LNOYL

This is the third instalment for this series, and I’ve taken this text from the introduction of the manuscript. It brought back some pivotal memories, and in retrospect, most of them were good (I can say that now, because it’s easy to forget isolation once its gone). In other news, the first proof’s for our graphic novel, ‘The Plan’, are on their way; the image this week is from page forty. We also heard back from the vinyl record pressing plant – they misplaced our artwork, but they’ve got it on the backup server somewhere. I’m going to take that as a positive sign, because it means that they’ve at least put our work on the assembly line…

It’s easier to be honest with yourself when you write it all down. The process somehow makes you disclose the thoughts that galvanize what is truth, instead of shedding pieces of simple wants. Words are transient and fleeting, and get tripped up with emotion before they even leave your mouth. Print will stare you down, face to face, if you choose to be less than honest with yourself. Perhaps that is why I’m committing this to paper. I learned a long time ago that if I wanted to understand change, I had to get it onto the page. During my first year of university schooling, I started carrying around this little black flip book. It wasn’t a cool one, like a moleskin, or filled with numbers related to a progressive social life (that would have just made mine blank). It was a freebie, with vinyl covering, and a little elastic to hold the pencil. I had just started running long distances, and would be spending lots of time through the isolated trails on campus that year. My little black flip book was used for the mundane. Numbers, times, and dates related to trail runs began to fill the even sides of it’s pages. The pencil was rarely sharpened, so the numbers became pulpy as time went on. It was a common occurrence back then to spend what seemed like hours a day, sitting on benches waiting for city buses. If it wasn’t raining, I’d take the little black book out, and would throw a sentence here or there between the pages of numbers. Eventually, the odd pages that separated the numbers started to fill with scribbled ideas. As a year passed, it seemed that these ideas could almost take form as a narrative. An account derived from the part of me that wanted resistance. The fragment that wanted out, to make a principled stand against unalleviated desires. I wanted to fight the useless haunting of my brain – the department that wants nothing more that to keep things in order and check, by scarring out any motivation to stand out of line. I kept on writing, and things kept getting clearer.

I’ve got a real flip book now, and I’m going describe how three people are trying to create something new for themselves. We are musicians, and musicians are a dime a dozen. When your musicianship demands that you swallow the pill, and discover the constituents of the less trodden path, you will look for marks in the fresh earth to guide you. You need them, because you are running out of time. There are less formative years ahead than there are behind. You are one person, and you are over in the blink of an eye. But before the eyelid shuts, you want to go beyond singular. You want to connect with the other shutting lids, and be able to view them as butterfly wings. You are searching for beauty within a mad rush to outrun your territory. We can dispense with naval gazing, because sometimes all that is needed is to chew through the leash. For me, this act would manifest as a search for the right way to focus on our work so it could succeed, and an understanding how we could unite this pursuit within own lives. The methodology is as blunt as teeth grinding on chain link, so I won’t apologize for the pragmatic details you are about to receive.

Today, your work is thrust into a saturated world that clamours for new experiences and art forms. Yet, at the same time, we are all exceptionally good at ignoring the vast majority of what is produced to fulfil those desires. We have no choice about this, because it is a natural inherited response. There is only so much time in the day to sort out all the options vying for ones attention and preference. Therefore, we’ve got to get used to the idea that our work will most likely be ignored for legitimate reasons. The sheer quantity of creative work being produced has forged a saturation effect that will precipitate us out of the solution, regardless of how good or original we are (the specific reasons for this will be explained quite soon). They say that under these conditions, the cream will rise to the top. I think it’s better if we just find a new glass all together.

When you’ve created the work, and it’s time to release it, it needs some space to grow that is free from the pushing and shoving for attention. Does such a place exist? Of course it does. Artists find them every day, and they become credible when you step out of your own shoes, and view your world with a different perspective. Specifically, from those who’s life calling it is to introduce new things into our culture, and to explain the dynamics of change within it. Through their work, we can figure how to access our culture in a way required for our work to take root, develop and find it’s place. I speak of pragmatic, tested ideas, that I have summarized and applied for our own use. The tools to accomplish this have been popularized, more often than not, by forward thinking marketers and economists with a conscience, and journalistic authors.

I know I said marketers and economists. We’ve got to establish something about those words, and what we mean by them. If you read the word “marketing”, your mind probably begged you to think about jingles, commercials, or comments like “help I’ve fallen and I cant get up” or “they’re magically delicious”. However, we are not referring to the trivial and cheesy marketing adaptations found within the golden age of the marketing industry. We refer to this concept instead: “Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization” (Godin 2005). We are discussing how important ideas, music, trends, or anything else of significance moves through our culture. If you read the word “economist”, and thought of grey business suits and some dude named “Dow Jones”, then let me put you at ease. Instead, think of Emily Oster, an innovative economist that has used her background and principles to impressively challenge and change the way people think about AIDS in Africa (Oster 2008). When it comes to the pursuit of the craft, innovative economists, marketers, and authors who critique and give insight into our culture often have more important things to say about our navigation through it, as compared to those that are firmly entrenched within legacy creative empires. The best ideas come from the outside. To pursue our goals, what we need to do is view our culture from that perspective. I’m going to tell you what we saw.