I'm Coming

How cool would it be to have a house in the middle of downtown?

I was just thinking about what I'm going to buy after I break out and I remembered that Barak Obama--the unifier of black and white, right and left--just got a $1.9 Mil mansion on the S. Side. Which means that I, the unifier of art and commerce--should have $40-60 mil or so for new digs. But I don't want anything too big. That'd just be wierd and cavernous.

Then I was thinking, what if I put $40 mil into real estate and built a $5 mil house? Across the street from the watertower downtown. Right on The Magnificent Mile (imagine 5th Avenue in NY).

Yeah, I'd have to get triple paned windows, and really good bottom-up curtains, but what a joy to bring some damn sense back to our insanity! What a joy to re-integrate living with our commerce. How fun to have the best restaurants walking distance. And Saks be your five and dime. The Polo flagship your mom and pop cornerstore (we'll have to see if we can get them to stock seltzer and fresh juices. There's even a Whole Foods already down there).

I can just see it--BBQing out front in my wife-lover t-shirt. Flipping the ribs and putting the corn on while semi-neurotic suburban matrons scuttle past late for lunch. If any of them, on my invitation, stopped for a bite, the whole history of western civ. could turn on got-damned dime. If they showed up the next week with some friends and a side dish, we'd be done.

I could sit out front with my guitar and play songs while the kids ran and yelled with their friends around the pool! "No running by the pool!"

My wife would be sunning on the roof. Or by the pool.

You'd need a lot of land. You'd need a private courtyard (with a killer garden to absorb and deflect the wierd juju coming off the hustlers and businessmen--and the disapproving glares of whatever women couldn't handle seeing our youngest wearing nothing but diapers when it's 90 out). You'd need grass and trees.

But if you had a whole block or two. Living quarters, a studio, a garden, a wrap-around front porch, a couple guest houses, business offices and a separate painting studio with skylights.

Or a couple blocks even.

You could chill downtown out in spite of itself. Make it more beautiful and loving despite the insanity it took to build it. Convert it back to sacred ground.

Without messing up what it does best--create value.

You'd force people back to sanity. Force them to be real.

And the real estate values would skyrocket. Fresh flowers erupting from every windowbox.

Every kid in America would dream of writing the next Love Artist. Painting the next Starry Night. Getting better at love and using creativity to do so.

One episode of Cribs and it'd be on around the world.

I win.

And some of the commerce would be forced back into the neighborhoods. People would start decentralize their own lives. Their own minds and souls.

Work toward unification.

I'd force them into the very culture they've dreamed of for so long, where walks, dancing in public (without being drunk and with strangers), and enjoyable, loving home-made music were the norm.

And their kids would get to keep dancing, keep singing, keep making beats and playing piano and painting.

To make money!

Just by someone going first.

God bless the free market!!

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WhiteG.com

T-LA Press Release, Baby

Hi y'all. Guess I should post my press release. Get hyped, yo! If you cain't feel it yet, or should I sing: "if you don't know me by now...."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:
Eben Carlson
773 6xx-xxxx
eben@ebencarlson.com

WHITE GOLD INTRODUCES $120 PAPERBACK “THE LOVE ARTIST”

Chicago, IL, 1/17/06 — Publisher White Gold today released The Love Artist by author Eben Carlson. The book, a 258 page paperback, retails for $120. It is Mr. Carlson’s first book and White Gold’s first release.

“A book or a CD is no different than a pair of shoes or a steak,” says Carlson, also the company’s chief executive artist, “If you want to create a classic, it’s going to take significantly more time and effort. It not only takes more guts but also more faith, patience and love. If you don’t recoup that you go broke.”

And the book?

“The Love Artist is about what we want and how to get it. Most people have given up on having it all—on being happy, relaxed, in love, doing exactly what they want and making money. The Love Artist puts everything back on the table. It’s both a bet with god and a story about exactly what true love costs.”

Carlson dismisses any notions that the price will deter readers.

“I’m not interested in going first for a couple bucks a copy. And anyone unwilling to drop what it costs probably isn’t ready for the discussion anyway. I took this entire process very seriously and got the price from the same place I got everything else. The cover, the price, the words—they’re all the same thing.”

And what about other tell-all writers like James Frey and JT Leroy?

“It’s more fun than their books, more a story but also more true. I wasn’t addicted or messed up by my parents, I was a well-paid professional from a loving family who couldn’t feel it. I had a notion that things could be incredibly, beautifully, wonderfully better but I also had no idea how that might actually happen.”

Set five minutes in the future, The Love Artist is the story of an extra-ordinary man named Julius.

Finding himself institutionalized after an apparent motorcycle accident, Julius struggles to remember what he can of his old life while "translating" as much western culture as he can for use with the Intimists—an art movement comprised of fellow patients he's determined to launch from his sickbed.

He knows appearing deranged helps his work to be taken seriously—and ensures his continued care—but he finds his condition exhausting. He can't get anything done. He’s confused. And then there’s that nurse…

To pull off his happy ending—to get better, get the money and get the girl—Julius starts crunching the numbers. What will it take? He sees horror and absurdity all around him, but love seems to clear his head. Or is it clouding it? Is what he wants the way out or just his final test—the thing he must give up for love?

Finally, in a conclusion unlike anything in modern literature, Julius constructs an experiment that will prove everything once and for all. That will create a way to both live and love. If, that is, he can survive.

The Love Artist is a beautiful book. Both smart and enjoyable, it moves relentlessly forward and leaves nothing behind. An engaging tale and a blueprint for the future, it is truly the next American classic.


“Eben has a wonderfully playful tone and a very good "voice" overall—it doesn't sound forced or fake, he seems to write things down exactly as he sees them.” —Charles Mudede, The Stranger, Seattle

"My favorite living American writer!" —William Wimsatt, author of Bomb the Suburbs, New York

“[Carlson's] grasp of reality is thrilling!” —Nadia Gordon, author of the Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley
mystery series, San Francisco


The Love Artist is available at Amazon.com and White Gold's web site: http://www.whiteg.com. For more information and an excerpt of the book please visit http://www.whiteg.com. ###


[--Now, got damn, kilogram, how could you have that show up in your inbox and just let it go? These motherfuckers are dead! In the heart of the beast so long they don't even believe in sunshine. Oh well, it's got nothing to do with me. Ignore me as long as you want, I'm'n'a have fun regardless. I officially no longer give a fuck! But once you do crack--once someone else makes being alive okay because they're not afraid of what it costs--don't go blabbing to everyone that you were there first, cause as of right now, you won't even post a comment on this shit. As punk, as professional, as cool and as smart and handsome and genious as you are? C'mon! They get posts on blogs talking about HTML code and Sex in the CIty up the ying-yang.

Confidential to white people: buy this fucking book, yo! You can get it here or on Amazon.com. Shake that motherfucking ass! Back that thang up, baby! Do it!)]

Calmly and Gently

Lots of good stuff in the paper today about Bubble, the new Soderberg film being released on DVD and in the theater at the same time. Hollywood and theater owners are freaking. Out.

A great quote 'he should know better than to tell consumers they can have everything'--some theater owner talking about Mark Cuban. Directors lined up to wring their hands as well. Gives you a glimpse of what these punks really think about us. That we'd kill culture if we got what we wanted. What arrogant bullshit. We must be manipulated, for our own good. How can you make real culture when you don't even believe in other people? How can you believe in yourself if you don't believe in or even trust other people. You can't.

The liberal dilemma in a nutshell.

All this is about love. And what we want.

And we've been living with PC and "shoulds" for so long that we've let them into our core. Where they have infected our love, our romance, our fucking and sex, our intimacy, our work, our play, our kids, our selves, and our god. And just about everything else too.

A friend and I started to get real about what we really like in women. Stuff we've known for years but haven't ever told anyone. Living with strong women and absent or relaxed men, we grew up ashamed of our desire. Of what we lusted for, what we wanted, what we thought about alone at night when there was no one else around and the lights were turned off.

I for one, like black women. Not all of them, but the one's I'll change course on the street for. I can't tell you what he liked, he'll have to do that. I haven't dated a white woman in years and years. I rarely even see ones that I'm attracted to.

Why is it though, that we consider this, our deepest truth, so shameful? So necessary to hide? Love is a beautiful thing. Attraction as well. This is all that matters, right? All we're going to work every day to support. The women I see that I'm most likely to have a visceral response of "yes, how about right now" are black.

It's not that I don't see white women, or hispanic women, or asian women who I think are attractive. But the gut, whoa, feeling--over which I have little control--is most often light-skinnned, tall black women. If that's a sin, then I guess it's me and god in the ring.

I've actually been going back and forth on this for some time. My actual preference may be mixed black and white, you'll have to decide what that is. In different people's eyes it's different things. Though as Public Enemy so astutely pointed out: "Black man, black woman, black baby/White man, white woman, white baby/White man, black woman, black baby/Black man, white woman, black baby".

The woman who spurred these thoughts is off the chain, by the way. Just unbelievable. I'd be myself every day for the rest of my life to stay with her.

And I haven't even talked to her yet. And I may not. I may find someone better.

I'm not in charge, just being honest about the process.

If it is true, or even close. If from my years of toil and moaning I get cashed out like that. A woman I can both see and feel and talk to and be silent with. Then I will stand up and tell everyone it's worth it. Which I'd do anyway, because it is, becoming yourself that is. But if I can make it pay like that, if I can have both the happiness of the eastern tradition and the good life of the western, then it's on my brothers and sisters. And lord have mercy this sister was fine. Mmmm.

I've been thinking about that recently (since I saw her to keep it real). What is it going to be like once I get all the shit I've been talking about for years? Jaquim Phoenix (sp?) had his brakes go out last night. If I had a dream about that, I'd be certain I was going too fast for conditions. And needed to slow down. If it happened to me, I'd have already ignored the dreams. He walked away, but did hit another vehicle and flip his own.

And Jamie Foxx showed up at 3 Hollywood parties in his new silver Lamborghini. Stayed half an hour or so and then bounced. Pouring champagne into women's mouths. According to People anyway. He gave Eva Longoria a ride from one party to the other. The last bar was 1 block from the second one. He drove.

And of course, Oprah. She got on because she brought more gut, more heart to the game. Has success and comfort corroded her integrity, made everything go fuzzy? Led her to shy away from conflict when she needs to bring it?

None of these people's lives are my business, but I do look for insight everywhere I can. Having a couple million in the bank right now is what I want. Is what will happen when everything starts to pop. I can almost feel it. The atmosphere is getting charged like the start of a downpour.

WIll that make it easier to sleep at night? Get off the computer and go relax? Record my album? Make myself dinner? Find time to spend with my 94% certain future wife?

When it's time to buy a house? Furnish a house? Get some pants that fit and chuck the thrift store ones? Will I get soft? Once I have something to protect? Nah. But I'm sure I'll be tempted. I'm sure flying to London and going shopping will seem more...

Actually, it doesn't. I'm definitely going to go shopping. A bit. But we've got Barney's, Saks and that other one right here. And I have very little social ambition so I don't really care to go out and try to find what's happening at night. If I had forty more glamorous invitations, though? I can't say. I'd probably try a few. But I'm a homebody. And have come to accept and embrace that. I'd rather make my home a center. But quietly, casually and infrequently at that. If honey-pie is still looking for something "out there" or is socially ambitious, it may not work. Maybe that means I'm ready. Cause I'm old and set enough to take exactly what I want. And know that that's what I want. (I also give what I want, for those of you who don't know me very well, but I'm a giver by nature, so growing was, for me, to learn how to take, and do so without guilt, resentment, etc.)

Lord, please bring me all the tings I want. Calmly and gently enough for me to handle them. Please make me strong enough to be ruthlessly and lovingly myself in the face of it all. Relaxedly. I'm ready lord. Bring it on.

It's Gonna Be Fun, Baby!

An interesting article in Newsweek this week about boys failing. With some pretty damning quotes: "Often boys are treated like defective girls".

This gets me going for about a million reasons, but I'll stick to the subject at hand. It's borderline abuse the way parents treat their kids these days (half of them have circles under their eyes), and I think the mixed messages that kids get makes it all but impossible to grow up feeling loved and supported. We push them to excel, insist they do arts and sports (until we insist they "grow up" and concentrate on something that pays, which increasingly won't even pay), and think that whatever it is that they'll do will be done at the frantic level of anxiety that we race around with.

Your kids are emotionally pure. They are sponges. And in a sense pay for every dual standard you hold. It's like yelling at someone to relax. If the person listens (and I think kids increasingly tune adults out for exactly this reason), and they care, they end up not relaxed but more anxious and conflicted. Kids do what we do, not what we say. They respond directly and immediately to the standard we set--—be they love, leniency, flexibility, domineering, patience, whatever. A kid with a "problem" can be turned around in a second--—as most people can--—not by insisting they're messed up and must change, but by the person with a larger perspective acting in exactly the way that he or she wants to act in the situation.

It takes two to be messed up. No one is messed up without being so in relationship to another person (which is a very different thing that us--as adults--being messed up BECAUSE of others, which we are not.) And a committed, open, honest person can make a relationship "healthy", fun and happy 99.999% of the time by learning what it is that he or she needs to do--—how he or she really wants to respond to being manipulated, someone being needy, vulnerability, etc. This often requires facing one's own worst fears, which is why it doesn't get done as often as we'd like. You can do this with your mom, your kids, your friends, your boss, anyone. Get wicked about your vulnerability, what you encourage and discourage in other people, and insist on a relaxed, loving foundation to the relationship. Take the lead emotionally, which means taking the lead from below, from a position of open hands. (And take no shit, regardless.)

The bottom line is you can't be manipulated if you are unwilling to be manipulated. Nor can you be let down if you take full responsibility for your own happiness. The more you adapt this perspective, the less you'll find you need it, which means the more you should insist on maintaining it if youre smart.

Back to the male question, I firmly believe that men are at a crossroads. A precipice. We've mastered the material world and found it didn't make us any happier. We went to or stopped going to church and found that didn't do what we expected. We went and did new age stuff and found that we weren't mountain men any more either. Our relationships may have stopped being bad, but they didn't get deeper, they didn't have an essential change in their nature. They didn't get much better. Including our relationship with ourselves. The sex didn't get better. We didn't stop wanting coffee and beer and porn. (Hell, Kanye just admitted he's addicted to porn and my Chi-Town brother there could have the real thing every night if he wanted! That's saying something. Will we settle for jacking off because we can't handle the real thing in real time? This may be our biggest question.)

It would be easy to say that our women came after us. That we lost the public sphere where we mattered and we can't we didn't, we couldn't, etc., etc. But that's bullshit. We have been wanting to retreat and turn inward for years and we haven't done it. That's on us. We don't want the public sphere, we're tired of it. We don't even believe it. It's bullshit. It's absurd. Computers can do most of what needs to be done anyway. We just get on a plane, shake the hand and go out for drinks. For us, that's bullshit. We were born to do, to make, to create, to render, to feel and be. Huge in some cases. Quiet in others. Smart, physical, alive, with feeling! Boldly, with some swagger, mates! From the hips. Put your back into it!

And we stopped doing this. Because we thought we had to.

And part of being a man is doing what's expected of you. But a bigger part is not doing what's expected of you when what's expected doesn't work. Or isn't right. Or would make you less of a man. And that's the part we're sleeping on. Why are we surprised that our children, both boys and girls, are feeling our failure.

School didn't work for me. I was horrible at sitting down and shutting the fuck up for 7 hours a day. And looking back on it now, I'm not surprised that by the time I got out all I wanted to do was ride a skateboard, drink beer and coffee, screw and screw around. Regress. I'm not surprised that I was more confused the deeper I got into the "real" world. And more and more depressed.

And to become the person I wanted to be, that I always had been, that I always knew was true, I had to say "fuck it" to this whole world and way of living again and again and again. The white way, the right way, the money-grubber or non-profiteer way. The this OR that way. And I had to do so against the better wishes/overt dissaproval of my girlfriends, my mom, my sisters, my friends, and most magazines and TV shows--—all well-intentioned. Only my dad never told me to stop. He never really encouraged me or gave me any insight to the problem as a whole, but he never told me to buck up and go get a damn job either. And for where he came from that was an act of tender love. One I'd appreciate more had I not been so starving for a man who would let me learn from his mistakes, or even admit them.

I was fortunate enough to meet a black man who had decided he didn't want to live in limbo--—to pretend things were okay when they weren't. And he taught me a lot. If you mean "fuck it" sooner or later you've got to say "fuck it". He didn't teach me everything, his method had some stark, glaring shortcomings, but we're very fortunate to live with black people, and we've got a lot to learn from them. (And them from us, most likely.) Once we stop thinking they're "underprivileged", or that we're "privledged", we'll find a whole world open up right under our noses. That we're both blessed to be alive and have a world that reflects what we create.

Writing my book I spend half my time wading through the fear and loathing that school, college and being white, proper and professional had entombed me with. (Don't end a sentence with a preposition--see I still have it, I just know when to ignore the shit.) I could think but not speak. I was right but didn't know the truth. I was smart but not wise, or even necessarily caring. --Exactly because I was so caring--and had seen my efforts rewarded so poorly. Found so little reward for giving a shit. Wanted to be cool and professional and strong, etc.

School is that fear institutionalized. So is work. We operate from a critical perspective. Johnny can't read and will be tested until he makes himself able. Once you prove to us you can do the job, once your credentials are beyond reproach, we'll hire you (unless we can find someone else overseas to do it.) We test each other all day every day and then wonder why we're impotent and exhausted once we get into bed. Only a crazy person would get turned on by the shit we choose to do.

So our desire is fetishized. Marilyn Manson, yada, yada, yada. I'll skip this.

What I'm saying is that how we live is how we live. How we are alive. For a while our economy was so weak and our lives so strong that we could keep something of a balance alive. But not anymore. Nor do we want to.

Our kids are the canaries in our coal mines. And they're dropping like flies. And we still don't believe. We medicate them, send them to counselors, etc. Anything but admit that what we want is really the answer for us both. We expect that our lack of faith--—our absurdity--—will remain hidden from them like some kind of adult belief in Santa. That they'll get somewhere we were afaid to go--and be able to do so —without turning on us.

So what's the other way? How could school make warm kids instead of cool ones?

What if it assumed every child inherently gifted and provided tools and methods to discover and explore those gifts. What if it allowed them to grow and change (not to mention walk around and talk to each other--—hello!?) And then had a period or two a day of additional stuff that they might not stumble upon on their own. What if we removed criticism--the critical method--from the core of our selves and replaced it with a secular faith. With a real faith. Faith in everything (as opposed to most religion's faith in whatever it is that they've deemed proper).

What if children grew up around people who were happy and doing exactly what they wanted every day instead of overworked, harried, security-minded people. What if they were raised by and people who exercised belief and faith first--—overtly--—and concern and worry second, only when absolutely necessary? What if they were encouraged when they talked about Plan A and discouraged when they talked about Plan B. Cause we're obviously living Plan B all around here. The most powerful and free people in the history of the world. Unable to even get a hard-on without advertised drugs.

At some point you've just got to try the other way.

Men, our boys aren't going to be shit that we aren't. We're not going to somehow throw them clear of the problems we were afraid to face. And if we never man up how will they? Or rather, how will they be able to without forsaking our weakness? If we grow up believing that our deepest dreams are impossible, shameful even, then how can they realize theirs without destroying us mentally, emotionally and physically? How can they feel safe when all we've ever shown them is fear--—on a minute by minute basis. They may come back and be nice to us, but what will it matter then? We'll be broken and old. Unable to feel. Out of touch. We may have frozen it out, but they're alive, feel, are present. It's not yet a casual choice or a process of momentum for them. And it's not women that have to stop something for the state of men to improve, it's men that have to want and do something. Commit their lives. Life and death. To what they want.

And we have to do it no matter what women say. Take full responsibility! It's not their job to believe we can make it, to validate or approve. It would be nice if they did, and definitely take any support you can get, but ultimately, if it was easy or already done, you wouldn't be very interested in it anyway. Would you? That's why you're a man. (Or aspire to be one).

Along the way we'll have to negotiate what will seem at times like a lack of drive and purpose. We'll have to think and figure explore. We'll be ridiculed for being soft, pussies, fags. By ourselves. I heard a grown man call another guy a fag in the locker room Monday because of what kind of underwear he was wearing. I turned and said "I don't like to hear that kind of stuff". The guy, who probably benched more than I did, and certainly had more tattoos, said sorry. But he could have kicked my ass. Or called me (who was sitting there wearing an all red almost matching work-out outfit and taking his shorts off to be replaced with a pink Polo towel) a fag. The point is we are what we tolerate, what we create and allow. What we watch and enjoy.

It will hurt most when it comes from our lovers. When they say "I think you like the IDEA of writing". (This one's in The Love Artist, btw). But that's just what is. We can either say "fuck you" or we'll roll over and kiss them (buy T-LA, see which I did). And that will mean more for our children's future than all the miniature Jeep Commandos and Xbox cartridges we buy them, and all the hot meals and baseball games and piano recitals (although those do count). If we are doing what we want, they do it naturally. It's easy. Instinct. If not then conflict it. They'll either live inspired or have to be motivated. And they'll raise their kids the same way. In a world that is much, much more of whatever it is that we made.

The funny thing is that it's so much easier, except for the fact that we've never done it before. We don't even factor in the cost of worry, fear and doubt anymore, so used to it, so in love with it we are. We don't even pretend we miss relaxation, we just want to be more perfectly stressed. Believe me, for what fear and doubt cost us, there's more than enough to let everyone go free. Forever. It wasn't always (maybe) but it is now. I guarantee.

The economy is crashing. It's being rebuilt so fast that it's hard to see, but it is crashing. If you factor in the emotional and personal cost of what our economy cost, it is an absolute depression. The environmental ruin we're faced with is little more than a symbol of what we're missing as a people--in each other, as people.

We can try to keep it up--with our economic, social and personal stashes of viagra, but ultimately we cost too much to continue to compete on the material plane. We have made ourselves too valuable--and luckily (luckily because we have no problem disbelieving ourselves)--we've transferred that value into the land. So we can't even afford to do and make more more effieiently on the material plane. NOR DO WE WANT TO!! We're just afeared to do anything else. "It's all he knows" we say to guests when grandpa sits down at the dinner table in his top hat and calls the family to order like a board meeting. "so we humor him". But then it's you who's crazy and grandpa who's sane.

Anyway.

Our culture is perfectly positioned to own the next overwhelmingly huge thing: creativity. (Notice to concerned hand-wringers--ownership is non-exclusive in the spiritual/creative plane). And this economy will be enormous compared to manufacturing, sales, services, information and distrobution--maybe 8 times bigger within 25 years. And it'll grow faster, hurt less, pollute less, care more and both profit and prophet us more. In the US, we've got a more modern culture and less baggage than any other nation in the world. But we've still got some work to do--and we won't get there without some serious rock-gut pioneers. Some serious lovers and livers. Stand up men and women. And we have nowhere else to go. And life is persistant and long. What you want, if it's true, never goes away. It only grows and grows and grows. Sooner or later you either kill yourself or answer the call.

White Gold is in the perfect position for this shit. But if you let me get too far ahead, I'm not only gonna own the GM, Google, Van Gogh, MIcrosoft and TIger Woods of this shit, I'll also have a lock on the Xeroxes, the Warner Brothers, the Lexis/Nexis, the WAL*MART, the eBay and the Chase. The territory is unlimited, so a monopoly's impossible, but still, it takes close to ten years to turn your shit around and get back up to speed. To get real, baby. To grow out of your counter-culture tendancies even if you're already a talented, practicing artist. (Note: my artistic chops helped me —almost none. Art ain't gonna save your life, either. But YOU can save IT--providing you save yourself that is. And I'm guessing that's what you really want to do.)

And you're more than likely going to have to go through The Love Artist to get there. Or risk being derivative, or worse yet, not even close. You can wait until the album next fall or winter. Or the documentary (more show than prove, though) this spring. But from where I can see, y'all don't have the time. And they're still going to be at least $140 and $160. Nor would I suggest living with your mother for any longer than you absolutely have to (thought I thank and love my mom very much).

Hell, $120 for the blueprint will be the cheapest thing you get the whole time. And it'll get you seventy times as far as the $60 massages you're going to have to get just to deal with the embodied fear and mental trepidation of facing your own shit. A bargain compared to what the $15 yoga classes led by women who really want you to be more flexible will get you (and god bless them because they're doing the exact right thing for them). A mere pittance compared to the $125 an hour therapist you'll seek out hoping beyond hope to find someone who has found a way. (After you humiliate yourself by asking for the sliding scale because you can barely afford groceries and are already living on credit cards--—and don't even try a female therapist or some cheap chucklehead. You need a guy with all gray, in full-blown love relationship, lives in a landscaped home, and preferably still participates in sports, But then you'll still spend 6 months thinking you should go back to school and become a therapist). Who believes and hasn't cut his own dick off or converted to buddhism or decided to worship "the goddess".

Almost nothing compared to the places you'll search for someone to say "you're doing exactly the right thing. And this is how it feels. And keep going. You can do it. You're doing a great job. [Insert your protest here] Yes, that's exactly right, and you're going to keep going. And it's going to get better. Uh-huh! And you'll might see that again. But it won't bother you as much. That's good."

And then I'll pull my book from Amazon, because they want 55% of the cover price (for what?!). And the world can line up and thank me for putting the shit out so cheaply. For getting it out at all when all anyone else did was walk around and think it, or maybe jot some notes in a private journal or tell their girlfriend, or get mad and ironic and quiet. When without it, their kid would have been the Trenchcoat Mafia. Kip Kinkel. Dedicated to destroying the very institution that was supposed to nurture them. Because it was killing them. And there wasn't a man around who would stand up and even admit the truth in public, let alone listen and understand.

And my job will be to walk around, make music, feel everything in color, rock my wife's world on a near-daily basis, smile at babies in the grocery store, and otherwise be male and human without being mad that it took so fucking long for people to get it or get too excited that I was the one who went and got this love first. Cause it's love. And like all love, it's free and equally available to all.

And remain a good person when people stop ignoring me like I claimed I wanted when I'm hungry and going to get some lunch.

It's gonna be fun, baby!

Wanna come?

Cashflow Bubble

I read in the Tribune (Chicago) this morning about a board game named Cashflow 101. It was created by the Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy, who I have never seen or read, but have, of course, heard of.

It's all about getting out of the "Rat Race". And it costs $195. They've sold an estimated 500,000. Doing the math, that's roughly $100 mil. Players make investments and try to increase their cashflow while learning about the guys real estate techniques.

The Love Artist is the same thing, but it's for people who want to do what they love every day, what they feel like they're on this planet to do. It's a blueprint for what to do after the self-help, after the therapy, after you succeed in real estate (or fail). Whenever you decide to go all the way during this lifetime.

When you want to go beyond successful lawyer, golf pro, recording artist. When you want more than a career in any field can offer--when you want to become a fully realized person--and believe that doing so will not only make you more valuable, and more real, but also manifest in this world as an increase in your bottom line. Having more time with your kids, better love with your wife, etc., etc.

Anthony Robbins is selling 10 DVD sets for $3,600, people are buying board games for $195 and going to $3,000 workshops, so we know there's a demand for premium specialized content, what we are lacking, however, is premium CREATIVE content. Which is why our culture feels so empty.

As you know, we are made in god's image, and therefore primarily creative beings. If we were primarily material beings, our current material culture would have us sated like the junkies and sex gods we are. As it is, we feel none of it.

And Soderberg is releasing his next movie, Bubble, straight to DVD. And theaters. Wherever he wants. Because he's the artist. (Now if he'd just charge what he wanted).

Add this all up and what you get is a huge missing link: premium, or revenue priced, creative content.

Mass produced culture is priced to maximize unit sales. Which means for an artist, label to be relevant he or she must appeal to the largest number of people possible. Not the smartest people, not the most caring people, not the most valuable or productive people, just the most. This means that most people involved in culture are focused on moving units most of the time. (With most of the rest focused on resenting this). This is why people feel a sneaking connection between the "individuality" so doggedly cultivated by the culture industry and the mass conformity of thought and experience it seems to bring.

So The Rolling Stones compete with Jessica Simson's sister. And Aaron Neville with John Mayer. Every song on iTunes is 99 cents.

For a long time this system delivered. There was so little money (relatively speaking) in entertainment and culture that it was essentially self-selecting. People did it just for kicks.

But somewhere around the Monkees, people figured out that you could just assembly line it and take a bigger cut. As they say, no one ever went broke underestimating the American public.

This created a divide in our culture: people who had it and people who didn't. If you could survive on subsidized white "high culture" like the symphony, ballet, etc., then you kind of did. But this was "good for you art" and although beautiful in its way, is not necessarily real or relevant to what's going on currently. It's a dated acquired taste.

The strong, vital culture is a child's culture, a youth culture. Much of it is good as well, but that doesn't mean it feed grown-ups.

Which also means that very few grown-ups are drawn toward creating new forms, colors and sounds. Even though they're likely so starving that the "guiltily" survive on their children's culture. Until now, there hasn't been an adult popular culture to consume. In fact, popular culture has defined itself as thumbing its nose at the adult. Even the Bukowskis--the older practicioners--revel in their teenage freedom. As if there's nothing more beautiful or enjoyable in life than a spring break in Lauderdale.

The second way to price culture is by revenue instead of unit. This assumes (correctly, I believe) that there are people willing to pay more for better films, magazines, songs, etc., and that certain artists will find greater incentive to create better culture if they can sell at this price point.

(If you bore me by saying that artists don't work with money in mind, I'll ask you for his phone number. They've all done the math and either sold out or devoted a significant portion of their creation to fighting this perceived injustice, which is just another form of selling out.)

This youth culture has been a self-fulfilling prophesy. We roll around in it until we decide to "grow-up" and get a real job, get married, have kids that need braces. Growing up, in this sense, is a getting over enjoyment, giving up on meaning and a connection past your family. Growing up is isolated suburbs, 12 hour days--both necessary to live a "decent" life.

But when we start to think of our indulgences, and by this time they're as likely to be second and third cars and an overabundance of $500 shoes, as guilty pleasures, when we consume in hiding, they fester and end up as neuroses. We end up creating our very fears instead of what we want. Then, when what we really want does comes along (and with god in charge, it will) we feel too hurt and neurotic to reach for it. To try. To demand that it be. To commit to it financially. To step out on faith for it. At least our vintage guitars and snowboards are solid, won't leave or let us down, hold their value and can be resold. Fear is rock solid and love and faith fleeting and in need of support and tender care.

At least in our current economic configuration.

I learned this by feeling it. For years in a row. I now have $500 shoes even though I haven't had an income in years. I am believing my way to the top. By force of faith and will. I will bring beautiful and meaningful objects into this world with both my creative and my consumptive needs and urges, period. I am broke and reselling used guitars and computers to make my measly $300 rent (I live at my mom's house), but I still bought the best Mogami cables at Guitar Center last night. $70 for two 6' cables to use in my studio. And I probably have $500 in the bank. And no payday in sight. And $36K in debt. But long after I'm gone, someone, likely known to me, will enjoy those cables and the way they transmit information. Two crappy cables will be saved from the landfill as we grow as an economy and become comfortable paying for higher quality, longer lasting goods. It's what I'm willing to be on this earth and live and hurt and die for. We all make the same choices every day.

And that's how the world's going to be saved. Not as sexy as Ghandi had us believe, perhaps (especially if you live in the west and bestow sacred meaning to living on grass mats and not wearing shoes), but what works nonetheless. And we'll get to spend our time making items that last. And have to be relaxed and sane to do so. And get to spend our lives using items that work and are beautiful.

Now if I could just get paid for telling y'all something you didn't really want to hear.

Oh, and by the way, the cultural sphere is even more exciting that the material. The cables don't really matter. In fact they are completely immaterial to what makes me and every other human being here happy. That feeling, that certainty, that love, is what we'll get as soon as we TRULY realize that we are spiritual beings having a material experience and not the other way around. We'll create exactly what we want--a vital, mature, robust, inclusive, caring, warm, honest culture. By paying for it on faith. And sacrificing to create it. By leveraging everything we've got because we believe. Just like our forefathers and mothers did. By taking control of the enormously powerful tools we've created instead of playing victim to them. By growing up for real.

And just like our ancestors, the riches, both material and spiritual, that we reap, will be beyond our wildest imaginations.

But that's all y'all have afforded--actually much more since you haven't as much as dropped a dime in my general direction--I'd love to mess around with you all day but I'm off to buy and sell computers. We can talk smack all day but the market never lies! It must be what you want me to do. Piece!!

Le Ghetto Blanc

What??

First JT Leroy and now James Frey? What's up with the fake ass white guys? I told you grunge was dead (and that was in '01 : ). Isn't it enough just being a normal white guy? Isn't it enough of a story to have had the whole rest of the world think you're responsible for everything bad that's ever happened and trying to not let it bust your flow in bed?

Whoops, I don't do sarchasm anymore. My apologies.

But please do keep tabs, my friends. Please do do the math. Please do get tired of the manipulation and bullshit. It's not an abberation but business as usual.

Please do stop buying what bores you. Please do do anything else when $14 a pop books and Oprah's book club doesn't feed you. Doesn't speak to you. Light up your nightstand. And fill your days... ...with song!

Please do take a chance on something you think might work. Do something you've never done before. Pass on the cookie cutter culture and spring for the real thing.

There are a couple million folks watching to see if my shit works. To see if there is a way out. And most of em ain't even born yet.

Fuck it.

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WhiteG.com

ps: Ooh--just heard they were offerring money back for Mr. Frey's book due to the errors. Is this true? Lord have mercy. That's some shit. Oprah, call me up if you want an honest white man. : ) (And, by the way, you make it into my book.)

Ready for My Close Up

I just started my press campaign. It's emotional to put it all on the line. But it also feels good. I know this is curing something elemental inside of me. Good riddance I say. To whatever demon or fear was parked in there.

I've never been one to seek much attention. Overtly at least. But maybe that's been a hidden desire. Certainly not as much as me shirtless on the cover of my book would suggest. The way I see it it's just what had to be done. And fun. I guess I just never thought it was safe.

In high school I was much more loose. Or didn't care as much. I'd wear women's lime green paisley coctail pants to school(think Pucci--and pegged of course). I'd also get macked up at our parties and dance around with several "Sportpacks" (the cardboard boxes that 12 beers came in) on my head like a helmet. Captain Sportpack was a minor nickname for a while.

But it's a lot different to do it sober, during the day and telling people that's what you do. To step to women sober. To fuck sober.

My friend Charles, who took the photo on the cover of my book, laughed as I picked him up that morning. And he shot half-naked punk rockers for a living for years. But drunk and at night. In clubs. That was cool. Sober, in the morning, downtown--not cool.

My thinking was, and is, that we need more of that. Not more shirtless guys, not more cool, but more warm--more of that feeling. Proud and vulnerable at the same time. Just me and the business district. Especially in our art. C'mon art! White art is so shirted these days. Unless it's the stupid and ironic Har-Mar or some Brazilian Girls concert. Yawn.

So how come when we put up a poster it's as likely as not to be a provacative Lil Kim or 50 Cent. You've gotta go all the way to Tommy Lee to find a shirtless white guy. Or Travis Parker maybe.

I'm taking it straight to the Ivy League. Straight to Wall Street. And not as a hippy naked party at the co-op (although I went to those as well in my college years). That's a Gucci belt and Jil Sander pants, mind you. The best is the best.

I've said it before and I'm sure it'll come up again. Any improvement--whether it be social, economic, personal or spiritual--should yield better sex. Better intimacy. Better fucking. More feel. More of what you really, really deep down want. Or it's not an improvement. Fewer meetings, more time, better food, more relaxation, healthier health, more beauty, etc.

Thinking the truth should be ugly is just as much an abomination as anything else. And as we've got history's most powerful economic engine at our disposal, I expect to start seeing some results. Where are the artists creating for feelings? Going deep for love? Sacrificing for flowers and spring? Trying to better van Gogh?

I saw something great on tv last night: there are Thai seasonal workers in Finland making enough to fly home and live comfortably for the rest of the year after picking berries for 8 weeks.

Certainly we, their bosses, have the time and balls to do what we want.

Lots of love. If you're a press person reading this, please don't hesitate to call or e-mail me. You're sitting on the story of the year. And I'm getting less hungry by the day.

'06, baby! Let's do it!

New York Review of Bucks

The only email address the New York Review of Books will give you is to their advertising department. Fucking punks. So who's all about editorial and who's all about money? Fuck 'em, they can buy one of my books if they want to review it. After they read about it somewhere else.

I'm about two seconds away from writing off the entire American cultural machine. So full of themselves and so fucking pretentious and precious they are. From the guy publishing the zine to get some scene cred to the vegan animal rights punk promoter to the university embattled and embittered post-modernists—ain't none of 'em got love. And they're liberal, counter-cultural and money hating to the core. Drunk and confllicted punk rockers all of 'em.

I know the money folks ain't that cute either, but at least they're honest about their bullshit. At least you know what they think, what they're working for and who they are. Ironically, at least they'll reveal some vulnerability.

Keep your dicks out of the machine my brothers. My sisters, keep your tits and hips out. These guys will fuck you up hard-core. WIth the white mind-fuck of alll time.

Cultcha

Maybe my point is as simple as this:

A youth culture is better than a fake culture, but almost any real adult culture beats them both hands down (assuming you're an adult or a kid interested in growing up).

The corollary being that we get what we pay for.

30 years ago, when I was growing up, no one would pay for kid's stuff, so there wasn't any. And there wasn't any fun. You couldn't find a skateboard magazine to save your life, let alone wheels or trucks.

Today, no one wants to pay for an imaginative, vital, honest adult culture. There's "fun" everywhere, but none of it's any fun. (How could Kong and I Walk the Line be boring? --We've seen them both a hundred times.)

The price for this new culture will be paid by artists who insist on being men and women instead of boys and girls (or gals and guys). And they will be compensated for their efforts by starving consumers who have run out of places to go, things to do, ways to be, and feelings they allow. They will charge what the real is worth--a lot. But first they must refuse to be victims--again and again and again--to money, time, the art world, the economy, other artists, everything. Living on scraps and making gold. Until they themselves realize what it is they've done and what it's worth.

In 30 years (with the basics in place in less than 3, I'd bet), we'll have as varied a warm, mainstream, adult culture as the youth culture and the previous superficial, exclusionary mainstream combined. Times three or four. We've got to get real first, and that's not going to be as cute as punk rock, hip-hop or even new age, but once we commit to the truth, beauty we can feel is just around the corner.

Happy New Year folks! 2006 is gonna be huge. Lots of love.

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WhiteG.com