Very impressed with Timothy Ferriss and the 4-Hour Workweek. No, working 4 hours is not what the guy is about. This is about working smart. And about outsourcing and the consequences and opportunities. Americans work a lot of hours with little time off in the Sun, so a book with a hammock strung from palm trees on the cover is going to get picked up. More, it's about Filling the Void with the time you create. Time is the new gold. I haven't read the book yet. It's in an Amazon box in my living room. I've been nonstop working on bidding for freelance work, updating this site, and learning about feedburning. And I've got a script that needs finalizing and a million other things that aren't bringing me immediate funds.

But my creative life is rolling. While my old worklife dies, the new one is begging for attention. Like a puppy in a cemetery. This site's going to change and evolve. The band is still alive. There's a lot of new music. Just no financing to record it. The EP was a good promotional venture, but a very expensive calling card.

Moving forward, time moving faster. I have a short movie to shoot this Summer by the Sundance deadline. Have a video coming out for 'Nameless.' It's 6am and I've been up all night. Sunrising, the deer are looking for something to eat. I can't figure why they haven't taken to the salt/corn lick I put out. I washed my scent off. And it's rained since.

I want to do something in this life for refugees of the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars. And for people who have survived Traumatic Brain Injury. I've been trying to get this freelancing/outsourcing thing figured out for two years. I have many ways to Fill the Void with time I create. Tim Ferriss is helping me get there, rapidly. And I appreciate it.

 

Reading interviews of movie business 'creatives' in a trade magazine -- their names withheld -- and their positive and negative commentary of studio executives, I resolve this:

Never throw invective at someone who dominated you. It's weak.

Also, know that the corporate stranglehold on our public art may never loosen -- but it will break.

Art is sacred. It is not a business. It was sacred before the Enlightenment. And to the sacred it will return. Transcending and including all the bitter lessons of polarizing, destructive, competitiveness. Transcending and including the rapid developments that greed sometimes made manifest. Transcending and including all that has passed.

We need not retreat to caves and campfires. But Art is being returned to artisans.

No one dominates me. I will complain about no one's treatment of me. Because he is I. And I am I, and we are I.

This is not just something I read out of a book. This is something I've experienced. But who to tell.

 

 

 

 

The video for 'Nameless,' the first track on the Smoking Mirror EP, has been shot and is presently being cut by the intrepid John McGall. John is going to wrap his edits whilst 'sitting on the beach in Mexico' which really rather pisses me off. Clocks are ticking in my head.

I had to have a friend talk me through my email or text correspondences on that news so that I didn't come quite off like the asshole that I am.

I don't recommend writing text messages until at least one hour after you know what you're going to say. Not something I follow, but good advice.

However, a little heat always thins the weeds from the garden where the flowers aren't growing. John McGall is going to be a director of note I think relatively soon. The Seeded Planet is still unknown to all but about 100 of the human souls on Earth. I get impatient.

My art is not about compromise. My art is about vision. Unyielding vision. Only lack of money and the gravity of the world bring me down to Earth where I can collaborate effectively. With most people, I burn the relationship.

I'll be writing music for this project hell or high water. But the album is going to get passed in the speed lane shortly by something called In His Own Image.

Thank you for reading.

~Erik