The Golden Era

A poll in the Chicago Tribune says that black kids think that rap should have more political content. Funny because they wouldn't watch it if it did.

I suppose no one is safe from the Judeo-Christian guilt that blankets our pleasure.

I'd suggest that we won't get what we want until we actually want it but you already know that, so let's move on.

I'm still on with subtle energies. And some of them are subtle indeed.

I'm getting into being alive--being happy--the whole day.

And I'm finding that I had a few left over, stale, time poverty beliefs.

I still start turning around before I close the cupboard all the way. What, am I hurrying to wash the dishes? And a very subtle panic sets in just before I eat. Maybe I should be eating earlier. Or more often. Or not letting myself go as far out into unhappiness while working.

That's the one I'm really working on. Staying right with it while I work, while I do my thing. My whole life I have told myself that it is not alright to be happy or loving if there is a deadline present. If I didn't have enough money in the bank.

But the more I take charge of it, the more I take complete responsibility for my own happiness and joy, (and that includes plenty of letting go), the more I see that this thing "out there" that I relate to as a separate world is, as so many physicists and new agers are now saying, determined by things as spurious as my whims.

And influenced strongly by my beliefs. Like I develop, maintain and protect the bandwith and as much as I can handle without flying off the handle is poured down the pipe.

Much different that what I formerly believed: that the way we got things we wanted was to run out and grab as many as we could as quickly as we could--sort of like a timed supermarket shopping spree. --Joy there being using a cart that you really, really liked.

I'm doing less and my business is picking up, women look better (and look my way more often), and my art is improving.

I now realize that it is possible to make money, even in a traditional, left brain business and be alive and present at the same time. It may take some careful alignment and some start up work, but it is possible to work with faith, be yourself totally, and interface with the "outside world" in a business setting.

And do your art honestly and without any jade. Because you're already coming from a place that is enjoyed. You haven't made any sacrifices but possibly have put in a little extra work to orient things the way you want. The same as everyone else.

And that's perhaps the most radical aspect of the quantum reality: that we are ALL, ALREADY doing exactly what we want. Every moment of every day.

That we are actually free and have chosen freely every action and thought.

And that all our "have to"s are untested and unproven. I have to keep this job because I have to pay rent. I have to do this after work when I'm tired because I can't get it done any other way. I have to go to this party or no one will like me/invite me next time.

Love and money are two of the most challenging ideas to get free around. And often require the most liberal swings of the machete. And protection from the brambles for new plantings.

What has been most useful for me is a very strong discipling based completely on yes. I don't say no to myself but doggedly, repeatedly, boringly say yes to what I want.

Exactly what I want.

Most people wouldn't give a fuck if they gave up ice cream after dinner if they knew a Swedish supermodel was waiting for them. In a sense they're eating it because they've given up on a larger vision.

Most wouldn't even need a Swedish supermodel (or Algerian--take your pick)--if they had a couple hours with the energy and intimacy they enjoyed as a newlywed with their partner. They'd turn off the tube and head to bed. So they could still get to sleep by 10 to get up to take the kids to soccer or school.

But they think that's a forgone conclusion. Work was too hard today. The kids too out of hand. There's too much we haven't discussed since the move--whatever.

But what if we were all really close to exactly what we want. Be it greater intimacy or more time to work on that book?

And what if time, money, love and energy weren't elusive beasts at all, but naturally replenishing--overflowing wells that required nothing from us but to follow our appetites and pay fastidious attention to what we want? Both in the moment and overall.

What if it was our beliefs only--what we told ourselves in the privacy of our own minds--that was holding us back?

Would we let go? Would we accept relaxation and happiness? Would we live with a little uncertainty to have our lives more free? Would we forgo control to rediscover our appetite?

And what if it ALL worked? What if you could be the veterenarian, rock star, pilot, socialite that you imagined as a kid? What if that was what you were SUPPOSED to be? A golf pro, photographer, civic leader, philosopher?

Remember, kids a hundred years ago dreamed of being a fireman. A teacher. An explorer. One thing. Now we're renaissance. A couple specialties is no big deal.

BUT (and, baby, that's a nice big but)--we're going to have to afford it. We're going to have to pay for it! You and I are going to have to pay to create what we want and we are going to have to pay to consume what we want. Otherwise our pessimism, our "that's just eh way the world is" will be right.

Because we will not have made the world the way we want it!

Let me put it another way:

We are incredibly smart. We are incredibly sophisticated consumers. We are spiritually aware. We are environmentally conscious. We are culturally astute. We are materially complex.

And we have an economy that will support any one of those attributes at a time. We can find a book that is spiritually "aware". It will probably say on the front "This book is spiritually aware", which means it won't be that culturally sophisticated, adn the typesetting will likely be an amateur job, so it won't be materially complex, but it will be spiritually aware.

This book will say things like "let go and let god". Good advice, if a little corny. The book will be either non-fiction or thinly veiled expository fiction. Any symbolism or mystery will be forced and wince-invoking.

Or perhaps you'd like something culturally sophisticated and materially complex. you could buy a video iPod and watch Ghost Dog on it. But the killings and insistance that the world is best represented by a gangster metaphor will deeply offend your spiritual nature. And your mores as a parent.

But it will appear "real".

You could also buy an $800 cashmere sweater with a skull on it. Or in pea green. Materially sophisticated, and seemingly culturally complex, but lacking in an innate appeal that you long for long after it ceases to be cool.

It didn't get you any new friends. Or even more clout at the bar. You never felt it. Because getting more cool just makes more people fear and respect you--from a greater distance. And you want intimacy, closeness, warmth.

And forget sneakers--you can't find a pair that doesn't look like a 14th grade design final gone wrong. Zings and zows and she-bangs to make you look insane--excuse me, give you attitude--even when you're standing still.

Which brings us into mass marketed goods. The ones that they have to aim directly at the 18-34 demographic. The Van Helsings. The SPIN magazines. The Smokin' Aces. When you mass market a good it must have mass appeal. Which means you aim for the lowest common denominator every single time.

You would never put up $500,000 to introduce a line of shoes that sold for the same price as Nikes but appealed to a smaller audience. At least I hope you wouldn't. That would be stupid. Unless you weren't doing it for the money. In which case your enterprise would likely be unsustainable.

And your wife and kids would be put through some serious nonsense when it failed. (Not to mention you and your soul).

But hey man, it's cool, you weren't doing it for the money. You just wanted to be a part of the community. You were doing it for soul. What a crock of shit. If soul, or community requires you, or I to put up huge amounts of money to keep it going, what is it? Sustainable? Desirable? Wanted? Craved?

One challenge is that we've internalized the van Gogh thing so hard we now think that the best art IS the most incomprehensible. The most despised. The hardest to find.

And that that is a natural function of art. That at it's best, it is so challenging that we--the squares--can't understand it. And shouldn't be able to.

What a crock of shit.

That was one thing when culture moved at the speed of shipping printing presses. Was being delivered at the speed they could lay railroad track and only after uncle Ernie could afford a ticket to the World's Fair and then came back and told us stories we didn't even really believe.

But now culture moves fast enough that it consumes the all but the biggest ideas almost immediately. Internationally. It needs them. Economy is dependent on new ideas. Creativity. New memes. Curt Cobain, bless his soul, unheard of; famous, rich and huge and then dead and barely relevent in ten years.

The ten years that if van Gogh would have stayed alive he would have started to see his paintings sell. (--It wasn't moviing that slowly back then either.)

Mass markets. If you put out a CD at the same price as Brittany Spears but with a smaller audience you are either saying that your cultural ideas--and what your audience is capable of doing with them--are worth less than hers. Or you are a fool.

Or trying to be nice.

And if you're trying to be nice and an artist, I can guarantee that you are already running out of gas. And about to become a total raving b-iotch in your own special way. That kindness and true availability is leaving your repetoire. Because you think you have to give more than those you're giving to to be loved.

And that's not only not true, but a not only an unsustainable but also an unsupportable position. Meaning that we, your audience could support you at the level at which you ask--$14.99 for each album--AND YOU WOULD STILL FAIL!

Because there are not enough of us to provide you with sufficient profit to continue the process. (--So, even if you truly don't want my book, if you're an artist, at least charge what you think you're worth. Run the numbers and give yourself a snowball's chance in hell!)

Which is not to say don't be kind, don't be a good person, don't be honest--please do--but when you enter the public sector if you don't charge for everything you put into your work, you will fail.

I have seen this happen to numerous restaurants, cafes, and other businesses. Artists are usually smart enough to know the deal so they work in an ego payment up front. That the audience has to swallow silently to get close.

This is the shitty attitude that many artists appear to have. The ego that appears to coexist with great art. The depression, the enoui, the darkness. Indie rock has gotten so nice that it's essentially all of these: depressed, a bit bitchy and egocentric--and still slowly eating away at most of its practicioners.

Why not just charge what you're worth and skip the drama? Why not just say I saw Led Zepplin rip off Son House and include Zep's inspiration in the price of admission.

I know you'd have to give up the cultural and spiritual authority that you've gotten so used to lauding over the "norms", and have to admit that you're "knowable" (or at least comprehensible), but I promise you, you won't get the love you want living on that paycheck anyway.

Just make it easy and ask for the damn money.

Hell, at least then if you fail you fail going for the endzone. Instead of a quarterback sneak that wouldn't even get you the first down.

If the mass market is going to work for all of it's participants. If this is the way we're going to create and distribute culture--and I think it's a wonderful method, by the way--then we must, absolutely, develop the price points that allow other demographics to create and communicate.

In a very real sense (and those among you who still profess solidarity with whatever blue collar workers that still exist can start calling me elitist here)--we've cut off the most important and most valuable producers in our current economy.

The mechanical reproducers of culture have it okay. Print the old stuff, be square and antiquated but make decent coin. Reprint 60s concert posters.

The craftspeople have it darn good. The commercial illustrators and designers. At least as long as folks don't mind recycled motifs. They can work their butts off--translating the creative for mass consumption--and as long as they make it homogonized enough, and keep enough of their creative frustration out of the way, they can make six figures.

The maestros have it pretty good too. Pay your significant dues in the creative field and humble yourself to the powerbrokers and gatekeepers and you can make millions. It'll be quite a chore to keep your creativity alive while dealing with the uptight suits, but hey, you can take it out on your audience a little and you'll have plenty of hookers and drugs. Plus adulation and the spiritual authority of a god.

The true doers, though. If there are any yet--those who have forsaken the mope of the counterculture AND the vapidity of the mainstream--those are the people we have cut off. Those are the ideas we insist could not find any home--at any price.

The fresh, unpasteurized, organic, non-homoginized AND unironic, whole, non-deconstructed, unfiltered, uncredentialed--these are the ideas that we have denied any rewards. They still trickle in--like they were rare (HA!), like the nature of the universe were stingy--on the backs of tainted beats and the middle of otherwise dry passages.

And their infrequency--their rarity--we then use to justify the price cap we've put in place to stifle them. There's only ever one or two good songs an album. That magazine isn't even worth the $5 they charge. I think I'll wait for that movie on DVD.

And why not? As an audience, our rabid support never led to an increase in price! Unlike oil, unlike recyclables, unlike corn, unlike ancient forests, unlike water, unlike garbage, unlike even love in our realtionships--when we wanted more and loved more, when we lived an inspired life and interacted with full faith we got better products and more choice in every other sector. We were rewarded!

But not with culture. With culture, the more we love it the more we go without. The more we support it, the less new stuff we get. Why? When we get inspired by love and buy flowers, plan a romantic date, shave and let go of our insecurity, we get more love--EVEN IF WE HAVE TO PAY MORE.

The same with cell phones, cars, shoes, everything--when we love it more we get more love. More choice, re-issues, upgrades.

But not with music. With music we love it and get re-treads. With books we love it and get references to references. Post-modernism.

We have cut off the way to get more love. The only inteaction we have with artists is our payment. We go to more and much more expensive shows but that just gets us more expensive shows--NOT BETTER ALBUMS!

Not more artists. Not a broader range of creativity. Just more and more expensive shows. Larger VIP areas with better looking women serving better beer and nachos.

Note to Western Civ: it wasn't the nachos that we went to the concert for. It wasn't even the concert. It was the music.

When we watch more football we get arena football, frisbee football :), bigger defensive backs, harder hits, more color commentary--we get a football culture. And richer, more theatrical players. More capital looking for more NFL type avenues to invest in.

But buy more CDs? More iPods and iTunes? Go to more concerts? It gives us nothing--because the price is fixed based upon the cost of the materials that USED to be required to distribute the content. Which is like saying what's important and valuable about the bible is what kind of paper it's printed on. The ink used.

So, if you really want a Dance Dance Revolution. If you want new feelings, new perspectives--new fun--in your art, in your culture. In your music, in your movies, in your magazines, in your books, in your tv.

If you really want it--pay for it! And I guarantee you will get it. My book is available for $120--and may god bless those who have bought it already. So there's no reason to mope about the state of our culture unless you haven't heard of The Love Artist.

Now I know what you're thinking. Because I already thought it--repeatedly. But movies used to be good. Music used to be great at a fixed price point. Books were wonderful!

Yes, there was a "golden era" with fixed price points. Where the entry to the market was easier (no suits and ass tight number crunchers in Hollywood), where creative freedom was there for the macho taking (now you have to be established, or hugely popular--have to earn your creative freedom)--and very importantly--the alternatives to being an artist were four times as bad!

These mostly boomers got in early, before the market was saturated and made a good name for themselves, and some great culture. But things are different. And most of today's Brandos and Scorceses say fuck it--I'll just CEO Amazon--and maybe later do what I want. They get married, a few kids, make a few more connections to their job than they thought (and many more compromises), lose the spark, and boom, they're done. Working on wireless standards rather than cultural bandwidth.

Put it this way--the earliest racers in the Tour de France were coal miners, for whom a bike ride around the country seemed like a month with their feet up on the fucking Riviera. Throw in better food, a few bottles of wine and fourteen times the [female attention]--not to mention daylight and fresh air!--and not many of them considered going back to the mines.

But would a graphic designer today do the same? With a nice desk job, a great loft overlooking the Champs-Elysee, a smoking girlfriend, and a trip to Prague coming up?

Not unless you got the serious checkbook out.

In almost every industry you can likely find a time when it was done right because that was the right thing to do. I own a 1939 Schwinn that's beat like no body's business and still works beautifully. Because it was made bullet proof--at a mass market price.

Because China wasn't yet available. Because the unions weren't that strong, that corrupt or that entitled yet. Because people didn't expect weekends, or sick leave or pensions. Because steel was cheap and consumers not used to parting with their money for anything less than a food or a long term investment. (Which it turns out, the bike was).

If you think you can re-create ANY of these golden era attributes with regard to culture, please be my guest. And please contact me, as you must have several billion with absolutely no regard for what it took to put it together.

Otherwise, please consider either buying or making goods, services and content that are EXACTLY what you want. Preferably buying AND making.

You can't outsource culture and you can't get it cheap. What we're doing right now is essentially using child labor to produce it--having bands and artists start while still in school--and what we get is a very robust youth culture. No surprise there.

If we want an adult culture, it's very simple, we just pay what it costs for adults to do the work. (Or--just be adults and charge what it takes us to make it.) Either approach will work. Both will make it go like gangbusters.

(It'll bust a lot of gangs too--as they find that their considerable creativity and balls could be put to use being adequately compensated--but that's another story).

Love.