Posts Tagged ‘Content’

You Are the Product

Posted: August 21, 2015 in Music, Poetry, Writing
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I am currently “under-employed” and consequently, I am in a state of amusement because I want to be productive. The last time I was in this situation almost seven years ago, I pumped hundreds of poems that I had written into this WordPress blawg because I am a poet. Present tense, I wanted to make the best use of all of this free time, so I spent countless idle hours getting all of my DJ Lurk’s MP3 mixes online, because I am also a DJ. I clearly remember when I dropped poetry as an expression mechanism and graduated to recording sequences of songs because these sonic paintings expressed my headspace much better than writing in spiral-ring notebooks. It’s been a while since I captured the creative expression of my DJ Lurk persona, but it is humbling that I have almost seven straight days of mixes if you play them start-to-finish.

DJLurkLogo

Providing these sounds to the public is a cathartic, selfish action. As a human being that is capable of influencing the world around me, I find it to be of the utmost importance to provide a measurable value: this time, it is DJ Lurk, my army-of-one alter ego that mixes music instead of writing poetry. The technology has caught up to where it is simple to post an MP3 recording that captures a shitload of hard work. I have already spit about how important it is to Press Record and capture your own efforts. This is because you are the product.

Brother-and-Mallory-Battlemat

DJ Lurk’s biggest fans: Brother and Mallory.

There are three types of people: past tense, present tense, and future tense. Everyone can operate within those categories to a certain level of competence, but everyone defaults to their most comfortable worldview. Typically, I am a creature of present tense; however, when I am faced with my own musical selections recorded in the infinitely replicatable format of digital MP3s, they are messages to yourself from the past. No one is a better subject matter expert on this media than I am: what was I thinking? Where is my mind?

It is way too easy to take a shitload of pictures on your iPhone of your children, pets, loved ones, food plates, vistas, and your experiences — it’s now getting worse, turning into videos and Vine loops — and YOU NEVER LOOK AT THEM AGAIN. The social media drive to post unadulterated crap all of the time is horrific. 21st Century humans collect tons of media almost reflexively; it is the art and action of going back through it and framing it with times, dates, tags, and explanations that will make that media worthwhile. Otherwise it is a waste of audience time and QVC will not invite you back as a vendor. You have to manage your own brand.

With my newfound temporary freedom, I have looked back on my output of product, and I am thrilled to build out the DJ Lurk side of this WordPress blawg with all these recorded dreams of being a professional DJ — DJ Lurk, if you will. This is adding hours of product — original content, if you will — to the Virtual Lilypad, and the effort reinforces that elusive immortality sought by the Froggacuda.

At the top of the page, roll over the DJ Lurk item, and explore the madness and mayhem.

Is This Thing Still On…?

Posted: May 6, 2014 in Music, Poetry, Rant, Writing
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It has been a hot minute since I have fired up the ol’ WordPress blawg and wrote myself a letter. This effort has an audience of one: myself, and once you accept that, it gets easier. In this feed- and filter-driven 24 hour news cycle of technology, when you are staring at a blank page, it is asking you to be creative and say something. Say anything. It is much better on a cosmic, spiritual scale to create content than to passively watch the social network feeds go by.

I used to write poetry and stories to capture what I was feeling. This “blog” is full of it; when I was unemployed I kept busy (because ADHD) by pumping tons of those “witless driblets” into this online database called WordPress from a stack of hand-written journals that I subsequently burned in the mountains and the deserts in campfires. They’re all now indexed Internet content and ashes. Ribbit. Fuck you. Enjoy.

Once upon a time I built pages for music I composed, wrote, played, produced, rapped and sang on. Labored over, instead of going to class or doing homework, I caught them on magnetic tape and transferred them to a computer. I figured out how to embed those songs here with a play button. I still have a couple of handwritten cassette tapes I can refer to for source material and memories. That includes a page for M0nster Zer0, a band I was instrumental in–ha, ha–when I was in high school.

I remember making DJ Lurk compilations every year for 15 years, many times multiple disc sets, of my favorite music and giving them out by the dozens for free. Custom, handmade printed paperboard CD case insets, printed on an inkjet, and CD-Stomping labels on them. Those comps keep me grounded, and company, because you should always make your own mix tapes.

I used to record two hour sessions of vinyl-spinning to capture all of my music collection the way that I heard it blending and surfing together. That’s how it was on Pete Tong’s Essential Mix program on Radio One: a two-hour uncensored journey. I made this effort because the Woodweaver gave me a Sony DAT recorder that could do two hours per tape; that was hot tech at the time, and I wanted to use it. There are 12 Essential Mix @ Mordenkainen’s Parlour tracks, labelled with exact dates. They have incredible power to return me to years ago.

More recently, with a MacBook Pro and a shitty pair of USB controllers attached to Traktor, I would record DJing live at the Edgemont Compound, the Isle of Lesbos, Below the Chateau, or at a Dirty Little Mansion. This content has names and maybe rough dates, but I was asked to show up and spin, so I did. I get to wonder who this particular character is, because I can’t believe that I produced that. But it is undeniably The Froggacuda.

So there it is as evidence: a poem, a mixtape, an occasion: captured somehow so that I have to go back and verify that it actually happened for my audience of me. Memories that are fleeting ghosts. Content that is hard and unrelenting to experience again and try to put into perspective in the present tense.

Is this thing still on…?

Messages to Yourself from the Future

Posted: April 4, 2011 in Writing
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I have ranted before about this strange drive I have to create things. Being digital has helped a lot, because I can perform magick tricks that were only in my head–or I didn’t think I had the chops to do–and send them out into the world as my little wind-up creatio

n and see where they ended up. Case-in-point: my buddy Miguel runs an awesome blog/podcast/site called The Monster Island Resort Podcast. It was his birthday. Through FB, he asked what his “monsters” were going to do for his b-day. I suggested in a comment a Photoshop-Miguel-into-vintage-movie-posters contest. I really thought the amateur PSers would come out of the woodwork. Apparently, it is not such a common skill

Miguel vs Monster Zero

Miguel vs Monster Zero

; this means I am taking my own proficiency for granted. Far be it from me to suggest a contest without participating; I threw together a pic of Miguel laughing via screencap off of his FB and Google Image searched for some Godzilla movie posters. A few minutes in PS later, and I sent the composite up to Imgur and posted the link back to his FB wall. Lo and behold: I won the contest! He posted it up in his FB album. My artwork is now–briefly–his FB icon. I laugh every time I see it, and I brought a friend some birthday magick.

Because I PRESSED RECORD.

I am still sortof blown away that I have written poetry for something like 25 years (not so much lately), and I have 15 consecutive years of doing music compilations. I am listening to my record collection that Kleptus and Moonbow helped me move into my spare bedroom after 2 years of rotting in my garage, and every song I hear is a message I had left behind for me to discover later on. This funk phenomenon has happened to me many times over the year. It is why I am passionate about creating. “I’m not bragging; I’m confessing” ~King Fantastic

My last entry was So You Think You Can Blog. No matter how many people think that I was somehow commenting on their efforts (or lack thereof), this was nothing more than a message to myself that I will be able to discover again and again when I decide to do the painful process of reviewing shit that I have already created. I made a Nu Decade resolution to myself to blog once a week; I’m supposed to use Sundays–it’s on my personal Google Calendar. My phone blows up with SMS reminders. I’m trying to convince myself that uploading and tagging camping photos to Facebook with witty captions somehow absolves me of blogging that week. Because it is fuckin’ hard.

The Turntables are Alive!

The legendary Studios of Doom be alive and kickin'!

The more you create original content–in whatever media you choose–the more you attract people who feel that it is a breath of fresh air because it is not recycled: it is actually new. This is the act of creation. Press record. Put it out there. What do you really have to lose? How big is your audience, really? If you’re scared that someone is going to dig up some Tweets or a blog you wrote weeks or months or years ago, then you need to reconsider what you stand for. Although there is an unsettling–creepy and threatening, really–trend to use interconnected networks on the Internet to squelch your individual voice, you HAVE one, and it is your human duty to exercise it across ALL media. It’s called integrity, and it leads to serenity in troubling times because it gives you confidence. And if you can capture–or bottle–some of that in a blog post, or a mix CD, or a painting; work on a vehicle or a piece of furniture; a biz plan outline, a stream of photographs, a poem, an essay, a sketch…comprehend that it is creation and you are creating it. The world ALWAYS needs more content!

I am old enough to remember when the drum machine and the synthesizer appeared in the music market. The critics opined that now you don’t have to hire a drummer, or a string quartet, or a horns section. Then digital recording came along; now you didn’t have to rent an entire studio; you could four-track in your folks’ basement. Then came the worst evil of all: the sampler. Just go ahead: rip-off and re-use any break you could load into the computer. Music has not suffered from these advances; it has grown and proliferated and been brought to the masses. Anyone with a mind of their own now can Garage Band themselves into the public’s eye. I have to applaud the effort–or luck–that it takes to leave a message that potent in the past for yourself: you get to live with it. Did you fuck your brand up? Probably not; in fact, I bet you built it–it’s like character.

Going back through old mixes and compilations and poems and stories, I am certain that I am continuing to be sincere and amazing. It is important that I recognize that these creations are love-letters I am leaving myself; it does not matter that sometimes I feel like I have an audience of one. Someday, I might have an audience of one more: some other creature that gains knowledge or strength or spirit from some message that I have left for myself. I certainly gain wisdom, knowledge, and opinions–experience points–from other people’s efforts on- and off-line. That’s icing on the cake.