Kickstarted

This is all new for me.

Two days ago my kickstarter campaign ended successfully. Over $6000 were pledged to fund a new recording of my original music. I didn't blog about the process as it was happening, but there were many thoughts and feelings along the way. I'm still processing much of this, and exactly what it means to me. It seemed to happen in steps, much like the graph of progress from my kickstarter dashboard.

Early on there was a tremendous rush. Making the video, writing the copy, receiving those first few pledges...it all felt like Christmas morning. It felt narcissistic in a way. Every artist has a touch of Narcissus otherwise we wouldn't do what we do, but this at times felt like it was too much about me, me, me. My oldest brother, as he has done time and time again, came through with some wise and sage advice. He said, "No, you're wrong. This isn't about you. This is about the music. You are but a conduit." I held that with me through to the end.

During the middle period, where days went by with no pledges, I struggled with how to promote it. Facebook is amazing, but there is such a thing as too much of a presence there. I joined twitter (and still don't really get it.) I was posting videos to the kickstarter site. When there were about two weeks left I started considering the very real possibility that it could fail. What exactly would that mean for me? It felt like when I ran for 8th grade vice president and didn't succeed. I chose not to see it as a referendum on my career, though. I thought maybe I didn't think big enough. Maybe I should have raised $10,000 for an album and app exploring the music, ala Bjork.

Then something interesting happened. We hit 75%. There was hope. Although there were only 3 days left and we had $1500 to go, it once again appeared to be possible. I also played the concert of the new music at this time, which also recharged me.

The rush of pledges at the end was exhilarating. The fact that I'll be making a new record, and that it's paid for is a feeling I'm not sure I yet understand. But I do understand this: it doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the community of people who pledged on kickstarter - from people I've known since I was a toddler to people I've met in the last 2 months. To me it's not a referendum on anything that has to do with me. It's a referendum on music, on art and on the business of music and art. It's an entirely new paradigm that affirms that people are willing to support music through non-traditional venues.

Kickstarter.com, and other crowdfunding sites like Pledgemusic and Rockethub, are genius. This is how we do it.

Protesty

Last night several of my friends spent a few hours in jail. 


They were among the 700 arrested when a protest march attempted to cross the Brooklyn Bridge, and some of the protesters walked on the Brooklyn-bound roadway, blocking traffic. 


I wasn't there, so can't speak from firsthand experience. I'm only going on what I've read online. 


I've been thinking about this all morning. In fact, I can't get it out of my head. I have some opinions that might not make me super popular amongst my lefty friends. 


But, come on. 


I support your right to protest. I even support your cause. Clearly the way that our society has created the distribution of wealth is flawed and needs addressing. Protest. Hard. But don't be shocked, surprised or appalled when you are arrested after breaking the law. In the Times article, Christopher T. Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said that protesters in the back of the march may not have heard any warnings from the police and "would have had no idea that it was not O.K. to walk on the roadway of the bridge."


Really? They would have no idea that it's not OK to walk on a roadway of a bridge? I think my 4-year-old niece knows that it's not OK to walk on the roadway of a bridge. If a car had driven on the pedestrian walkway, and the driver was arrested and said, "I didn't know that that's not cool," would anyone entertain this for a second?


There are some reports that the police didn't in fact give warnings not to walk on the roadway. That they deliberately led protesters onto the bridge to entrap them.  Perhaps this is true. I've actually seen this done before. 


My response is, you fell for that?


Look, some of those people driving across the bridge may have been trying to go to work. And maybe they get paid by the hour and your protest march made them late, essentially taking food out of their mouth. Or maybe they were trying to go visit a sick relative, or rushing home to try to save their marriage. You blocked traffic by walking on the street. This is illegal and you were arrested. Don't bitch.


To my knowledge, the police handled this better than the protest at Union Square last week, where protesters were beat up and pepper sprayed.  


In 2004, before I lived in New York, I was visiting during the Republican National Convention. I heard of a protest march that would start at ground zero and march to Madison Square Garden. I was a fierce opponent of the war in Iraq and other policies of the Bush administration and I wanted to make a statement so I went. 


The protest organizers didn't have a permit to march on the city streets so we were told we had to stay on the sidewalk. There were thousands of us, so the word was passed that we would march two-by-two so as not to break any laws. The police said nothing. They waited until the march started and several hundred people had crossed the street and were on the sidewalk next to St. Paul's church. They then stopped the march and out came the orange nets. They were all arrested. I was not as I hadn't crossed the street yet. I'm glad Tony Baloney didn't pepper spray me. 


The march dissipated. I sat on the ground feeling defeated. As I thought about how I could make my voice heard a kid walked past me with "fuck Bush" written on his tennis shoes. I thought, no one is going to hear that. No one. They have Madison Square Garden. We have kids with "fuck Bush" written on their shoes. I felt like I was screaming "NO!" to policies with which I disagreed and no one was going to hear me. 


I left the protest. I haven't been to one since. I guess I'm not an activist in that way. I guess I realized at that moment that a "yes" makes a louder sound then a "no." 


So although I support the protesters of Occupy Wall Street and their cause, I'm going to fight in a different way. I'm going to teach my ass off, encouraging excellence in music as I feel this will create fewer greedy corporate douchebags. I'm going to write music and play and arrange and produce, all with a commitment to excellence, content in my decision that even though I could make so much more money if I applied my talents and abilities in the financial sector or corporate world, this is what I choose. Because I feel it's important. 

I write good. At least I used to.

It may be hard to believe by the frequency of my posts on this blog, but I actually really like writing.

I had an annoying stutter when I was a kid, so I learned early on the power of the written word. In 2nd grade my favorite activity was when we were given a blank sheet of paper and told to write a story. It was the possibility of it all that excited me; the blank page staring back at me like a field of fresh snow, and I could forge any path I wanted. Yes, I had that exact sensation as a 7-year old.

In 4th grade we were assigned to write a journal. We were required to write 2 sentences a day. A few months into the project we were instructed to pass our journals each one person to the right. I remember what I read in the journal from the boy on my left. Each day was identical. An example: "Today in social studies we read about the Yanomamas in the Amazon. In science we looked at rocks." Every day. The same exact two sentences.

My journal was inconsistent. Some days I wouldn't feel like writing and my two sentences would be, "Hi. Bye." Other days I'd write page after page of sprawling prose about my dog, my family, playing the piano. I was a pretty dramatic and emotional kid, so I imagine it was an interesting read. When we handed the project in, my teacher was so impressed with some of my entries she read them aloud to the class. Oh, Mrs. Borland. What were you thinking?

In my 20s, I got interested in journalling via Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. It's very possible that Morning Pages saved my life and certain that they are partially responsible for a vast body of my creative work, either directly or indirectly. Here's a little ditty I penned in 2002 after a late spring snowstorm in the mountains of Colorado.

Wet cold and clump-like

Snow melts on the flower

Melts through the flower

The Old Man's last icy breath

Tends the spring like a shears

As if to say, "I'll be back."

His steely gray cloak covers the sky

And hides Spring's sun

As he whirls and turns to leave the room

Gone are the birds

Hiding are the bees, cupids for flowers

Cowering in their hovels, powerless against the cold

In hours they will rise again

Sing again

Buzzing in the Old Man's ear

Now I know there's nothing groundbreaking here. (The Old Man metaphor is particularly tired.) But there is an honest passion. A certain, albeit quiet, barbaric yalp. 

The reason I'm writing about all of this is because I am working on a new website, a project that is requiring me to write a new bio, a description of my creative services and to write about my music. I'm finding it very difficult. 

Is it a symptom of living in our culture of status updates and tweets? Maybe I'm just getting old. It has never been hard for me to write. Why is it difficult now? To be honest, I don't journal anymore. I'm just as apt to read facebook on the subway as I am to read a novel. I feel myself slipping, if I may be candid. 

So I'm recommitting. I'm inspired by the blogs I read regularly like my friends here and here. At first I was going to exclude my blog from my new site, as I hardly every post to it. But I have decided to keep it, and I want to post to it more. What I like about my friends' blogs is that, because I know them, I can see their personalities in their words. I can hang out with them whenever I want to by reading their posts. I don't think it's a coincidence that they are both also very into music and food, as am I. 

Words, music and food. I touch the second and third of this holy trinity every day. I intend to do more with the first - to write - and to try to do it well.