go intergallactic and back with stories of the women who were kind enough to share with us.

We also took crazy and fucked up chances to do it. We didn't give up a life in a factory or managing a mall shoe store to drum in Blink-187. We didn't give up $500,000 in drug proceeds and the likelihood of getting shot to party with strippers and pull our crew out of poverty. We gave up the good life. We gave up stock options, front yards and Saturday afternoons at the soccer field.

But the rewards of our birthright aside. Where's our rich culture? Where are the happy rich people? In the richest country in the history of the world? Where are the proudly Manhattan artists? Where are the premium paintings, recordings, magazines, movies, books? Where's the shit that talks about love and god in the same breath as that azz? Where's the dinner party with some real conversation? Can't we do better than Puffy at Tommy Hilfiggers in the Hamptons? How could we not?

Anyway, that's where I'm from, though no trust fund (I don't think I would have gotten anything done had I not been forced at least somewhat to produce). God made it as easy as he could on me--that's for sure. And I was a knucklehead a lot of the time. I didn't want to do shit. And I'm gonna be as honest about it as Eminem was about 8 Mile. As Jay-Z is about the Marcy Projects. Polo Ralph Lauren ain't got nothing on land grants from the king, married to George Washington. Virginia estates that extended "all the way west". Mo-fos who invented tobbaco brokering. And risked it all on logging operations on land they'd never seen--and some would say stole. And then lost it all. A couple times.

So, what's it like to be the 41st member of your family to go to Hamilton College? What's it like to have ancestors that've owned slaves and best friends that are black? What's it like to do ecstacy with a bed full of ridiculously beautiful downtown art chicks? What's it like to ignore the band and instead drink their beer backstage? What's it like to watch your friends become millionaires and rock stars? What's it like to give up law school to bike messenger? Houses that have names? What's it like to believe that white men are what's wrong with the world. And then change your mind? What the fuck do you believe then? To have ancestors barely make it on the Mayflower and try to make good on the promise of their sacrifices?

All I can say (until we've got the movie ready) is read the fucking book, yo!