Inspiration

I love the Grammy's. Yeah they are outdated, yeah they have favorites, but it is the closest thing we have right now to a musical summit, a gathering of the minds. I love watching all of the acts. U2 was boring, Kenny Chesney was forgettable (as in I forgot he played until I was about to write this), Radiohead will not get the credit they deserve for, as ?uestlove put it, murdering (in a good way) their performance of 15 Step, but I love seeing creative people doing what they do. I would watch Stevie Wonder sway back and forth, smiling and singing, all day if I didn't have to eat or go to class. He in particular is one of the musicians that when I watch them fills my heart with joy.
I recently decided that I would no longer be a musical elitist (a term I once took pride in). I want to be an open, endless vacuum sucking up all of the music I can. In this short span of time since I decided this, I find myself growing closer to music. When you can find good music in anything, you learn to appreciate the true genius of great music.

As a budding, newly planted songwriter, I do have my obligatory list of "Things Not To Do" that is growing larger, but I am shifting my perspective in a more positive outlook. Maybe I should have a things to do list. I should really have a "People To Be Like" list full of people who I admire on stage and off. Stevie Wonder, Jason Mraz, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Dave Barnes. Many times, when you make a living off of things that you literally spit out on boring days, you can start to think that your stuff don't stink, and it might not, but when you ACT like that people look with more scrutiny to find each and every fault as if to say "Hey! Get off your high horse because this metaphor was stretched too far and you rhymed 'rain' with 'again'."(Ok in poetry, faux pas in songwriting).
Any who, inspiration and creativity. The most recent TED talk had Elizabeth Gilbert speaking on dealing with inspiration and its inconsistencies. I highly recommend it. It has really gotten me in a forward thinking mode. That along with this last Sunday's sermon from my pastor (who I usually don't like or agree with) talking about the resistance to following a dream. I didn't catch the exact tie in with WWJD but that was mainly because I was tying everything he said to a build up process of a band/artist. I can't remember the points exactly but the gist was be prepared to wait, be prepared to jump at any opportunity, be prepared for opposition, and be prepared for jelly beans or something, can't remember the last point.

All of this together, Sunday's sermon, Lizzy-baby's TED talk, and the Grammy's has me excited for the first time in a long time to write and and play. Now I need to work on my voice and learn to write happy songs without them being cheesy.

Required Listening: Jason Mraz, Selections for Friends.
Required Watching:
Take notes on working the crowd while not losing the integrity of the song.

So as someone that is thinking about becoming a solo artist, You take advice and niblets of information where you can get them. To me though, these will always be untrustworthy. It is essentially like someone throwing letters over a wall describing what his side of the wall is like, like Plato's cave. Is it easy, is it hard? do you regret going over the wall? Usually we only see the ones who get to get up to the only thing we can see from our side of the wall: the hill. Naturally it takes some climbing to get to the top of the hill. But there are careers in the music industry without going triple platinum and making several mil a year. So I guess what I a writing about is fear. If I jump the wall, I am not going to be able to jump the wall until after my degree is done, so for the sake of the analogy, I could straddle the wall, but I know I can only get so far with one foot in both worlds. Do I build momentum for the jump of the wall by making the best music I can in my room or do I dive in head first and make music out of need and necessity? Just some thoughts from about one second in my brain.

Slumdog

I watched Slumdog Millionaire last night and I have to say I was skeptical whether it would be as good as Milk, the Wrestler, or even Ben Button. I mean, if the boys at Totally Rad Show were underwhelmed it must be underwhelming. I love TRS but they were wrong. To me, this sticks out as movie of the year without any problem. I know that is easy to say with 2/3 of the awards already given out and 2/3 of the pictures of the year going to SM but I was the guy watching it going "Pfft, it can't be better than Milk" and "Its all politics, who gets the film of the year." Turns out the best film of the year is getting the film of the year awards.
Danny Boyle directed this Cinderella story beautifully. We are thrown into the slums of India the same way we were thrown into Tatooine in Star Wars. No preface of what we are seeing. One of the thoughts I had in the movie was that this place that I am watching was connecting with me the same places that the settings of Firefly (remember Jayne's Town?) were connecting. Only one real big difference. The slums of India exist and are pretty well preserved in this movie.

Twitter

I am listening to TWiT (iTunes Link) while they are talking about monetizing the investment-hemorrhaging Twitter. I love Twitter, but it has no profit model. This is a website that has millions of subscribers and is WAY out of its beginning phases. You can not... CAN NOT charge for this. There will be another service that is free. I support in stream ads but only because I never go to the site. I update through twhirl or twitteriffic. That is $0 from me. I think what they are going to have to do is charge for API usage. The people using the API are making tons of money. Ads in twitter fall, ads in my free twitteriffic, pay apps on the iPhone to use twitter. It seems like to me that twitter apps are a gold mine with no overhead besides code. I say Adsense in the site and pay-to-use API. (It would cut out some of the BS twitter apps too.)