Ready for Take Off

Hi my friends. Just checking in here to give an update. I've got one song more or less in the can and am learning as fast as I can on my new studio. I'm also trying to track down a video camera so I can get some good "before" footage. As I believe fully before anyone else even gives a hoot-n-anny, and what people seem to be most interested in is a) how to believe in a world that doesn't appear to be worthy and b) how to become fully realized, do exactly what you want, and get paid; I figure the "before" footage is invaluable.

I won't have to go back and re-create 8 Mile like Eminem or make a fictional Hustle & Flow. I'll just show the before documentary. As any artist worth his or her salt, I believe, would tell you, you find the feeling first, then get recognized for it. The, adulation, money, etc, is just a byproduct if you're doing it right. For me, what's important to me is that I know how to take my neice and nephew and their friend to the beach, go swimming even though it takes a bit of a walk, play like there's no tomorrow (or yesterday), get ridden like (alternately) a dolphin and a surfboard, and then BBQ, organize a wheelbarrow race and feel every minute. Be there and content while my nephew describes in detail his perfect weekend. And listen to a 9 year-old talk about how she feels about her dog that just died even though she only played with another dog because the one that died was boring. That's the good stuff.

So today, when I get off the phone with frightened book agent #432, who describes his NYC agancy as "just trying to pay the rent", I feel as much placated as anything. I swear to god, these fools will pay. It really has nothing to do with me, they are already paying--with their life and involvement of their love; but they, as an entity, will pay handsomly to even distribute my book. $40, White Gold logo only. Whatever--they're forgiven already. No use me caring about it. It's just a missed opportunity to create the world we all want but are, for whatever reason, deathly afraid of. Don't ever finish a sentence with a preposition.

I had a few thoughts about money over the weekend. People rarely realize that the money they give out goes to build more of what they give it to. If I make a few million off T-LA, after I get my house (across the street--$1.2 mil) and maybe a new car, I'm going to put it all back in--to making more lovely love. You buy the book--now almost 5 year-old produce--and you get lovely, new, fresh up to the minute music, clothes that miraculously repel both fashion and dirt, magazines that make Oprah's O look stodgy and stalwart. Imagine a mag with back to back articles about Krishnamurti's real story (a lot darker than most would have you believe), Poems from Ikkyu, the genius 15th Century Zen monk who would periodically leave the monestary and go down and whoop it up with the fishermen. When he was 70 or so he took up with a young blind woman. His descriptions of their love--including blow jobs--are among the best stuff I've read.

Then we'd do something on Mase's convestion from rapper to priest and back. Kind of a reverse Hustle & Flow. It would read with the devotion and care of Grand Royal back in the days--although it would be more honest, less pimp-riffic, and charge your ass what it was worth plus some--so it could not only survive but flourish. My brothers and sisters we can do this now or we can sit around and contemplate our bullshit and do it in 20 years. The only difference is a whole bunch of wasted time, lives lost to depression and hopelessness and fear. I look at the kids who are coming up on punk rock today and it looks grim. There's little of the playfulness and "us"-ness that it originally had. I don't say this as an aging whistful old man (it didn't do that good a job at feeding me back then) but as someone who thinks it's obvious that a teenager's pouty rebellion can be improved upon as a culture or way to live. All we've got to do is find someone with the guts to pay for it. The weak thing about punk is that it believes so wholeheartedly in the empowerment of victims that very few people comme out of it wanting to be in charge, wanting to ba an adult, or a manager, or a leader. "Kill your heros" (as well as "Hate your friends", "Confusion is Sex" and a whole lot of other self-pityisms). It has a lot of strengths, but it doesn't really believe in being happy. It believes in playing and having fun, which is beautiful, but being happy and enjoying yourself can't really be avoided if we're talking about how to live and why.

Speaking of paying. I've sold out of The Love Artist books at the local bookstore Quimby's. Go baby, go! Moving units at $40 a pop. Love to the love!