White Holes

Physicists are starting to theorize about the existence of white holes.

What's a white hole?

Take a black hole and turn it inside out. Instead of being so dense that it sucks in and destroys everything around it, a white hole is so light (?) that it constantly creates new energy, light, matter--whatever (untangibles if you ask me--and have been following my physics-themed posts).

There's no coincidence that White Gold is named White Gold. It's structured to act like a white hole--even though I named it seven or so years before I ever heard of white holes.

The whole idea is that is you go through the horror of the unknown and learn to master your own fears, you will eventually gain access to the permanent, ever expanding core of what's going on. And will experience joy, growth, money, love--whatever it is you seek--in limitless quantities.

White Gold the corporation assumes that the detritus of such an exploration--the record/produce/story/map and simultaneous proof--will be invaluable to those interested in growth in any and all forms.

Basically, the idea is that if people will go through Basquait's trash for shit he threw out and his grocery lists, pay $50K for a pair of ripped and stained vintage Levis, buying $1.7 mil Bugattis, and watching cheap home videos of Timbaland and Busta Rhymes in the studio fucking around--then there is a market for a truly creative corporation that approaches commerce itself like a canvas.

Creative works--music, movies, books, tv shows--magazines and the like will be the core, but the satellites will be clothing lines, management tomes, consumer electronics, furniture--anything we feel like. Content, values and craftsmanship all exist on a continuum--having manufacturing standards doesn't negate your creative if you've got integrity. Lighten up folks. It's supposed to be fun.

Do anything!

White Gold is the first but these Uber Brands are the future. Brands that take other brands and give them meaning. Well, that's old school terminology--these brands will simply emanate light. And attract those interested in bathing in that type of light.

Like graffiti artists doing shit for Nike but bigger. This time we'll be pimping (very lovingly and relaxedly) them instead of them pimping us. We'll outsource to Nike and take the swoosh off. Have Lexus building cars with our name (or not) and our values. Have Savile Row working for us.

This is about having artists in control of the whole shebang and subordinating the suits, rather than having the suits in charge and subordinating the artists.

That's what people want. And that's what they'll pay for now that the suits have proven themselves incapable of generating enough high quality content to sustain interest.

What, did they think us artists wouldn't get better at managing accountants and directing lawyers?

They certainly haven't gotten any better at making art--they don't have the time.

I don't give a fuck about telling someone off. I don't often do it, but I'm not afraid of a fucking CEO with his own island. He's probably a scared child with an iron-clad work ethic and an overwhelming, though thoroughly repressed desire for rest, play and fun. In other words--a sold-out punk.

And we make better beats, movies, books--all premium, all true, all real and all premium.

No counter-culture moping victim pimps and no mainstream chipper alpha dog whores.

Just straight razor's edge. (With props to both Somerset and Occham.)

There's the future for you. It will be financed by allowing content prices to float--$14 songs, $24 movies, $160 DVDs, etc.

If you want in, hit me up.

Let's do one for the numbers people.

Profits have been moving from the tangible to the untangible as long as economic activity has taken place. Everyone's hot on intangibles at the moment, but those aren't dick compared to what untangibles will do once they're allowed floating prices.

Exxon/Mobil has a P/E (Price to Earnings) ratio of around 13, Google has a P/E of around 40. Why are people so willing to pay a premium for a company that returns smaller earnings? Because they own the intangible future.

And Exxon Mobil is burdened with the tangible past.

Exxon Mobil makes a hell of a lot more money and many fewer people want to own their stock.

Google has mastered the intangible realm like Exxon mastered the tangible one. But everyone's so far up Google's ass, they can't see that the intangible age is just as doomed by the march of progress as the tangible age and its toxic oil wells.

What's funny is that those who should be in the best position to capitalize on the value of quality untangibles are trading with P/Es around those of tangible companies. Time/Warner, Sony, Dreamworks--these content companies are all duking it out with the manufacturing sector with P/Es around 12.

No one wants to own them.

Why? Because even if they deliver the high quality content that the developed world is increasingly starved for, they won't make anything. Because--say it with me now--content prices are arbitrarily fixed. The market knows this and values the companies accordingly.

But you and I know that a company that really owned the untangible future would trade at a P/E of what--80? 120? A couple thousand? It's upside would be almost unlimited.

And, unlike the speculative oil, gold and biotech stocks with massive downsides (which tend to have high P/Es), mining the soul is a guaranteed return. Once you know how to do it. Not all land has mineral wealth, but every soul is gold.

Another way of looking at this is that the best artists rarely, if ever become irrelevant during their lifetimes. Pollack painted dribbles for years and they go for millions each now. There was never a demand problem. Still isn't.

The same is true for mass content--the best mass content is often consumed over and over. Books taught and canonized. Songs re-bought in greatest hits packages, licensed for movies, etc, etc, etc.

Whoever owns the first publicly accepted premium content company will be sitting on a money printing machine the likes of which we've never even considered.

Look at it this way--because I know you might be too scared to even buy and read The Love Artist--or take the word of the author that it's the book to do it:

Look at it this way--even if The Love Artist fucking sucks. And by sucks, I mean is a piece of absolute shit..

Even then, what would three million in advertising to introduce the world to the idea of premium content do?

It would attract the best works by the best artists. As a label.

A label that made $14 a song instead of $.99 could pay the artists 4, 6, 8 a song and still crush iTunes, Interscope and all the pretenders to the throne.

It could pay writers $60 a book.

Sure, you say, they could release it on their own and make all the money, why do they need White Gold.

I'll tell you this about artists: we don't want to do any fucking paperwork. We don't want to print and sell our shit.

We want to fuck around and make more. Like Henry Miller said--we're like trees, and once we drop a piece of fruit, we're so over it it hurts. We want birds and deer to come and eat it--and carry the seeds miles away--but if it's up to us, we'll just let it rot. That's how uninterested in transportation and distribution we are. We just go on making the tastiest and most nutritive fruit possible. Let someone else package and sell apple sauce.

Look, if you're in business, you're in management. And if you're in management you know that the name of the game is talent.

And if you're into talent, you know that money and freedom is all there is.

But if content makes money, it's mainstream drek. If it has..

Aw, fuck it. If you pussies haven't felt it yet, you just won't get it.

But remember this: I'm appealing to your most base greed. You haven't even read my book--I'm not appealing to any artistic instincts or taste. I don't give a fuck about that. I'm appealing to your greed and desire for more money, an easier life, to leave something for your family.

To make money.

I can make you Paul Allen times 50.

And I've described how in exhausting, rational detail. In your language with math.

If you've given up on your dreams to make money and you don't even want to make the maximum money--then what the fuck are you? If you've embraced life as toil and reward and don't even want the rewards, what do you believe in? Pain?

Y'all some kinky motherfuckers.

Don't you want a front row seat to the most important and most flexible brand of the coming millennium?

Cimbing Stairs

It strikes me that life is like climbing a set of stairs--or walking somewhere.

The West has told us that all that matters is getting to where we're going--or else why walk at all?! So around here, we ignore the scenery--try to get past it faster.

And we certainly have a point.

The East, on the other hand, insists that as we're walking at the moment, where we're going is immaterial. Which, of course, is true as well. But why not at least head for places with even better scenery as long as we're enjoying it? Why not go visit shit we've heard great things about? Why not investigate what we want--as long as nothing matters anyway?

It's not too hard to see that here in the 3rd millenium, what we're going to do is shake them both and say: "Yo, mothafuckers! It's both!"

And maybe add a quick "Get over yourself." Damn.

The question remains, though, which one to use as our primary reaction to things. Which one to favor and hold more holy. For certainly we aren't bad-assed enough yet to speed like we've been doing and dawdle smelling flowers at the same time. Maybe some day, but not quite yet.

Like computers, our attention doesn't quite parallel process as efficiently as it does singularly focus.

The rent is due, and the couch is feeling relaxing, do we believe or get scared?

We have missed rent before. Even starved and hurt. The question is real.

And there's a series of paintings calling. And a few songs percolating.

You have paintings to sell, but none have sold so far.

You've been at it ten years and haven't sold shit.

Faith or fear?

Which will render you a man and which mighty mousey?

The Love Artist

As far as I can tell, I am the world's first self-descirbed love artist.

There are a few others. There's a conceptual artist and yoga teacher who owns www.theloveartist.org (I own theloveartist.com). She runs workshops as a love artist--and promises better fucking, which is great--but I don't see much in her site or work that goes beyond Kundalini Yoga and a somewhat hippie/liberal/romantic notion of love as being really nice.

Annie Sprinkle has a site called loveartlab.com, which is surprisingly boring for such a vaunted performance artist. For a fee (I assume), she and her partner will hold a cuddle-in--where they install a bed and have bystanders cuddle between them on it for minutes at a time.

Which sounds like hell to me. To me, that doesn't even sound intimate--let alone like fucking--let alone loving. Why is being touched by strangers love? (Unless you're on X maybe.)

But I do like that the notion of a love artist is bubbling up in the collective unconscious.

So what's my claim to fame? Or at least origination?

I started writing my book The Love Artist around 1995. The first thing I got was the title. And then, laying in the grass at my family summer house, I asked myself: "what the fuck is a love artist?".

If I had come up with an answer, I wouldn't have needed to write the book.

But I couldn't, and so I did.

What was interesting was that, if anything, I started off with a fairly conventional notion of being nice to everyone as being loving, and had that repeatedly dashed on the rocks. Like it was being beaten out of me. (And believe me, I was as nice and as big a pussy as you would have met.)

It turns out that love can just as easily tell people to fuck off, when that's what needs to be said.

Love is loving yourself--it's just like oxygen masks in airplanes in that respect--you can't really do it outward until you know how to do it inward. Which is why so many well-intentioned attempts go awry: i.e. welfare, trust funds, being a "giver", putting others before yourself, etc.

And so many supposedly hateful approaches work so smashingly: capitalism; individualism; boundaries, borders and fences; taking, etc.

There are lots and lots of manipulative people out there and if you're "being nice" to them, then you're spreading emotional molestation, not love. Showin 'em the hand is love.

I published The Love Artist in 2000 and bought theloveartist.com shortly after. It wasn't until after I put it out that I learned all the money and fucking stuff about love.

It's all wrapped up into one neat little ball. Money, fucking, love.

And any artist who pretends to be dealing with one without EXPLICITLY and OPENLY addressing the other two is full of shit.

A nice artist. And likely better at theory than painting, writing or making music.

Always go by the work. Even with me. Don't give me shit for how clever, witty or "smart" I am. None of that means shit. Though concepts are of more importance than ever, conceptual art itself is bullshit--just reasons the mind makes up to cover a lack of talent, a fear of venturing into the truly unknown and wordless frontier. If it's valuable, then it's applicable. And should have examples in abundance.

An artist trying to sell theory is like a real estate guru trying to sell seminars. If the shit really worked, why is he running around teaching it instead of logging in from Bermuda for an hour every third day and doing the damn thing?

Read a fucking poem, check the paintings, buy the book. I'm off to get my hair cut.