The Inspiration Revolution

I guess all I really have to say, a million times over and a million ways, is that that thing you think you'd really want to do, but maybe in an alternate universe, is the thing you're here to do. And exactly what you'd be best at. And maybe most valuable as.

When I worked with a youth group called TSB, we did an exercise where we wrote our dream occupation on a card and then tried to match the cards to the people.

I was already a "writer" or an "artist" or something relatively half way there. I had a solid back-up plan, etc. etc. I may have even been working on my book.

What did I write down? Inspired by the goofy atmosphere of teenagers I put down rap star.

ONLY because it was impossible. Only because I had failed at every instrument I tried as a youngster, my mom had told me I couldn't sing (I don't remember this but she said she did--I certainly didn't grow up thinking I could, but this was likely because it was true rather than any parental suggestion), my band had wiped out, I had given up on guitar and been called "the retarded cowboy" by the one person I can remember commenting on my playing/singing/songwriting. Oh wait, there was another guy I was trying to recruit for my band. He said he liked everything except for the singing (I sang and played guitar).

So I was headed off the write, or paint. Or something. Being a rap star was only safe because it was absolute in it's absurdity. I would be manageable. Top the top writers. Make some paintings. Something I could do without anyone watching. SOMETHING I COULD EDIT INTO SOME SEMBLANCE OF PROFESSIONALITY or Competance. Something I could hide behind and throw a personality out from. Offline.

But that wasn't what my soul wanted. At all. It didn't care about how well I could write or paint when I APPLIED myself. It didn't want to be applied at all. It wanted to play. And then play more. Until the tools of joy started to become second nature.

I have always equated making money with unhappiness. I thought that's just the way it was. You do what you don't want to and people pay you so they don't have to do it. It took a lot of schemulating to figure out that it was the thing I wated to do most that would make me the most valuable.

But! Or I could even say behind.

I had to do it the WAY I wanted too. And that meant challenging everything. Everthing.

Strip down. Start naked and alone. Bring not one assumption along. Not electric guitars from punk nor the beautiful stark beats from hip-hop. Nor the recognizeable vocalizing from anywhere.

But what an idea--that you are most valuable doing what you most love to do. And it may make you a million and it may not. Interestingly, I think that this next 40 years will find former punk kids making money way beyond the hippy to boomer generation ever did.

They created a whole new economy. The lifestyle economy. Punk, hip-hop, indie, hipsterism, good coffee,artisan bread, design--these all came from the beats and hippies.

But the lifestyle economy is short. And soft. It's not worth it. You have to work 8 hours a day (10) to afford it.

Enter the life economy. Not what you consume but how you feel about what you're doing. And if you, 40 years down the line, are amazed at what people will pay for the lifestyle economy--Whole Foods, $5 coffees, $200 jeans, $600 shoes, $3000 couches--to make it LOOK like they're living it up, wait until we have five years traction on the products that impart the FEEL of living.

Right now the assumption is that life sucks ao you might as well be properly accessorized. With skull hoodies, the right Absinthe, an eco car, the iPod full of styled affirmation of that fact. The highest expressions of our material culture, our designer products offer no feelings other than those of bohemia. A dark, at least we know what's going on, stance.

But this only works on the insecure. On those who think there's something somewhere that they're missing. On kids. On those who don't take full responsibility for their own life--financially, emotionally, creatively, physically, etc.

But I digress. I didn't write cultural critic on the card.

It's funny, because when I wrote that I would have told you in a second that life was absurd. That it had little or no meaning. Because I thought I had done the math and it was impossible.

BUT--I wouldn't have plunged headlong into that which most frightened me. That I most wanted! I wouldn't have said--Oh, it's absurd? Then I'll do exactly what I want and do whatever it takes to do it exactly how I want to do it.

In short I didn't have balls. I didn't have any guts. I was content to pay someone else to create my world and sit back and complain about it. That was my right--to criticize it.

And so I only loved things that were critical--because they were right.

The hardest thing in the world is to not criticize the critical. To accept the unaccepting. To love the intolerant. Even long enough to ignore it long enough to not get bogged down by it.

To be a part of the love/life fest that's coming, in my sometimes humble opinion, you'll likely have to drop out twice. Once from the mainstream and once from the counter-culture. The first is from society's norms and the second is from society's self-styled abnormal. Those who still believe in the mainstream's norms but believe them unjust.

But if you do, I'd like to posit that you just might be free. In a freefall perhaps, but only as long as it takes to develop the faith and strength you need to accomplish what you want to do.

What if every so-called failure was a shortcut to what you really wanted. Either by teaching you to be tougher, or smarter, or happier, or less concerned, or freeer, or more responsible? But what if you had to get up and start like nothing bad had ever happened every morning? Not take even the worst slights personally? What if you had to hold tight to the present and enjoying yourself even while you made and carried out the biggest plans? What if you had to want to be resolutely yourself only as your surroundings got more and more plush, beautiful and comfortable? And the temptations more and more loaded? The lines more and more blurry? The demons more and more convincing?

Would you react by getting more and more vulnerable? Responsibly of course, but more soul nonetheless. More love in more situations and harder circumstances.

And I'm closer to being a rap star than I ever dreamed in this life or last. It still has the same aura of improbability as before, but I'm starting to see that it couldn't be any other way. And if it was--if I looked, smelled, walked, or talked like one then I wouldn't have anything to add.

That it has to be impossible. To even make a good story. IT HAS TO BE. It has to be impossible to even have a chance. To even be anything new. To even have a chance at escaping the reach of the life we're trying to escape.

A whole lot of me died on my way here. But I don't miss any of him. I kept the absolute best parts I could. I'm sure a few good parts got singed off or whatever, and I'm in progress still. But it had to be entirely new for me to love it. Because I didn't love where I was or the way I was living.

From impossible to I'm possible. That's worth the price of admission right there. I'm not going to say some bullshit like I don't even care if it happens because I do, and I'm busily spending my life causing it to, but that feeing is worth the price of admission.

Hmmmm.

BTW, the business model on this puppy is sick. Basically operating trucks to collect and distribute the cash fast enough. And we'll be heavily leveraged getting everything going for a good 5-10 years but after that it's pretty much on golden pond. Take what Worhol did in the seventies and combine Martha/Oprah money with P Diddy/Simmons hustle and Wu-Tang/Prada creativity. Douse liberally with Borachelli quality and environsibility (yo, trademark that word! I need a lawyer). And I figure 20 billion in 20 years. Minimum.

And that's not even the reason to do it. Just what might get your attention (or make you leave). The reason to do it, to get up three times a week and go to the gym so we're strong enough to conduct the negotiations, spend a couple hours in the studio and still make crazed, off the hook love to our wives most nights, and hang out with our kids mornings, evenings and weekends, the real reason to do it is because it'll be fun.

It'll be so fun maybe I won't even want to do half of it. Though how hard could licensing deals be? It's not like I'm going to manufacturing anything. Or distributing it. A team or two of lawyers to crack (lovingly) the whip. A cadre of elite business hustlers to pre-negotiate and keep in motion. No advertising. No marketing. I'm gonna teach a few folks about viral. You don't need anything anymore but ideas. And love. Let the inspiration revolution begin.