In The One

Content has split.

Upwards is Kanye West--high art that you're lucky to get once every two years. Concept albums with pretty videos and meaning. Rare quality. This is the tiny head.

Downwards--not at all necessarily worse, mind you--is Lil Wayne. He just spits off tha top. He's reality TV to Kanye's immaculately scripted sit-comma. Mass quantity. This is the "long tail".

We're all hungrier for the real shit--middle shit with some quality and some quality--than either of these poles allow. A half hour a week of something you like isn't shit. Neither are daily episodes of "Who Want's to Be a Millioniare?"--something you don't really like.

What corporation sits on a hot brand like MTV sits on Buzzin'?

What if you couldn't buy but one Mercedes every four years? Or could only have one cell phone at a time? One latte every two days?

Why can't the content industry meet demand? Because they have socialized--fixed--their own prices. They are so inefficient it's laughable. If they weren't all doing it, they'd all be run out of business.

It's moronic, stupid, idiotic and a huge waste of money.

Not to mention an enormous drag on the economy.

We could have Kanye quality songs coming out every week if they made more than Lil Wayne's one-offs. The split is entirely arbitrary, a function of the fixed prices charged for all mass content--movies, music, books, tv--all that shit.

Content is stuck in the world of either/or like a depressed-ass Elliot Smith--either great and fleeting or plentiful and shitty--because it can't afford to reach any other level. Kanye's got to tour, shoot videos, advertise cell phones, run a label and sell clothes to make money. He doesn't get paid anything to write or record music.

Lil Wayne makes tons of music, but so what, only one in twenty songs is worth buying. And even then, they don't have any ideas or real inspiration in them.

We think that the real--the authentic--is naturally rare but it's not at all. We've made it so. Our frugality and fear. Our insistance that consuming content is a guilty pleasure.

White GOld says FUCK THAT SHIT.

We're not victims to anyone--big business, woe is me artistes, mommy and daddy, our own demons--no one. We're 3-D, the whole enchelada.

We make what's real, charge what it's worth, live relaxed adn are ready to ramp up as far as you can afford. No--fuck that--not can afford, cause your ass is starving with a millie in the bank--you can afford fucking anything but you choose not to express yourself that way.

We're ready to go as far as the consumers of the developed world are willing to consume.

But you're scared to consume. Just like you're scared to feel. Just like you're scared to slow down.

Just like you're scared to fuck.

Guilty guilty guilty guilt. This is changing--quickly--but the folks with money are still scared as a motherfucker. Scared and burnt out. It might take a crisis to shake them out of their repression.

White Gold is ready to meet demand because market transactions insulate us from the market's bullshit--we make profits from content itself and so can tell the advertizers, label bosses, dorks, freaky fans and dorvmos to fuck it. We can even tell the audiences to fuck it. We don't work weekends, tour in vans or do press junkets.

We dont kiss ass, don't approach you on our knees or give away our first song. You don't really want a pandering culture, but you don't know that yet. Don't feel it.

You think a non-pandering creative is arrogant, or less valuable. Just like you think a confident, attractive woman is a stuck-up bitch. You don't know her, of course, but you hate that she's escaped the fear and insecurity you cultivate daily.

Higher prices gives us more time to make shit. What a revelation!

The reality is that people are starved for new quality content--but our media structures can only provide huge ponds of shit a mile wide and an inch deep--like YouTube, or puddles of pristine H2o a mile deep.

And you can't high dive in any of them.

No backflips, dives or even pool edge horseplay.

White GOld is a sandy beachfront to this shit. Clean, well maintained and landscaped. Go as far out as you want. Stay as long as you like. There's a raft with springboards up to 60'. Lifeguards, showers and a great little place to eat.

Once you've mastered those, we'll show you where the cliffs are.

And, yes, it costs more than a puddle in the parking lot. Go figure.

Or we can all sit round these oily, evaporating, concrete-rimmed .99 per song puddles for a few more years til they're just dark spots.

I was bored in 1998--I don't know what's sustaining you. Have you convinced yourselves that The Black Kids are great? That LCD Soundsystem will feed you into your 40s?

Or are you surviving on two songs in heavy rotation?

I don't know how you do it--starving with money in the bank. Workaholic thinking that more money will get you more fun, more love or even more like.

Will that promotion make your wife or kids like you any more?

No, fuck that, they're on their own too--will it make you like yourself anymore?

That's the real shit right there?

Luckily, there's a book you can read about just this shit. It wasn't written by David Sedaris, David FOster Wallace, or David Eggers. It isn't sad and doesn't mope because it didn't have the luxury.

And it's not $14.

Not even $24.

It's $120.

Because that's what it fucking costs for an educated motherfucker who's got commerce by the balls to chuck it all to figure out if he even has a book in him.

If you're a businessman worth his salt you'll recognize the risk/reward ratio.

Hipster taking a few years off after school to write a "scene" novel, and maybe make it big among his friends=$14.

Hipster at the end of his rope willing to alienate all his friends and sacrifice any chance of getting published by putting down the white, man, scary and fetid truth=significantly more.

I got the price the same place I got the title--$120.

If you don't like the title, then you won't like the price. The title is The Love Artist.

And if you don't like the title, you won't appreciate the cover.

And if you don't appreciate the cover, don't like the title or aren't willing to drop a fucking measly $120 on something you think you might really care about, then we probably don't have anything to talk about anyway.

Just keeping it real.

Follow the link to White Gold store to buy it. (Upper rightish).

I'm going to bring content back together if it kills me.

I can't do it without you but I won't go begging. There's been too much of that already.

This is a business proposition--$120 is the price of the prospectus. It never goes on sale and it isn't going anywhere.

Take your time.

Maybe selling out will work for you if you do it another 50 years with some real gusto--if you're fucking hookers and taking down your boardroom rivals with aplomb instead of just kind of half-assing your way to the top.