Be White and Die

I had a bit of a realization after last night's post.

It's not the money y'all are most afraid of.

It's not even premium art, higher prices or even the appearance of arrogance.

It's being white.

I've been so white for so long, and so enjoyably, that I completely forgot that even the name of my undertaking is heresy.

"Racist".

Inappropriate. (Maybe white folks most loaded term.)

Or, as they say it now, cause they don't even call you the thing itself..

Wouldn't some people see that as racist?

It's not even fear but the fear of fear.

Whoo--

We're some ab-stract motherfuckers. That's for sure.

I was just as surprised when the first guy I asked for money ($7 mil for 1/3 the company—and you'll never see those terms again) couldn't get past it.

Before I even said what it was—and this was a guy who knew me and had seen how I roll for years—he asked what the name was.

I replied White Gold and it was all downhill from there.

He wasn't white, he insisted.

White people don't even exist! (Which may be true, but for different reasons than he insisted, I'd suggest).

There is not ethnic or racial catagory called white people was his reasoning.

Oh yes there motherfucking is, was mine.

And it's one of the—if not the—most entrenched, certain and exactly enforced realities on this planet.

Just ask anyone who's not.

They'll tell you.

As long as you don't seem too white.

Ask Tiger Woods if white people exist.

Well, he claims he's not black, so maybe he wouldn't be the best.

But I'd still be he believes in white people.

Playing on the PGA tour?

If he wouldn't say it in public, I'll bet he would in the gym.

And if he wouldn't...

No, his dad is black.

He may be able to insist that he's not black—and may even be right..

That has nothing to do with me.

But I'll be he wouldn't deny that white people exist.

Barack either.

In fact, ask anyone you like.

Except white people, of course.

One of the great strengths of white people is insisting that they don't exist.

(Which, unfortunately, makes them somewhat like the Klan in that respect).

It's something of an extension of Protestant pre-destination:

If we rich, then god must have wanted it so.

Or—since we're in charge, we get to call everyone else what we want, African-American, Pakistani, European, rich, poor, needy, worthless, important, whatever..

Yet we defy classification altogether.

Smashing, Bif, would you like another Compari?!

And that might even be the most accurate definition of white people:

Those who, by their own insistance, defy classification.

(Does that mean Tiger is getting closer?)

Now these days, being white certainly doesn't mean you're a certain skin color, even I'll admit that.

But that doesn't mean the term or designation is any less powerful.

There are plenty of folks insisting they're not black actors, or Arab comics, or Asian painters, or even female bankers..

All striving to get into that arena of non-classification that white men created and then excluded just about everyone from.

And that's their right.

And why deny them?

Everyone should get a chance to be white for a while.

For as long as they can handle it.

But if you're already white..

And whiteness IS an aspirational thing..

Maybe the most aspirational thing..

All sorts of Italians, Germans, Jews, French, and even Irish have worked their asses off becoming white.

And lots more folks are doing the same now: Indians, Chinese, blacks, etc..

And there's nothing wrong with it..

It's just that there's no there there.

There's no magic portal that opens when you get accepted to the Harvard Club (or is Princeton more white?).

In fact, what most folks on their way to being white—and this includes a whole lot of white people themselves—don't know, is that these men created the designation precisely because they DIDN'T feel special.

Not because they did and wanted to protect it.

Put it this way: nothing happens when you make your first four hundred mill.

When you get asked to sit on the board of GM.

When you finally get into the country club.

Nothing happens.

Except that you realize that you've given up a whole lot of yourself in the search for acceptance by some mysterious other.

Some group or judge you've never met.

And why does nothing happen?

Because whiteness is completely defined by otherness.

It's just people who have completely dissociated.

To the point that they don't even believe themselves.

(How they then get an intricate set of rules pertaining to even using salad forks—with no authority in sight—is anyone's guess.)

And both of the two last statements bring us to perhaps the clearest fact about white folks:

They will snap on your ass!

Guaranteed.

When push comes to shove and most likely just when you need it most.

Because what it's really about is control.

I was born in control.

It was etched in my frontal lobe.

And most other lobes as well.

Self-control, management, other control, discernment, and a whole bunch of other controls that I didn't even recognize.

And for ages, I tried what most other self-respecting white young people do:

I tried to become even more other.

I tried to be down with black people.

I associated with the poor, artists, minorities, women—anyone who was more other than me.

There the truth must lie, I was sure.

With other folks.

Folks who aren't in control.

If being white, male and in control was so wrong..

As my history books described and even my mother, father, and sisters knew..

Then being female, black and out of control—or feeling it—or punk, ashamed, guilty, remorseful, angry, whatever, must be right.

Ah, to be other!

How relaxing and authentic it must be!

How real!

I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that that didn't work either.

And then, one day..

I got far enough in to see.

It wasn't that I needed to be other..

But rather that I wanted to do what I felt other folks were doing.

Which was being them motherfucking selves.

WHAT?

BE A MOTHERFUCKING WHITE MAN WITH MONEY??!!

Are you fucking crazy?

Be a well-educated, soo-fist-icated, tight lipped, white-ass bitch?

And do it proudly?

Happily?!

Are you stupid?

And if that sounds like at least a challenge, coming from where I did—which was a solidly progressive white background, then you are right.

And if that sounds like career suicide coming from anywhere, then you may be partially right—but only very short term.

Cause life is long, and the tides of change swift.

And there's literally no where else to go.

Who would have thought in 1957, with the whole world laughing at the four fey, ostracized, unpopular Beats, that their way would soon rule the world.

And we'd be paying $900 for a pair of jeans that had been taken from their original new state—and destructed according to what was seen as an authentic Beat manner.

And that we'd laugh at the people wearing $90, less Beat jeans as posers, pretenders and fakes?

When all they had was each other and some sorry-assed San Francisco real estate—fucking pussies—and what everyone else had was the entire economy, and the rest of the real estate in the western hemisphere?

Go ahead and drop out you losers!

It just means more room at Harvard, in the management training program, in the crisp new suburb with everything I ever wanted for me.

But they flipped the script.

Just like Luther, Robert Johnson, the punks, our founding fathers, and a whole bunch of others.

And the value, and the money, and the love and the women and the work and the rewards and just about everything else went one way:

With the fucking truth!

It didn't matter how big anyone's bank account was, how many titles motherfuckers had, or how solid the aristocracy thought the army's allegiance was.

Nothing mattered but the truth.

And still who alligns themselves with the truth?

Who?

Who doesn't kiss ass at work.

Or defer to the jackass in traffic?

Who doesn't go along to get along?

And hope to high heaven that someone, somewhere is watching him be "good", or paying more attention to what's in his heart than what he does and will reward and love him some day.

Despite how he feels about himself and what he continues to do on a daily basis.

If there is one certainty that I can find in today's landscape, it's that us white folks have made ourselves white.

And we're either that or nothing.

We're not going back.

And we can't go black.

Sure, go visit the homeland—but you don't live there. You don't know the dances or like the traditions enough to stay.

So—what's left to do?

Be your freaky-ass, uptight and all-right white self.

And get into it, baby.

There is no other route to the self discovery that so many seek today.

Yoga won't do it, Chi Gong won't do it, not Tai Chi, Kabbalah, or anything else—no matter how foreign, fancy or high fallutin.

How could a foreign movie—with subtitles—tell us more about ourselves than one of our own?

Even if it wasn't what we wanted to hear.

Maybe that's it—our own shit isn't telling us anything we want to hear.

It's time to pay some dues and what's happening in France, or Istanbul, or Fiji suddenly looks mighty appealing.

Hmmm.

And it's not that they have no value. Foreign stuff may inspire, inform, or even help..

But ultimately what are you going to do besides be your white-ass self?

Where can a guru point but ultimately back at yourself?

What can any god say but YOU ARE?

And so why not just skip em?

And go straight to it?

And then go guruing, or to the movies or wherever you were going to go anyway..


AS Y-O-U-R S-E-L-F !!!!!

How are you going to get to just be without just being white—or male, or tall or 143 pounds, or blue-eyed or born in Des Moines —or whatever you are the fuck right now first?

You gonna skip that part?

Try to be cute?

Get an exemption?

You going to try to sneak in with a levatating Indian guru?

Or take enough classes with a Yanni'd goddess worshipper that you might receive an exemption?

Are yo going to feed enough other people that you won't have to admit your own copious hungers?

You gonna read more Krishnamurti?

Get more New Age?

Fix the political system?

Reduce your carbon footprint?

Just what conditions are necessary for you to be yourself?

—Do you have to read White Gold? :)

And even if any of that WERE helpful—how can you doing something—anything—that you are completely in charge of—make you anything but exactly more of who you already are?

And if you're a white man..

Or even a white woman..

How you gonna get past that?

Without saying it?

Without being it?

Without accepting it.

Ever?

You've got to go through it—at some point.

And the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned—though there's no rush.

Unless you want to be yourself while yo go about all this other stuff.

And what this involves is exactly why the name White Gold works so perfectly well..

What this involves is giving up the control and being in charge to which we white folks have always held fast.

We make the money then control how we give it away to poor folks.

We didn't just make less in the first place, or relax from the start so that others would have a fighting chance.

No, we competed ruthlessly and then make everyone else compete to receive a handout.

They compete in pity of course, but we try to make them avoid that as well.

Anything but give up control.

Anything but give up labeling ourselves as rich and others as poor.

Even though we haven't been able to use those terms for a long time.

The career path is well-worn now:

Make stupid retirement money guiltily doing something arbitrary and then redeem yourself by opening a non-profit.

Which includes telling others that they should no longer refer to themselves as poor—because they're now economically challenged, or differently abled, or otherly gifted or whatever new spin we put on fucked.

Or whatever.

Anything but give up control.

The truth is you can't get into White Gold without getting past white.

And paying to do so.

If manual gold miners had to get down in the mire and muck—the shit—to reach tangible gold..

Then emotional and creative miners have to get past their greatest fears to get their gold.

And for white folks—the richest market on the planet..

The richest market in the history of the planet..

One currently starving for culture of any sort—real, imagined, corny or great..

Our motherfucking fears are:

In order:

Fucking.

Money.

Being white.

Feeling it.

And probably some form of reaping what we've sown.

Call it payback.

After a couple thousand years of crusades, colonialism, atomic bombs, mideast interventions, determined economic competition, slavery, witheld votes, etc.

And that doesn't even scratch the emotional and energetic dalliances.

The icy looks, the disappointed glances, the withheld recognition, the false enthusiasm.

And the crazy thing is that no one else even seems to care.

It's us that's keeping score.

Holding ourselves to it.

Prodding ourselves guiltily on.

Other folks, I imagine, get mad as hell when it drops on their shit..

Who wouldn't.

But the nature of the universe is one of instant letting go.

And life itself—the loving and relaxed present—eternally re-asserts itself over the past.

As long as you've yourself let it go.

But first you've got to admit it.

Get real.

Or—maybe all that is still karma and the fear of retribution..

After all, we've achieved glorious greatness as well.

We've built power plants around the world, installed trains, roads, clean water.

Designed and given away entire social and economic systems, manufacturing processes and educational curriculi.

We figured out a good portion of the world's infectious diseases.

No, we haven't solved all of them yet, but hey, we get to do what we want as well.

That's how it works.

So maybe the forgiveness, the letting go has already happened.

Is dependent on nothing.

And we can sink into it any time we want?

Or was always permanently available?

I still don't see how we'll get to where or who we want to be without being who we are..

But I don't imagine the universe holds it against us.

Like we do.

Anyway..

The gold is in the white.

Just like the gold used to be in the shit.

And I'm not saying that the white is any less fearsome than the shit once was.

It's just where the considerable gold is.

And realize this:

The term shit is now bandied about routinely and casually.

Just 40 years after it was even allowed to be uttered publicly.

Same with fuck and cock and pussy.

And there was a huge, huge, huge amount of money to be made in the mining of those "inappropriate" fears.

And an enormous amount of fun that had never even crossed "decent" folk's minds.

Along with a gang of movies, music, books, magazines and conversations that were better than anything Leave it to Beaver had ever even dreamed of.

And it all became real almost overnight.

So,

Assuming that things are speeding up..

And knowing that the internet moves culture faster than the carrier pigeons of the Woodstock age..

We can expect the remaining vestiges of social and personal fear to yield even larger benefits in an even shorter amount of time with even greater—and less anticipated—cultural benefits than any previous cultural revolution.

More and quicker than Modernism, post-modernism—anything ever.

And with even more beautiful results.

And even greater effect.

This is what the fuck White Gold is about.

Applying all the hard core science and economic acumen that us white folks—us mainstream westerners—have..

And blinging shit out like never before.

By cracking the code.

And flipping the script.

Making what we actually WANT for once.

Putting our own shit on the line like countless bluesmen, outsiders, African tribes, and artists have done for centuries.

And getting to feel it as a result.

Getting to live INSIDE of a culture, instead of living outside and always feeling like the god damned Jonses have figured it out.

(Even though Jones Sr. is on meds and the Mrs. is OCD.)

And taking that love global for anyone who wants to create or participate fruitfully.

Or even unfruitfully.

Quite literally anything that people even think they love will thrive and find support.

And, since we're some rich motherfuckers, we won't have to starve a day.

no frustrated or starving artist.

What about well financed artists?

What about Venture Artists?

What about the suits tracking down the freaks like their summer houses depended on it?

The walkabout will be fully catered.

It will still require the SAME DEGREE of FAITH!

But no one's gonna cut off your heat.

You couldn't fail if you tried.

You're too well networked, my friend.

Way too well loved by too many people with way too much money.

All you have to do is take responsibility.

Full responsibility.

Start leveraging all the privilege into something someone actually wants.

Be a leader.

Which, at this point, means taking people where they are BOTH deathly afraid of AND dying to go.

And all you've got to do to do that—is go there yourself.

Which is exactly what you want anyway.

And I can guarantee..

It's way more fun.

Feels way better.

Is much more relaxing.

Tastier.

It's everything you want.

But you've got to admit it first.

You're white.

You were born white and you're going to die white.

Or, translating a black saying:

There ain't nothing you gotta to do but be white and die.

White G Designs the World--The Five Year Plan

My book is selling at least 500 copies a week. ($220,000/month)

The mass media, having nothing else to chew on, can't restrain itself. A million and a half in ads has sparked a fifty year storm feeding frenzy.

Everybody knows White Gold.

They love it! Finally a loving, honest deep culture! A place to go. Room to grow. Something to aspire to. Something that inspires! Culture without ironic brats in the way.

They hate it! What an elitist fuck! How will high school dropouts ever afford it? He thinks he's better than us. Delusional, hateful, pretentious sell-out. Combining love with money--what is he, crazy?

How dare he?!!

(Then they read it, but that's another post).

With overhead that's very conservatively $2 mil the first year. (It'll likely sell at least 1000 books a week). Not much, but certainly enough to secure what I'll need to build.

And what will I build, you ask?

First the basics.

Good men's clothing. Like big money, good mens clothing tends to fall into two camps: paunchy, golfy and skinny, mini.

The first could be found at Marios in Seattle. 50s guys who made their money. And you can't find a straight cut sweater to save your life. Pants all have pleats--even the 32s. The colors are muted and boring and everything looks like its someone uptight trying to relax. Oversized to hide the paunch, and maybe for golfing? Who knows.

The second was found at Barneys. Very heeip. Graphics on suitcoats, "distressed" (read very precisely ripped) hems, poorly knit sweaters (poorly knit on purpose of course). Intentionally ugly colors. Stuff trying to look like it came from a thrift store. Dark, morose stuff trying to help rich kids look punky. Or, more likely, trying to help gay men look like straight rich kids trying to look nonchalant.

Everything here was tight and stingy. Slim cut. For those too loose who want to look put together.

Two strikes and you're out.

The huge market, and where all the growth is is straight down the middle. Where is the love for a normal, well adjusted, happy, reasonably relaxed person? Someone who's not trying to make a statement or "relax" with his clothes?

Who is doing what he wants already? Who doesn't want to change with the times. Who knows who he is already. Who isn't going to buy into either square toe or bulb toe shoes but wants exactly what he got the last time he bought shoes--the right ones.

Cut right down the middle.

Straightforward. No baggy, floppy and no stingy, hyper cuts. Just normal stuff. No zig, no zag. --Eternal.

And beautiful, vibrant, rich, bright, warm colors; exquisite fabrics and spot-on detailing. And the basics of course.

I didn't mention in my historical post the other day that I built a very successful graphic design firm during my punk dayz. (I say punk more to communicate my dedication to a specific set of ideals, I never considered myself a "punk rocker" or "grunge" but a person doing what he wanted to and thought what was best).

I thought up, directed and executed multi-million dollar ad campaigns worldwide.

And rode my skateboard to lunch. And played pool and guitar in my filthy 10,000 SF co-op warehouse in downtown Seattle.

That was pretty good. We were paying $120/month apiece in rent and doing work for Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, The David Letterman Show, NBC, VW, a bunch of other national and international clients and a million bands and record labels. Nirvana, Sub Pop, Atlantic, sunglass and snowboard companies.

It's fun to get a $20,000 check when your overhead is closer to $1300 a month--including food. More Faith/Void splits and deep soul 45s for me.

I also had a clothing company. T hree. It folded (poor price points and punkish clientele do not a good business plan make).

I mention it just to let y'all know that I know what I'm doing. Cause I know one of you out there is considering dropping the 2 millie even as a lark. And why not? There's nothing else the fuck going on.

I've had patterns made, overseen production and the whole nine. I was even briefly commissioned to design garments for an action sports retailer.

My own shit's gonna be right down the middle. All this extreme nonsense has messed everyone up. Communicate with cut and color. As few logos, labels and nonsense as possible. We wear it not the other way around.

Just make the damn thing and enjoy the long tail of sales. :) If it doesn't sell well enough for the White G Boutiques, just carry a few online. Or have them made to order.

No limited editions--that's all manipulation and devalues the brand long term (yes, it does). Once you get cool enough to want warmth again, you'll know that instinctually.

As long as we can make it, it's available. If you're lucky enough to see someone else in the same thing, you probably have a lot to talk about anyway.

So that's the clothes, I can do that off the side while recording the album. I imagine my wife will want to do the women's side. Have Borrelli manufacture so we don't have to ride them like a sweatshop. Jeans cut in every fabric. Casual suits with jean cut pants? Who knows. No worn or dirty stuff though, and likely very few graphics beyond logo Ts--straight cuts for straight men.

For shoes, maybe Churches--no they're not comfortable enough. It's gonna have to feel like going barefoot on a white sand beach. Some classic tan bucks. Some bluchers. (Have LL Bean do those). And Nike for the sneaks. Maybe classic re-issues with our own colorways. Sans swoosh? Though a pair of original K Swiss in white with gold stripes would be dope as well. Might as well contract them both. It's not like there are any rules. White G designs the world.

Oh--and my kingdom for a pair of decent brown oxfords. Why can't anyone cut it straight? Not too much sole, perfect round toe, probably cordovan. Re-soleable.

A pair of Jack Purcells too. In natural canvas. And maybe blue or red if you're nice.

Sportjackets I'm not sure yet. I haven't found one I can't do without. I'll try local tailors Oxxford when I have more scrilla. It'd be fun to use some US makers, but only if they're the best. I'm not going to make anything I wouldn't wear myself.

I'll do polo shirts too--no logo but you'll know just looking at it--and maybe dress shirts as well. Who knows.

Socks and undergarments for sure. Right off the bat. I feel like I'm fighting for air with my Calvins. He has a better waistband than Ralph Lauren, but even wearing the XL it's too tight. Relax people. You need blood flow up and down. Nothing bunches up your chi like a too tight belt.

Athletic shorts and sweatsuits are a slam dunk. They only make them for gang-bangers and geeks. Don't rich folks work out? Huge gap right down the middle.

Socks--so help me god this is a spiritual problem. They are all too tight. I have skinny feet and it takes me considerable effort to get the suckers on. They are all machine made, which is fine, but adjust the sucker. Make bigger ones. They're cutting off my circulation. Compensate for shrinkage in your wool ones.

Gloves and jackets--a brown leather car-ish coat. A fake fur college-style old time raccoon coat if I can find a loving enough fur source or substitute. Regular coats are surprisingly hard to find. A Gortex one that isn't turbo and zing, zang hyper. A down one without the North Face logo and a better quilting pattern (though they can make it). Better colors too. Who cares about black anymore? It was played in the 80s.

And a fleece cardigan. And a flax or linen work coat. (I've got a vintage model for that one.)

All with better colors, organic fabrics, non-toxic dyes, made by craftspeople with healthcare in developed economies, a brand that means something real and likely isn't even mentioned except for a tag pinned to the garment when you first get it. (If you're the only one without labels, everyone knows it's you, right?)

If it's shipped in plastic, which it likely won't be, it'll be the kind made out of corn. The boxes will be recycled cardboard and re-used whenever possible. And recycled thereafter. Soy ink and recycled paper are a given. As are whatever we can do to save energy.

[We won't go crazy, we're not hippies--and can't handle florescent light--but suffice it to say that we won't feel comfortable unless we're ahead of all but the lunatic fringe. About 90% pure. Low VOC paint, double-paned windows, and renewable wood flooring are a given. Minimal to no packaging will be standard and presentation will be decidedly low-key. If we did a beauty line, it would likely be re-fillable at stores (but not by the customer--the person there would take it, clean it out, refill it and wipe it down while you were hanging out--with a cup of tea and a copy of The Love Artist.)]

What else? A Lexus LS 460h with recycled leather and plastic inside. As eco groovy and beautiful as possible. And they'll buy a pre-catalytic converter car off the streets and scrap it for every one sold. Which will save multiple times the carbon that you'll create over the lifetime of the car. Now that's progress.

That should give my staff enough to start work on while a few dead men walking take meetings on the movie. (I have ideas for a series of three--more the making of The Love Artist than a re-do--possibly to be shot together. Fast and loose). I'd also be open to having other folks shoot The Love Artist from different angles.

Why tie yourself down with exclusives? Let them compete. All it takes to film a movie these days is a couple $5K cameras and some computers. They'll go straight to DVD and theaters and download and rental. However you want it. I don't manipulate or play games, just deliver, deliver, deliver.

There should be a TV show as well. I'll see if the Entourage guys have a single spiritual bone in their bodies. This I just want to produce. No acting or writing. The method should have enough legs by them that it could stand on its own. A good deal of it will be training people to take enough risks to even give it a chance to happen.

The failures should be just as interesting as the successes, because they won't be pasturized or homoginized. They'll still be real.

With all that percolating--remember, no timelines, certainly no dead-lines--I should have five to seven songs out, my corporate structure defined (lots of independent contractors and partnerships), and key allies identified. And will likely be interested in a bit of re-couping.

Also, if I don't have my house by then, I'll be highly interested in moving, getting settled, etc. But it's not like any of this will take more than 20-30 hours a week. If it does, I'm not doing it right. I'm not inspiring but controlling. Not playing but working. And I've already done that.

And we already have unlimited cultural artifacts resulting from that process. And they're all worth less than having fun and expressing who you are.

I know I want to start a magazine. That'll be dope. Stories about Krishnamurti's sex life. John the Baptist's secret history (that's that DaVinci Code stuff), reviews of books like Art and Physics, Lov-o-nomics, etc. Plus, what stars really think about getting enlightened. It's like shooting fish in a barrel--how could you not beat our current best--Vanity Fair doesn't even have stories anymore and The New Yorker doesn't even believe in photographs (what are they Muslim?).

Communicate with the image, yo. It's not unholy.

And then how could I grow. Movies with real sex that aren't dumb or art films. That would be radical. A reality series about artists working to bring the next big thing. It kind of writes itself.

By that time I'll have people submitting demos, books, movies and business proposals by the scores. And will have some very astute businessfolks executing the best.

This culture is built to grow. I maybe haven't emphasized that enough yet. From my experience with the reluctant heros of the counterculture I learned that one loud and clear--if you want to make the world a more loving place, you MUST have a clear vision of success.

My vision is cities across the world populated by increasing numbers of artists and businessfolks interested in human growth making more applying their passions than anyone in the economy working with conflicts.

The most powerful artists get the best houses and first pick of most other stuff. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies aspire to create content--get in front of the content pipeline. Grow the balls necessary to be human in public. To engage with vulnerability--take risks instead of controlling them.

Within ten years, my decidedly artistic mind estimates it should be the largest industry on the planet. Not to mention the greenest, the funnest, the sexiest and the most relaxed. Two hour lunches are mandatory. Go home and see your wife, all you have is one call today.

How could you compete favorably at love without constantly enjoying it?

[Then there are the WG un-branded cell phones, the home line and video games (start your own global art movement, pick colors, instruments, logos, artists, partners, theory, influences, etc. Then paint the pictures, take the meetings, find your muse, convince the parents, tell your friends who you really are etc.]

No Thing Else To Do

The reason I'm starting a mature mass culture is not because I dislike the culture we have, quite the opposite.

WHen I was a kid I jonesed for Neil Young like it was crack. Every day I'd go home and put on "Everyone Knows the is Nowhere". Usually followed by Quadrophenia and if I was lucky (meaning if my neighbor had let me borrow his picture disk), Metallica's Creeping Death.

I was so relieved to have someone who knew that this WAS nowhere, because it really was at the time.

There were very few kids who skateboarded. Everything shut down at 5pm. There wasn't anything downtown. And even when an album like The Ramones first one came out, you were lucky if you could even find it new.

Finding it used, which I could barely afford, required constant searching in the record stores along the University District's Ave.

If it was a hip-hop song, forget about it. One kid I knew had The Message. I have no idea where he got it. Schooly D, The Fila Fresh Crew, or Luke? Forget about it. You could hear it at a party if you partied with the right people (who likely had it on a mix tape--meaning they were or had dated one of the two DJs at school), but otherwise you were SOL, my friend.

Remember the time before the internet? Before computers. Before cell phones, CD players, and magazines?

I was lucky in Seattle, at least I knew the one place you could find a Thrasher skateboard magazine if they hadn't already sold out of the latest issue (in which case you probably bought an old one and read it anyway). When I moved to Chicago I couldn't find it anywhere.

Which led to a lot of lengthy searches.

And even waiting a month to find out if Danny Way had done another McTwist seemed like cruel and unusual punishment.

Cause no one had ever done anything even remotely like that before.

And just the simple act skateboarding could easily incur the wrath of otherwise god-fearing citizens.

But it was worth it. Who ever thought that you could do an activity that was a) fun, b) creative, c) had it's own music, and d) had its own style.

And the magazine that did come out was so much more delicious because of that hunger. Because there was nothing else. Because it was a Teenage Wasteland. And it was only teenage wasteland. (It was likely adult wasteland too, but that was their own fault--more on that later).

And when Devo hit--whoo-whee. How could it get any better? The excitement was palpable. From nothing to everything.

I spent my days drawing designs for the bottom of boards. I thought Ray "Bones" Rodriguez was the coolest, even though I had never seen him skate. (Twenty years later he showed up at a party at my house--how's that for making your own reality?)

In a sense, getting my first pop culture was like copping my first feel. Since my life had been, up to that point, almost exclusively defined by what it had lacked, when that thing showed up, it was like a flash flood, a snowstorm, hail, a drought, going broke and hitting the lottery all at once.

It was like everything.

And for a long time I just sat around wondering why we did all this other nonsense?

Why go to school? Why do sports? Why even wear clothes or move around? Why didn't we just do THAT!!??

All day every day.

Spoken like a true addict.

(And I was pretty clear about this at the time. I loved coffee so much when I was in college because I thought it was the drug you could be addicted to forever without getting messed up--ha!)

But I was a good boy and so I went to school, went and did sports, and reserved my fun for the weekends, which usually meant eating, a twelve pack, trying to get some and, if failing, running the streets with similarly positioned friends, going for hamburgers, sneaking into places and/or jumping off of bridges, boats and buildings into various bodies of water (called "jumping", as in "Hey, let's go jumping).

But that only lasted through college. After that I was burnt. I wanted to chuck it all and live. So while my then Republican girlfriend hit the career center, I plotted how to drop out.

Move to San Francisco and skateboard was #1, but I didn't have the guts. So I moved to Burlington, VT and worked menial jobs while living in a very artistically minded group house. And wore the wackest clothes I could find.

(Which was hard back then--as they weren't even making any yet. Usually it was ill-fitting thrift store chef's pants combined with some kind of paisley dress shirt mistake, either Cons or Patrick Ewing high-tops, and a thirty pound Swedish motorcycle cop leather jacket I had talked off a friend from NYC at school. [Warning: it did not look as glamorous as it may sound.]

And had scraggily long blonde hair. (Again, more Jenna Elfman than Fabio.)

It was all good fun until a roomate started dealing drugs out of the house. Oh, and another roommate invited a young woman I had called to ask out to come live with us--what a first date: her moving in.

And so the experiment in communal living ended. And I got the hell out like I had the chicken pox.

Returning to Seattle, what would later become the grunge thing was in full swing. I knew a bunch of the people from high school, and it was hands down the best thing going, so I signed up, lock, stock and barrel.

I was actually already following it all from school--and having friends secure availables like the first Mudhoney record on a trip to NYC, and through snagging mix-tapes on visits back home.

From there is was only a matter of throwing out the tie-dies and Dead tapes for a few "Ride the Fucking Six-Pack" Green River Ts with the bottom cut off--grunge was glam you'll remember until it split into the Mudhoney vs. Pearl Jam, underground vs. mainstream thing. (A split which was eventually overcome by Nirvana.)

After a brief stint as a waiter (and getting fired for having two earrings, long hair and wearing Doc Martens), I relocated to grunge ground zero: a Single's-like four plex just off Broadway that had not only housed hordes of musicians but also the man many called the Seattle Scene's mayor.

And took a job as a bike messenger.

Boy that sucked.

But the parties were good. And the drugs relatively plentiful. Rent was cheap and there was often free food, BBQs, and when people started getting bigger, lots of everything backstage at shows for free. All you had to do was get there. (Which usually involved walking).

But the tolls were getting louder.

I had lost a few friends to drugs and alcohol in college but now it got amplified. This wasn't something that was being entertained to blow off steam on the weekends, but a way of life. If I drank twice a week in high school, by college it was three or four times.

During the rock years I don't even remember, not because I was blacked out but just because it wasn't anything distinct. The question wasn't if you wanted to it was did you have the $1.89 for a forty, another $2.10 for smokes and was anyone around?

And then everything blew up.

I thought Nirvana on Saturday Night Live was success. I thought Elliott Smith on the Grammies and gold records and the whole world coming to visit was us winning. (Plus, the foreign and out-of-town journalists were always good for drinks and meals--none of the actual stars wanted to see them so us hangers (on and out) were only too happy to oblige.)

Sure I thought that Ralph Lauren's line of flannels, and Sears' Doc Marten knock-offs were dumb, but more because you could get the real thing easily enough, not because I didn't think everyone shouldn't dress like that.

I was in it TO have everyone dress like that. I thought that's what winning was.

And I definitely wanted to win.

I had wanted to win since I was a pimple-faced high school kid.

I wasn't a punk rocker in high school, I was one of the popular kids. Voted class muncher and biggest preppy (a new fashion on the West Coast--similar to being "GQ" but more relaxed).

But I was short. And had horrible skin. And was skinny. And obnoxious. So I fell on the "aspirational" side of popular. It's not that I was ever not invited to a party, I was probably invited to most of them (or was throwing them, or securing the kegs and taps through some money-making schemula), it's more that I never quite felt like I was whatever I felt I should be.

And I'm not sure this isn't omnipresent among the "popular" classes. I hung out with basically East Coast landed gentry in college and they sure looked like they had it together, but I can't say I ever felt any of the sense of entitlement rub off.

I could SEE it everywhere. But scratch here or there and I'm not sure any of us weren't just running.

Which is why I ran back to punk rock in Seattle.

And there I tried my got-damnest to fit in as well--as hard as it was to shake the feeling that I wasn't "true". That I wasn't really down for the count. That I wasn't just slumming. (When I bought my chain wallet--probably in 1990 or so, I promised myself I would wear it forever.)

Plus I wasn't really feeling the women.

And that I took as my greatest failing as a human. I wasn't down, I wasn't real because I liked things, none the least my women, clean, beautiful, kind, relaxing--soft.

Which meant I was soft.

This was, of course, a blasphemy for which I had to pay. Surely I would paint no great paintings (which is what I ostensibly did back then) until I was hard, until I was one with the people.

And the people, of course, were unafraid of dirt, of life's callouses, of really living.

So I washed less. All my clothes were already thrift store (a movement pioneered in my life by my parents) but now even fit made you suspect.

I cut my own hair, lived in a condemned building, and drove a car that I had traded a six-pack for (that the guy I got it from was dating my ex didn't seem to phase me).

And then it started spitting me out.

None of the women I was trying hard to like because I should (even though I wasn't attracted to them) were working. (In fact one even wondered if I was gay after too many nights of me sleeping over and not doing enough. Hell--soon enough I was wondering if I was gay--after second guessing my natural inclinations for so long).

And the ones I was attracted to wouldn't sit still long enough for me to even get a fix. Too much drama.

And I didn't leave quickly. And I didn't leave willingly. I left kicking and screaming.

I had voluntarily left the "norms". They were all square, didn't know what was going on.

But at least then I had a place to go. It was easy--and felt natural--to leave because I was just following what I wanted. Even if what I wanted was to question what I wanted. And to question what others wanted.

To question everything.

But leaving that process of questioning, leaving my efforts to be "more sensitive" (interesting that that is what I was inwardly concentrating on while trying to protect myself with steel toed boots, be tough with nipple rings, and whatever else I was doing)--that was more like getting spit out.

Neutral Milk Hotel and Leonard Cohen were all I had. It's not like leaving Lawrence Welk for the first Pavement 10".

It's like leaving Pavement for nothing. No thing.

And of course, once I was alone with no thing, I was with myself.

And eventually I learned to just do the damn work. And eventually I passed the 50% mark, before which doing the right thing doesn't even seem to work very well. (After 50% the feelings build and multiply--using each other for reference).

This time in my life was a virtual hibernation. I lived in a tiny apartment across from a school, right by the corner of Summit and Union (fitting) and just thought (and felt).

I had already written The Love Artist and was working to promote it. And I had left my last roommate situation with the intent of getting a job while my book blew up.

I applied for just about everything. Bus driver. Waiter. I even tried to go back to old graphic design clients and start something up.

No dice.

What I got was $38,000 in debt.

It didn't help (my finances, that is, my soul it essentially saved) --it didn't help that I wad figured out half the equation. That I had to lock myself to my desires material, emotional and spiritual. And do it quickly.

For a while I thought I could spend my way to salvation. That was fun. I bought a Rolex. I remember my thinking quite clearly: "If I am in control of my own destiny and I make my own reality, then I just have to show this world that I've got the balls to be a rich artist."

That the jeweler dropper their no-return policy when the date-just wasn't working I consider complete proof of divine power on this planet. The universe, god, love--whatever--wanted me to both go through the experience of dropping $8 grand on a watch when I had only $8200 in the bank AND it wanted me to have $8200 in the bank so I wouldn't starve.

Plus, I didn't have the guts to wear it anyway. And my mom had given me the money. Bless her heart.

But that's what I was prepared to do.

And not to just have a watch. I don't even really use one (I do want a platinum Daytona, though--that's what it was).

I bought it because that's how firmly I believe in the sanctity of a world where people 1) make the absolute best they can make doing what they want 2) buy the absolute best they can buy with no regard to fear and 3) follow their deepest desires to discern both what they want to make and what they want to consume.

That's on my life. To this day I believe the exact same thing. I might not think that I can make this world by myself--no that's not true, I can make this world by myself. I am making this world by myself. I have made this world by myself.

And will be as richly rewarded for financially as I have been already emotionally.

What I didn't realize at the time--and why I didn't get to keep the watch--was that I had more to learn. That I was still afraid to wear it in front of my friends and family. That I still relinquished to them the setting of taboos for me--at least in part.

Hell, I had a hard enough time wearing my cashmere Donna Karan sportcoat. And that was black--the hipster color par excellence. I would never wear a black sportcoat now.

I also got guff for wearing pink. Still do, but I see it as a badge of honor now.

True pink (as opposed to ironic or hipster pink) is as unacceptable today as those damn chef's pants were back then. I can say that being an adult is as punk as beink a punk was back then--that being completely responsible for who I'm with, what I'm doing, what I want and how I live is just as powerful and just as forbidden as being completely irresponsible was back then--but it's not an intellectual exercise so it doesn't really matter.

Just like writing college papers about punk rock's influence on blah, blah, blah doesn't matter.

What matters is to do it.

I had a dream the other day that helped me understand my relationship to money, and why it has taken what feels to me like an eternity to solve it to my liking. (And how it is that I can go from utter and complete poverty, debt and lack of stability to being rich beyond even my [significant] dreams).

In this dream Martha Stewart was running a day care. There were kids running everywhere. Playing in the back yard, wilding out--just nuts.

And she was calm, cool and collected.

She was organized.

And ready.

You don't learn organization--real organization--in an organized setting. The Container Store is for organizational posers.

Dabblers. And as well it should be. Who wants to devote that much of their life to labeling clear plastic buckets and rearranging drawers? I firmly believe in the specialization of labor. And capitalism.

Which means let those who want to the most--who will pay the most to be allowed to do it--do it. Do you want to re-shingle your own roof?

I though not.

Where you learn real organization is in the absolute depths of chaos.

Where even the chaos is chaotic. Where even chaos theory appears patterned when you try to apply it--just so nothing will work or stick together.

Just so you can't get a leg up, a foothold, a grasp of what's happening.

Just so you can't take a single breath.

And if you survive that, you, my friend, will know the value of organization instincutually--it will be fused into the very core of your being.

You will radiate order. Bring order to dirt roads, unmarked graves and abandoned garbage dumps with a glance.

To really know the intersection of money and love, I have lived there forever. I have experienced most, if not all permutations. It's been easy, it's been brutal. I've had it given to me, I've had it snatched from my hands.

It's been magic, it's defied the laws of physics and common sense.

And this doesn't make me an expert. Or perfect. But it does make a good story.

And I can tell you, with every fiber in my being, that my book, sold for $120, from now until whenever I raise the price, will do more for the advancement of American literature specifically and global culture generally than any other single book ever written.

Not because I wrote it, I didn't even want to write it. I didn't want to stop bitching. I didn't want to stop believing that the audience was ignorant, deluded, and ruining the world just by living.

I didn't even want to stop believing that I was ignorant, deluded and ruining the world just by living my life as a privileged white man.

I just didn't have anything else to do.

Welcome to White Gold

It may be even more simple than I thought:

Consumers demand premium products.

Business delivers everywhere BUT culture, where its rational methods sully the true love a culture requires and fixed price points discourage a solution.

Economic development creates more premium consumers and erodes traditional culture.

The result is modern mass frustration. A longing for mature, warm, playful, inventive, intimate, relaxed, rested culture.

The only cure for this frustration without crashing the economy is the creation and consumption of a premium mass culture. Which requires both economic and artistic imagination--inspiration.

Enter White Gold.

White Gold is the premium, conscious, mass culture that scratches the unscratchable itch.

Honest and direct, mature and warm. Raw and loving. Sex. Supportive. Real.

The Love Artist is the first blossom of this new premium culture. The prototype.

The current, second, printing is just a couple hundred books. (Maybe even 100). That will launch a golden age.

Songs, movies, and magazines are on the way. As are the most loving clothes and consumer goods you've ever seen. If you'd like them now, just buy the book. If you'd like them later, just wait. Even if you can do without, others can't. Or won't.

Your kids will think it normal like email. And say "Da-aad" when you try to tell them about various Scandinavian Death Metal factions and $10 t-shirts.

And they'll inspire you. To do what you want. What you really want--not what you scene want. Not what you art world want, not what you economically viable want. What you really want.

Yeah, that.

So relax if you'd like. It's a great career move.

What's that you say? Sacrilege? Paying for love!!?

Yes, I say. Exactly.

That's the way it's always been. And always will be. I didn't make it up--just figured it out. At significant risk to my personal, financial and mental well-being I might add.

But every faith tradition says the same thing: put faith--put love--before money.

Have faith.

Pay for love.

And if you get that--deeply--then you probably don't even need the book. Though you'd likely want it.

My favorite line in the bible is the one where Jesus says it's harder to ride a camel through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven. (That's going to be my first magazine cover. Dressed like 'Aurence.)

Forget for a moment that that was two thousand years ago, before the masses had money to support vrai artistes. And that all the successful artists of the time practiced at the whim--and within the subject matter--of the controlling classes.

And instead read what comes next, when an astute bystander (Paul?), asks essentially: So we're all screwed?

Jesus' reply: "With God all things are possible."

Replace "God" with "love" if you like, but don't miss the good stuff. A couple thousand years of misunderstanding, slaughter, maiming and misery is literally nothing to the happy ending that's guaranteed!

Guaranteed.

Because all things are possible.

With love.

And you wouldn't want it any other way. That I can guarantee--from personal experience.

Ask and you shall receive.

Welcome to White G.

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.

Fuck Art, Let's Dance

Okay, let's stop pretending and get down to it.

Forget all this love stuff. Let's talk about money.

I read in the paper today an article criticizing college students, some 75% or whom list making plenty of money as a top priority. Whoever wrote it couldn't believe how shallow they were, blah, blah, blah.

Several pages later a story about a 77 square foot basement apartment in London for $335,000. Noted that the average price for a place in London was over $700,000.

I don't think that college kids have missed a thing. It's not like they're going to Dubuque to start a new farm. These young people plan to go to major cities. Which requires major money. Hell, even minor cities cost significant coin these days. And they don't offer much in the ways of culture.

Now, as I mentioned yesterday, I don't believe in victims, but I also don't believe that you can escape easily the time in which you live. Or the mores, or the land prices. Or that you should.

And we're crazy about money. Literally.

Half of us worship it, some literally. And half of us claim to not care about it.

(If you ever meet someone, by the way, who tells you they don't care about money--I'd keep stepping. A) they're lying and B) it's an untenable position--and you might not want to be around when it flips.)

Money is so connected to what we do, and what we do so connected to who we are, that you could almost wrap them all together into a ball. Except that for most, doing what they want means putting themselves on the market, which means submitting themselves to other's values.

Have you ever heard of a person complaining about the cliche "low-paid teacher" giving a teacher some money? Have you ever heard of someone complaining about sweatshops deciding to buy only hand-made designer goods?

Or does the person who complains about sweatshops try to buy from more pleasant factories, or reward "more authentic", often lesser quality goods from developing countries.

And does the same person raise an eyebrow when the production for said items follows their already drifting attention and heads overseas?

My point here, generally, is that we won't even scratch the surface of what having decentralized power, or being a people with authority and power dispersed, until we steadfastly refuse to be victims to "the group".

And the most powerful way we display this victimization is with our dollars. Which we primarily wield with great fear.

Money ceased to be worth what it was worth with the disappearance of the gold standard. It is now fiduciary.

Which means trust.

So what does it mean that we wield, that we share, that we create with our trust fearfully?

Wouldn't it have to mean that we are eroding our trust and eroding our trustworthiness? Chipping away at our own value? It would have to be gold to avoid the corrosive solution in which it was suspended.

And it's not. It's an emotion. And a somewhat precarous one at that.

Have you ever had your personal trust eroded by someone else's fear? By someone reacting irrationally and unlovingly?

I think that's what most poisons fear.

And I'm not saying that we aren't getting more prosperous--and more trusting and trustworthy every year. It is quite clear that we are.

I'm saying we're doing it with two hands tied behind our back and one eye shut. And possibly our tongue hanging out to the side.

(That's a joke).

Why? Because we're insisting that we get to trust through competition.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Easy there. I'm no socialist. Or maybe I am. But I only believe in voluntary socialism. Built on a foundation of competition. With people who have already proven their mettle thoroughly.

And this line of thought is surprising even myself. I wasn't sure I had it in me. But for the sake of honesty I'll at least explore it.

Growing up I was a big fan of socialism. It appealed to various parts of me--not in the least the social.

It also appealed to the part of me that didn't really want to do much. The part that enjoyed living off my parent's dime and sneaking out of the house to go visit my girlfriend. the part that didn't want to do any homework (We'll talk about that one later).

But it appealed to most of these later, negative parts, because I thought life was impossible. I had already adapted the notion that being an artist was from hard to impossible, and that doing what you wanted was a pipe dream bordering on delusional.

Where I was from you tried to sneak something worthwhile in to your profession--a graphic designer was a leap so large and presumptuous I didn't even consider it until my disaffected 20s. My original choice was an architect. That way at least I wouldn't have to be a lawyer or a doctor. It was still selfish as hell though, considering that some of my folks were community organizers, but hey, I already had two earrings long hair (or a shaved head), and was borderline squatting, why not actually shake things up a little. (Actually more like organizers of community organizers).

And there was a fairly good tradition of graphic designers in socialism. Sure they were dandies, and not to be trusted, but their stuff was a little sexy. I kept an original, wool, communist flag in my drawer at the warehouse I shared with other artistic tidepoolers.

And it went on. I don't know how many times I had to be messed with by someone with minimal financial interest in what they were doing before I got it, but it was significant. And I discovered that there were ties stronger than hanging out, enjoying the same bands, and being friends.

It was sometime after I had finished my book that I read Ayn Rand. I was almost completely alone and although I was not trying to hear it, the message got through. How could you have a strong society without strong individuals? And without a dictator.

I tried to incorporate as much as I could into my already existing worldview, but I must admit that much of it got tossed. I worked for months on incorporating personal responsibility into my understanding, but at times it felt like I was just becoming a jerk. Sure, you could hold everyone to everything, but what then? Where was the fun?

And why the hell did Ayn Rand smoke?

And why did she cheat on her husband?

And, possibly most importantly, why wasn't she a better writer? I believed her reasoning, but her stuff read like a dime store novella. And half predictable at that.

I had always thought that a better future would include, would require far fewer meetings, and much less busywork--if any, but I also held firm to the belief that the art would get better. Lots better. Like better than Van Gogh better.

But wherever I looked, and in all the sources I found inspiration: Ayn Rand, self-help, The Power of Now, Krishnamurti, Yoga, etc--the best they could muster was Yanni. Eckhart Tolle's dust cover told me he lived a quiet life in Vancouver and an interview had him drinking a cup of coffee--and later some wine.

How happy could he be if he needed drugs like that? That I couldn't even touch without going for a rollercoaster ride. Even Oprah was always shown with the largest Starbucks cup imaginable. Most of the black folks I knew wouldn't even touch "the white man's poison".

And, furthermore, and possibly most importantly, why were American Socialists waiting for the government to do anything? Why didn't they just buy their own factories? Pay the workers whatever they wanted to? Why spend a single day printing inflammatory, all red newspapers about foreign invasions?

If the American people were really so deluded, so crass, so sold out and so "comsumerist"--as Noam Chomsky insisted we were--why not just write them off? Why not start a socialist shangra-la right here. Why not move everyone in next to each other and get it on?

I read Adorno and many of the others and found them impenetrable.

Why the hell would the truth--a supposedly robust thing, which supposedly favored butterflies, the drool dripping from Golden Retrievers mouths (or mutts if you insist), babies cooing, flowers, sunshine, love, and all sorts of delicate, airy-fairy and off kilter goodies--why would this set of irreplacible, fleeting tangents require some sort of soul numbing square barbed wire enclosure to protect it?

Why would it require post-doctorate degrees? Why would it require paperwork and what anarchists told us was desire (more horrible art), instead of what we felt as desire? Instead of the sunshine we saw, unmediated, unmitigated, uneverything right in front of our eyes?

Why would the money have to be centralized and then distributed? Wouldn't that take a lot more money?

So that was my gripe with the left. But the right was even more joyless. Sure they had some incredible architecture, but what about the day to day stuff? What about expression? What about keeping it real? What about tolerance? What about not only being free but exercising that freedom.

I was all for personal responsibility, hell I had even dated a Republican (she went on to become a lawyer--working on women and children's issues the last I heard), but I knew first hand from my successful graphic design firm that money, by itself, didn't do jack.

And they seemed to be as intent on talking about other people's business derisively as anyone else. And no new car could erase what you could see in their eyes.

And why did they all worship art so much? Like it was rare and foreign? I appreciated the collections, but if you want the real thing, why not head over to the West side? They've got blues bands playing on the backs of trailer trucks for free outside of rib joints.

Why did they need the credentialed, ancient, the real so badly? Why were they collecting so much African art? Masks and ritual pieces? Why were they turning their homes into curated museums to what at one time was a thriving, from the hip, make it up as you go along th-a-ng?

And--similarly, but not necessarily right sided--why did the Vatican have Egyptian mummies? Wasn't that even sacrilege? They certainly must have loved them to bring them back and put them out when they had so many artifacts and artworks.

So, back to money--the left wouldn't give it up for what they wanted--they were reluctant to build--even when they had the capital, and increasingly they did, and the right would give it up, would take risks, but only for kinda boring stuff. Museum quality. Heavily mediated old fun.

When I thought this, and it was over a period of variously PC and non PC years, it seemed very blatant to me that they were both half right.

Yes, be self-reliant, but why brow-beat folks having a little fun unless you were afraid of it. Yes, stay loose, but why be afraid to stand up? To walk tall?

As I improved my posture I was actually, literally afraid that people would call me arrogant. And some did, but usually not for that reason.

As we look backwards, it seems obvious to me that self-reliance and responsibility and accountability were essential foundations of our prosperity. Of our trust.

And it seems obvious, that when this boot-strapping or self-love got too strong--became too insistent--and was projected out onto others, or used to exact punishment or keep others in line, it could become hurtful. Make us less trust-worthy.

A lot of it was based on fear. Sometimes real and well-founded fear.

But as I look forward, I can't see what MORE it's going to do to those it has served so well. If thoroughly applied anyway.

It almost seems that we want half-and-half. Strong women and relaxed men.

A rock-solid foundation and an enjoyable house. Or a fundamentally sound house and furniture with fantastic colors, pleasing surfaces, subtle touches--and filled to the brim with love.

To do this we must spend more money--wield more of our trust--in quality. We must pay for each other's relaxed lunches (by paying a premium for exactly what we want). Not out of guilt, not out of obligation. But because we TRUST.

Because we have been so lovingly taken care of. And we know more is on the way. Because we understand that we are free to do as we please every moment. And that a lingering lunch is our birthright as well.

WE MUST GO FIRST!

And our artisans, and artists must start making the products they really want to make too! They've been making it scathing, dirtying up the colors on purpose to be cool, to make a point. They put square toes on our beautiful Italian shoes. Square toes are acid wash minus four years. It is fashion, an untenable position, one that cannot hold.

Cause our toes are round. And will always be.

And you don't really, REALLY, want to be set apart from the group (though I would suggest that square toes CAN'T even do that anymore,a s they've been taken up by those who are trying to feel a part of something already).

You also don't want to have to do anything to be accepted.

And the glorious news is that you don't have to.

You can now be your actual self.

Which, I guarantee, is neither a snarling punk rocker nor down the nose art influencer. Is not a "relaxed" hippy (do you know how much extra work it takes, in today's mechanized economy to make tie-die -- that's a joke, btw) who doesn't brush and won't commit. It is not an uptight, harried soccer mom. I guarantee.

And much love to all these people. But we're not cool or hot. It's scientific, not a pose. We're warm. We're right down the middle. We're 98.6 degrees.

A little less at the surface, or if we're not wearing the proper shoes.

What we are:!!! Is beautiful, powerful, loving, joyous, supported, well-fed, prosperous, growing creative beings.

And this only gets messed up--we only don't feel this--when we refuse to let something we're done with die off. Or refuse to follow and investigate something that cajoles us. Something that inspires.

Maybe it's this simple. We don't need to go against our feelings to somehow get to our feelings. We need to go through our feelings to get to them. And trust is the mechanism. Faith is the mechanism.

A quick story. I was walking around one Valentines Day feeling sorry for myself--for I was objectively a depressed, frustrated, low-output (or so I thought), unemployed artist. And I was alone.

I stopped into a bookstore in Seattle and saw a book I had been thinking of and looking for for years. A comprehensive, full-color book about Basquiat.

I had about $100 in my bank account. The book was, I believe $80. I had no income adn no prospects for income. I was paying $300 a month for rent. I still had years to go on my book before I could even hope to sell it.

So what did I do? I bought the book. I said fuck it. I didn't even know at the time how crucial it was for me to support doggedly and with complete faith that which I felt to be the most important and loving expressions of economy--I hadn't gotten there yet. I figured I would either fail and whatever or succeed and it wouldn't matter. All I knew was that I saw before me what I wanted.

And then, and even more difficult, when I got it home, I drew a picture in it.

Because Basquiat was dead and I was still alive and I couldn't be afraid of him. Or even less free if I was going to be any good. It meant that I couldn't return the book. And that if I didn't make it big I had ruined the book.

But if I did make it, I had made it more valuable.

I still have the book. And got past Basquiat as well, although he obviously had talent.

And Ayn Rand? I figured her out when I saw the movie The Fountainhead. When Roarke blows up his own building because it wasn't built right. That's bunk. His argument in court is against everything Ayn Rand claimed to stand for. He argues that he was made a victim by the builder and lead architect. And that, like a child, like a graffiti artist, like the Unabomber, he had no other recourse but to destroy property.

The true artist, of course, and the true adult, knows that this is bullshit.

Because he lives under the rule of law. And a broken contract is a relatively minor matter to prove. Especially when you have a character like Roarke supposedly had.

That's if, of course, he would even care. If he had a spiritual dimension (and Rand didn't seem to have much of one) he may have even let it slide. Why bust your stride for some punk you knew was a sell-out punk in the first place.

Why not just do what you've always done--exactly what you want.

May god bless you.

E

Getting Stronger Every Day

While I've got your attention..

I'd like to mention a thing or two that I've been wrapping my noggin around as of late.

If all this stuff is right: and all this stuff includes a large part of the posts I've written here; all the self-help books about making yourself happy, changing your life, etc.; and quantum physics--if all this stuff is right, and our beliefs on the matter are not secondary and inconsequential but primary and essential--if we can never really be rich until we feel rich--then all this hemming and hawing, all this chewing the fat seems to come down to one very fine point.

Do we believe?

And I don't mean this as some abstract, what would you answer if I asked you what you believed in, but a moment to moment feeling.

Do you feeel it?

Do you believe it enough to feel it?

I've been reading a number of books about feeling your way there and in general throwing belief at my, not problems, but areas in which I'd like to be more perfect, areas where I'd like to have even more bounty and love. Like my finances.

But to throw anything at these areas, it is easy to label them first--to sell out the whole process from the get--as problems. To find the places most surrounded by fear and then believe the fear and come to the conclusion that they need to be fixed.

Which of course presupposes that they are broken. Which of course, in this process, from this viewpoint, is a bear to overcome.

I find that I can even throw 60 or 70% love feeling at something--which is pretty darn warm and fuzzy--and still have a reservoir of fear underneath it. Lurking. Certain that this is a problem. Nagging that the way it is closer to doubt than belief.

I guess the finest point I could put on it is what do yo do first thing Monday when you wake up? If you're going to be a writer, or a singer, or a dancer and you go off to work at Burger King where all that gets put on hold is that really getting yourself any closer? To make the money to come back to it on Friday night?

And I don't belittle the day job. Not at all. My question is what is the right alignment of priorities to get the best and fastest results? What is most effective?

I looked way down deep last night and found I had a dividing line. On top was my keep hustling--do the work first and get the rewards--enjoy it--later. That viewpoint was mired in doubt and rosy-futurism but could also be "felt at" in the manner I described above. So that it seemed like positive thinking. Was chipper or perky.

The lower, more essential, more frightening part of me was the feel it right now place. Was the take the damn thing place. Was the "The Academy" doesn't know shit you don't tell it place. Was the this is the truth and this is what's real place.

This place scared me completely. I am deathly afraid that if I am comfortable, if I am happy, I won't perform as I should. I won't be motivated. I won't get what I want or need.

But this place seemed to me to be more in line with every spiritual book since (at least) the Bible. We are. We are already.

If you bring forward what is inside of you, what is inside of you will save you. If you don't bring forward that which is inside of you, that which is inside of you will destroy you. (I think that's from the Gospel of Thomas--one of the Gnostic Gospels--attributed to Jesus).

They don't say if you don't get the crop in, not getting the crop in will destroy you. They don't say if you don't do a good job, or advance in your career. They say if you don't be yourself. If we don't realize what we already HAVE! Who we already are.

This is a radically different faith than I've been employing. This is more of a Monday Morning faith. Could it be that we could go straight at what we want? Go straight to what we choose to do and have faith that the rest will be covered?

As I've mentioned in other posts, I have explored this method extensively while writing my book and afterward. I never fully believed it even while I was practicing it but I still did it white knuckle style.

It's pretty much a free fall when you say you're a writer and two years into a book you're not sure you can finish. And even less certain anyone will put out. And you haven't written anything in two weeks. And two weeks ago it was two hours and three days before that it was three hours and then it was another week before you had produced anything.

And it's fairly well established that I ended that period in my life in significant debt. Significant.

But what if it was my true belief that the universe was responding to--my actual belief. What if it was my 90% fear that created my surroundings and not my 10% tip o' the iceberg can-do-it-iveness.

And--I still graduated from that school with a much better car and nicer clothes. And, more importantly--I somehow found a way, day to day, to write the mo-fo. And the time to edit it. And the will and means to put it out. And that was about five years. And I ate out for probably 1/3 of the meals. Even got some sushi feasts comped by an artist friend who managed a great Japanese restaurant.

What if it just felt like failure. What if it just FELT hard. What if I was just predisposed to see the dark side of things from where I had been?

I'm not trying to re-write history here, they don't call it the dark night of the soul because it's like an all night rave, but what if it was nothing but a training ground to believe the way I wanted to--and the only way to do that was to throw everything that could be thrown at me.

And let me learn to take complete responsibility for my reactions. And emotions.

What if, like a black hole, we had an event horizon. Everything below it being available only to ourselves and everything above it available generally, publicly.

And it was your predominant beliefs in the former arena--those available only to god, and energetically available to others (but silently, wordlessly)--that actually magnetized you for what you would experience?

To back up, I should mention that I think we can live one of two ways: mechanically, where we go faster or do more to get more things and have a "better" life. This is a life based largely on obligation and appearances. We do it for the children, for future generations and enjoy ourselves guiltily, as we know that our enjoyment takes us away from what makes us valuable--our discipline and ability to delay gratification.

I think this represents primarily the way that people have lived until now.

But I also think it is obvious that certain people live another way: magnetically. Due to their skill, or talent, or whatever attributes the possess innately, they draw to themselves experiences, prosperity and relationships. I think this is what people imagine when they think of and hunger for fame--that people would be drawn to them as they are drawn to certain others. That things would be somewhat easy. (Although I don't think that the financial structure of our current culture, or business, makes it easy for almost anyone--including those yoga gurus and home entertaining doyens for whom it appears so. In fact, I think half of their job may be making it look pleasant.)

I think that this second paradigm is actually the universal law of the two. The first being certainly expedient--or appearing so--for matters of a primarily physical, material, nature.

But if the second were the larger law, and the first had us running and scared--that we weren't going to pay the mortgage, that Janie wouldn't ever amount to anything--wouldn't the universe have to reward the practitioners of the latter and at least withhold something from practitioners of the first?

And if we held feelings in part of our body and thoughts in another, and feelings were the currency of magnetism, and thoughts the currency of mechanism, and some of us chose to keep our feelings subordinate to our thoughts, isn't it clear that we could appear to succeed and never really feel safe or rich?

It's interesting to note that magnetism is by far the stronger physical force. Mechanism relies upon friction (think gears and pistons) and so is not only always in need of outside lubrication but also requires much more maintenance. The order of efficiency (and don't quote me here) is something like 15% for a mechanical engine that would push a vehicle and 85% for the same same vehicle moved magnetically.

It doesn't take much (even fuzzy) math to see where enough pollution could come from to mess up the planet pretty good.

The interesting corollary I've read is that research suggests that businesses that work on effectively managing problems and building skill sets in it's employees run at about 15% efficiency compared to businesses that emphasize improving their strengths and putting people with essentially natural aptitudes in positions they enjoy--which run at about 85% efficiency. (Again, don't quote me, I'm a generalist. But do check out the management books on strengths, intuition and creativity, they're fascinating.)

So, where are we. Oh yes, the feeling.

The question basically boils down to do we allow ourselves to feel safe before we do the work?

Or do we make ourselves prove it?

Do we wake up assuming that the world is a supportive, ordered place where we have time, energy, love and money enough to do whatever we're put here to do (and the go-ahead to explore long enough to find it), or so we just wake up determined to create a little more wiggle room in our fear--make tomorrow more likely rich.

Because what if what we get is what we're praying on. What we focus on and chant every moment of the day.

And if that's hide the fear and make more so we don't starve, then we get more fear. I'll say it as lovingly as I can but we, the world's richest people--each one as powerful (or more) than the average 8th century royal (think drinking water, life span, health care, chances for true love, and softness of underwear--and iPods)--we are as anxious, depressed, and medicated as any people I can imagine.

From a study on college students psychological problems:

•Over the three time periods (from 1988 – 2001) problems became much more complicated and complex –– anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies, sexual assault, personality disorders.

· Depression cases DOUBLED.

· Suicidal students TRIPLED.

· Sexual assault cases QUADRUPLED.

[Emphasis theirs]

This doesn't even touch how much TV people watch, if their relationships are satisfying, how many sodas, coffees or beers they need to get through the day/week.

And I'm not a prude either. I drank and smoked my way through college and my 20s. But I also knew that things would be a lot easier if I just had something to do, somewhere to go, anything to aspire to, or knew adults who didn't seem sold out and weird.

So, if getting riches doesn't get us any riches, where do we look, what do we aspire to?

WE'VE BEEn told that our feelings--especially enjoyable ones--are an extremely poor indication of what's good for us. We've been told that what we want is what's destroying the planet. (So we scale back a bit and end up buying sweatshop produce that breaks or we replace in a year because it no longer speaks to us).

We've been told that our desires will lead us astray--like rock stars and drug addicts. But anyone who thinks that they're getting what they want--for the most part--hasn't been around many of them. They work hard, put their emotions on the line and make almost nothing on their albums and have to tour incessantly--leave their friends and family behind for the privilege.

AND, would it make any other sense in the world than for us to be saved--for us to save ourselves--that we have to leap headlong into that which we fear the most? That which we crave but are certain will destroy us? Into love and money? And flip our priorities upside down.

Insist that the vacation start now. Create the most valuable things you can and charge what they're worth. Feel what you already are.

And, if no one else chooses to join the party. You won't care. Because you'll already be rich.

Although people are so smart and so sensitive today, that I highly doubt they'd let a true practitioner--a true life--go by unnoticed. After all, they've been raised on lifestyle--inexpensive and t(h)in as it is.

Once someone drops an actual life. --"You mean a way to really be grown and live?"

Then it's on.

White Gold is like a hedge fund. I'm betting it all that you can't hold on to the denial of your desire--the fear that you can't afford what you truly want--longer than I can hold on to my enjoyment of mind--the faith that I can create what I intend.

And just like George Sorros and Great Britain, one of us is going to blink.

And I've done my math and checked it from bottom to top. I've checked it against ancient texts and up to the minute scientific studies. I've cross-referenced it with the most powerful marketing gurus and guys living on the street. I threw it out to women to see if it titillated, reassured. I fact-checked it with hip-hop and made sure high schoolers could feel it. I checked with the new