iPad table

Imagine an office where everyone is sitting in cubicles, isolated from one another.

Now imagine a large room where 5 - 10 employees are communing around a table.

Which scenario do you think is more productive for the company?
The second one, obviously, because more heads are coming together, communicating and sharing ideas. Working with, or even just AROUND other people, is so much more synergistic. And good for morale.

Even if you're working on your own thing, it's sometimes nice to have other people around the table working on their own thing. You can reach out for help at any moment.

What's the downside to the around-the-table arrangement? Well, for one thing, how is each person going to have access to their computer?

So here's the idea: It's an iPad the size of a table. Imagine it. A half dozen people sitting around a gigantic iPad. Files can be grabbed and moved around. "Here! Look at this file!" you can say, and then you can actually physically pass it to the person next to you. Because of it's large amount of RAM, each person can be working on their own project at the same time; their own section of large screen.

Privacy is artistically liberating

While I'm more musically inspired than ever before in my life, my good friend Scott — a "real" musician — is not doing music because he doesn't have privacy. He says he doesn't feel comfortable really getting into it when he knows he's in earshot of his upstairs neighbors.

I know exactly what he was talking about: I really need my privacy to make art, too. Because every time you go to put down a brush stroke, or sing a note, you are taking a risk. It might work. It might not. It's part of the creative process. You can't have people listening in or looking over your shoulder.

That's why this month has been such a blessing, because I've been living in a practically empty house. If I want to play the guitar and sing stupid lyrics at the top of my lungs, I can.


When I look back on my childhood, I'm really glad that I had this luxury. Besides the fact that my parents were really encouraging of my creativity, my isolated circumstances really made a fine breeding ground for talent. With nobody around most of the time, I could really explore my creative side in total privacy.
My house was completely separated from all the neighbors, so — as weird as this sounds — no one could hear you scream. I remember how fun it was to play electric guitar as loud as I could stand it. To sing and shout and holler. To compose songs on the keyboard. Playing into the empty air, where nobody can feel judged.


On another topic:

Earlier tonight, we got talking about the artistic relevance of pop music. It was a pretty stale debate, but there were some interesting points made. I pointed out that in the early 20th century, music wasn't the sole domain of musical renaissance men, which is how it became in the 50s, 60s and definitely the 70s, where full-package musicians became prominent: wonderkids who could sing, write songs AND play their instruments like virtuosos. AND looked pretty on camera. Way back when, there was a song writer behind the scenes and a performer on stage. Nowadays, that's still the case, but even more so: there's a whole team of professionals that bring any given CD to market: marketers, advertising a producer, a song-writer, hired-gun studio musicians and singers. The person on the cover of the album isn't even a musician, really. They are just a pretty face. However, there's still the MYTH lingering from the 70's that a musician is all those things at once. It's like we want to believe in these god-like icons who have more talent in one finger than we ever could. AND they're young and cute to boot. Therefore we can worship them and make them into a commodity at the same time. All the while, —- insidiously -- we can absolve ourselves of any responsibility to explore our own talents because we know we can never be the full package: writer, producer, performer all at once.

In my case, I know damn well what my strengths and weaknesses are. And I'm not going to let my lack of ability in one area stop me from exploring my talents.
I know that I suck at playing instruments. I don't have chops. My fingers just aren't dexterous enough. And I don't have the patience to practice. (But, incidentally, there are many people who have this skill. And these people can be hired or contracted.) I'm not a great singer. I'm an OK singer, but I don't have a voice you'd go out of your way to listen to.
On the plus side, I can write. I have a sense of humor, a talent for poetry, rhyme, rhythm and melody. Not so much harmony, but melody. That's what I offer. And I'm satisfied with the idea that I don't have to be everything at once. I can write song shells and then have real musicians come and enhance my ideas. Collaboration is way more fun anyway.

I'm proud of the two songs I recorded today! (The first and last songs are the new ones.)

Extemporaneous Album

I accidentally had some ganja cookies last Monday. I was so high I couldn't do anything but sit in my car and talk to myself. Fortunately, I had a small digital recorder with me. I started talking. And then I started singing. It was so much fun I didn't want to stop. I was there for hours.
The next day, I listened to what I had come up with. Most of it was quaintly weird and random, like a dream, or like my sub-conscious wringing itself dry. A lot of it was laugh-out-loud funny! I spent the next few days winnowing out the boring parts. But I left the final product in tact, with minimal edits, and only a few over dubs.

Click here to hear
Ready to Explode

This album really inspires me because I'm enthralled when I can make something of "quality" with little effort. One take. Totally off-the-cuff. It's an abundant feeling, because it means you can make gold at any time out of nothing.

There are some really good ideas — gold nuggets — buried in the horse shit. I am excited to extract the juice and use it to fuel an ever grander vision, but I actually think it is release-worthy as it is. I mean, it's totally crappy. But it's a good kinda of crappy, like the kind of thing that would become an internet phenomenon. Like the kid who posts the video that's just weird enough to make people go... "Hmm...? What can I do with this?" And the next thing you know, there are 100 remixes on YouTube, complete with crappy animation.

Pure, bare expression of the inner freak is a thing that people can grab onto. They are happy that someone else can really let it out — the way they wish they could.

Just naked voice in a vacuum, like raw materials, can be used to build something even bigger. For that reason, I didn't alter these tracks much. I want to see what will happen when I put my bare art out in the "free box" for anonymous people to scavenge.

Tattoo stencil

This is so obvious, I don't know why I've never thought of it before.

Here it is: Get a piece of sticker paper and cut a stencil into it. Put it on your arm and use sharpie. It looks really crisp. People will wonder how you did it.

Simply Simplement

I just thought of a cheesy thing. When you want to "implement" an idea and "simplify" at the same time, why not "simplement"? Eh?

What can Yudu do? How about STEAL MY IDEA?

I'm actually kind of flattered. Someone out there stole one of my ideas!

Remember my post, Hobbyist Silkscreen Printer? Well, it looks like some company called
Yudu has done it!



Now will someone please steal my other ideas, too? I do so want an electronic drum kit in my car.

Fractal Reality Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

I was thinking about those Choose Your Own Adventure books that we loved as a child. You know, the ones that are told in the 2nd person...

"You're standing in front of an abandoned house. The windows are broken, and you think you see shadows moving around inside. The wild howls. A shiver goes up your spine. It's all scary and enticing.

If you...
• Go in through the window (turn to page 7)
• Go in through the door (turn to page 11)
• Go get help (turn to page 15).

I remember as a kid not being much impressed with the actual story. What fascinated me most, of course, was the format. The way it put you in the driver's seat. Before video games, this was one of the first forms of art I could interact with.

Anyway, I've been throwing ideas around in my head, and I think it would be sweet to write a choose-your-own-adventure. But do something a little different with it. Update the genre. Do something that adults would find interesting. Something socially-relevant would be a bonus.

Here are some of the ideas that came to mind.

• Tongue-in-cheek social commentary style So many things today are simulated forms of something else, i.e. Nintendo Wii sports, Rock Band, internet chat. Anyway, I think it would be an interesting joke's-on-you style ironic art piece to make a choose-your-own-adventure book where the only adventure that takes place is actually inside of another artificial game. For example, a choose-your-own-adventure that's actually a game of Dungeons and Dragons. And within the D&D world, you can watch a movie, or play Wii or Rock Band. Like nesting Russian Dolls, each choice you make brings you deeper and deeper into some artificial reality. Of course, this idea is smarmy and annoying. It would be tedious to write. Only good as a concept. However, with that said, I sometimes wonder about people who read books like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, or any of that stuff. In a way, isn't this just the analog version of a game of D&D or World of Warcraft? (Obviously, this question is stupid, because it's really the other way around.)
  
• Open-source collab style This iteration is based on the idea that each "chapter" of the adventure could be written by a different author. For this, I was partially inspired by Douglas Rushkoff's Exit Strategy in which he had strangers on the internet write the footnotes of his already-conceptually-dense novel. But my version is different in that every chapter would actually be written by a different person. You could do this "pyramid style": One person writes the first chapter, which branches into three options. So, the first author has to find three friends to write the next three chapters. Each of those people has to find a couple more friends to continue the story, and so on. (Of course, there would have to be guidelines set ahead of time, like broad limitations on word count and content; but those are just details.) Alternatively, this could be done totally open-source-style, like a wiki, where total strangers can go in and write or edit. At a certain point, though, there would have to be a head author who has final say.
  
• Fractal reality style In this iteration, the novel is written by multiple people like in the previous iteration, but the main difference is that instead of the novel following one character, you actually jump from character to character as the story progresses. The reader can choose what character to jump to at any given point in the story. The challenge would be to actually succeed in telling a cohesive story while jumping around from character to character. (It wouldn't be necessary, but there could be a sci-fi explanation of how these jumps are occurring; for example, "you" are actually a mind-virus that can jump hosts. When you're in one host, you see the world through their eyes, but when they sneeze, you actually jump to a new host.) The sweet thing about this approach is that you'd be able to "live" as many different characters: he who seemed reprehensible from one character's perspective, might turn out to be understandable when you see the world through his eyes.
  And even sweeter turn on this same idea: have each new character written by an author who is similar to them. For example, the policeman character could be written by an actual policeman. The teacher, by an actual teacher. The child, by an actual child. The authors would be essentially writing about themselves; what they would do if they were part of this story.