ALL*MYTEE

Got my first two songs in the can. Working on getting Mr Jonze on the phones.

I saw a great article in the Tribune this morning. Talking about movie theaters and DVD releases. The point it brought up was: can you imagine hearing a song on the radio and going to the record (I know I'm old fashioned) store and having them say you can buy it in 4 months. Wouldn't work. In fact I'd refuse to buy it on principle. But then I don't buy m/any DVDs either.

What the article discovered, but didn't necessarily come straight out and say, was that this manipulation, to make more money, is ridiculous and backward. I'd add that it props up bogus Hollywood films and messes up a whole diveristy of cultural and creative produce, but that's besides the point. It's that old Woody Allen thing: we all want to join the club that wouldn't have us. So we respond positively to manipulation and contempt instead of negatively. And we've built a whole culture on it. Witness the song: "Don't you wish you girlfriend was hot like me?" If you were really beautiful (and she is physically), and felt beautiful, why the hell would would you spend one second of your time a) thinking about someone else's girlfriend, or b) trying to impress some man who's got one. It's a strange arrogance/insecurity thing that I think we're pretty much nailed as a country. In my world, people who feel beautiful just do what they want. Make beautiful things and hang out and be beautiful in myriad ways.

Which brings up the point that she probably wrote the song to make money. That's another wierd thing about us. We have artists who are sold out to a ridiculous degree. It's like a huge high school thing.

If you're smart, and I know you are, you're saying "Eben, you're doing the same thing right now." And you'd be right. I must be tired (or procastinating).

Another note: this morning I saw a kid pull up and say hi to another kid he went to school with. The first word out of the pulled up to kid's mouth was "Bitch". It was in an almost friendly way, the same way some folks call each other N**ga, but at the same time, it had a cold, we may never really know each other feel.

Some people may respond to the things they see like this as "Those kids today", but I see it as a natural response to where the economy seems to be going. Even dark circles under the eyes of four year-olds (I see them all the time) don't surprise me. Both the high schooler and the kid are being prepared to be productive members of our materially competitive economy. To be harder, faster, stronger. There's lots of bemoaning the loss of childhood these days but none of the adults (that I know) who say these things are doing shit to create a world where it is safe for children to be relaxed. Where relaxation, being inside your body, and having a sense of yourself is prized and valuable. Most of them just miss their own childhood so much that it makes them sad that others don't have what they percieve as one.

The answer, in my opinion, is to scrap the nostalgia and the crocodile tears and get down to the business of making what we want. Ain't none of us victims. We get the world we create. And we create a world that the rest of the world will inherit--because it's what will feed, house and clothe people (and let them be free--no small thing).

The left blames Bush, the right doesn't think a much better life is possible, and here it is 2005 and we're still operating like most of 20th Century physics never happened. I won't go into all that, but why don't we have any artists strong enough to make the real s**t and own and get the money off it? Why are all the most interesting artist aiming their love an knowledge at 16 year-olds? And making clothes for children. Bubble gum clothes, t-shirts? I saw an ad for a Tim Burton movie and it was about dead infantile cartoon characters. Doesn't this motherf*&ker want to grow up? Is he really living such a happy life off of coffee and pop culture that he wants to stay that way? Or is he just geting paid and laid and hasn't yet gotten sick and tired enough of being sick and tired?

And you! Are you still buying this crap? Is it because you don't see anything else possible, or because you actually still find value in this hypnotist show? Yes Radiohead is attractive, but don't you feel yet that it makes you sad every time you listen to it. Don't you think you deserve something both beautiful and inspired? Don't you think there's something to satiate that hunger you've always felt? Don't you see that there has to be? That it's promised?

That doesn't mean it'll be easy (although it will be), that doesn't mean you won't have to sacrifice or do things you think are scary (you will), but if you don't believe, it will be a lot longer in coming. Believe is being live. Be-Live. Buy this stuff you really want. Where you put your energy and love (especially with your attention and cash) is how you build the world. No big corporation is in charge. No one is foolding the people. It's just the people are buying lots of crap, then throwing it away and buying more. Eventually they find they can "afford" (though they've been rich all along) what they want--something they deem expensive--that will actually last. Can be recovered (yeah, I talk about couches a lot). Is worth repairing. Maintaining. Keeping up and clean. Not very cool in the now omnipresent underground of shabby chic pre-ripped jeans and distressed houses, I know, but that doesn't change it's relationship to the truth.

(A note: in my city, Chicago, they are now building houses with old, weathered bricks on the front and new ones on the side. In the old days, they would put the best brick out front and the cheaper on the side. How you feel about this fashion may be one of the most important questions of our liifetime. On another note: I just bought my first pair of weathered-look jeans. Banana Republic ones for $10 at the thrift store. Lord, please help my book make money so I can make some real jeans for the people.)

Now imagine how inauthentic our culture or feigned distress and drama is--especially those who insist they are. Like the punk rockers. I read about how Curt Cobain hated having to play the tortured artist every night in front of thousands of fans yesterday. He made his own world, got fabulously wealthy, got all the love he could stomach, and cemented the revolution and he hated his own life. He took his own life. Something to think about if you think you're punk. Or if you think punk was cool now that it's been dead long enough to feel safe.

I'm off to continue making a popular culture that's fun, loving, enjoyable, safe, takes massive risks, is radically vulnerable, replicable, profitable and will save the world. From itself.

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!