They had me a "donuts." This is one of my favorite talks about art and being a creative person, and the struggles that go with that. Maria begins the conversation with, "Let's talk about donuts..." a reference to a bit of Amanda Palmer's book, The Art of Asking, and Henry David Thoreau living at Walden. If you're a writer, artist, or any other kind of creative person, you may love this conversation. That's all I'm going to say, other than it's from 2014, shortly after Amanda's book came out.
I have a new blog now, about side hustles, gig jobs, small businesses, and making a living in this coming recession. Check it out:
Amanda Palmer performing "Ukulele Anthem" in about 75 mile an hour winds outside Sydney Opera House.
When I was a kid, if someone mentioned ukulele, pretty much the only thing you thought was of Don Ho singing "Tiny Bubbles," or maybe Don on The Brady Bunch, because that's the only times we ever saw anyone on TV play a ukulele. That's fine, but it's not all that exciting. So here are two women playing ukuleles in completely different ways, and breaking that stereotype that Hawaiian easy listening music is all ukulele's are capable of. Enjoy.
Taimane Gardner popped up on YouTube today as I was watching other stuff, and gave me the idea for this post. We all have preconceived notions about much of the stuff, and the people, around us day to day. But those are just our thoughts, not the reality of what's going on, or what's possible. We don't have to live in a box surrounded by stereotypes of everything. It's up to me, and it's up to you.
Simon Sinek is the Optimist/writer of books like Start With Why, and Leaders Eat Last. I've listened to several of his talks on business and finding your "Why?" in life. He's easy to listen to and makes a ton of sense. This one surprised me when it popped up on my feed a couple days ago. I found it totally fascinating. Maybe you will, too. Oh, among other things, he gives an actual definition of "art." Hell, I've never managed to do that.
What do you do after you spend a year eating, praying, and loving? You inspire the freakin' world with an epic TED Talk. Elizabeth Gilbert's epic piece. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've watched this.
Why are we all afraid of asking for so many things we need? Maybe it runs in the family. Maybe we need a ukulele anthem to psych us up first. Another epic TED Talk involving creativity. Like the one above, I can't even count how many times I've listened to this.
"Let's talk about donuts..." What? You had me at "donuts." Maria Popova does some serious brain picking into Amanda Palmer's thoughts. I wasn't sure what to think when I started watching this for the first time. Like those above, it's become a favorite I've watched many, many times. EAT THE FUCKING DONUTS!
The thing I've learned about suggesting books, talks, music, or orgasmic techniques to other people is that what is amazing for me may not do anything for anyone else. So I'm throwing four favorites out there. If one calls to you a bit, watch. Listen. That little intuitive spark of interest nearly always means there's something in it you need to see/hear right now. Let me know if any of you get something cool from one or more of these.
Maria Popova talks with Amanda Palmer about her book, The Art of Asking. If you're a creative person, this is one of the best videos I've ever seen about the day to day life of doing creative work. So, most of you will ignore it. But this clip will find the few who need it.
Listen to this cool performance of Amanda Palmer singing "Ukulele Anthem" at the Sydney Opera House, and then go kick some fuckin' ass at something creative today.
The crazy weather in this video got me thinking about the evening of May 7th, 2018, when I went out to my tent in the woods behind Bolton Park here in Winston-Salem, where I lived for 9 1/2 months or so, with a six week hiatus after I went to jail for buying donuts as Aldi's on Peter's Creek last fall. Long story... ask me sometime in person. Or you could ask officer Dime. And look at his bodycam footage. Oh wait, the public and press are not allowed to see bodycam footage here.
Anyhow, I soon had a bunch of Southern good ol 'boys stomping around outside my tent, a couple mentioned having baseball bats, and talking about beating the fuck out of me to "teach me a lesson." Months of various forms of intimidation didn't work to get me to go stay in the homeless shelter with all the lazy-ass drunk and crackhead motherfuckers who are getting Disability checks, paid for by YOUR tax dollars, every month. I came to Winston-Salem to turn my art into a business. It's as simple as that.
But the good ol' boys ran me through the police database, and found that I tested as having one of the highest I.Q.'s in the country when I joined the Marines in late 1984. I was dropped from the delayed entry program, and told that the Commandant of the Marine Corps himself, personally, made that decision. What I wasn't told was how high I scored on the I.Q. test. With that on my record, I apparently came to the attention of all kinds of people at various government and law enforcement agencies. Without realizing it, I became an "asset," for several of them. I had a roommate in 1995, Chris Moeller's cousin, who claimed to be a CIA agent. Chris called him "Operation Rick, the paramilitary Mod", because all he talked about was being a spy, but he wore Creepers and rode a scooter. Hence the Mod part. Things got crazier later on, especially after 9/11. I can't go into all the details of what actually happened to me in all those years I was homeless, a taxi driver, and a homeless taxi driver. The reason is because of who was fucking with me. But it was just ridiculous. And your taxi dollars paid for it... lots of your tax dollars.
Now, I just want to make a living as an artist and writer, but the bullshit has ramped up again. And that led to the good 'ol boys stomping around outside my tent on the night of May 7th, as a storm approached. I just laid there, waiting for them to do something, and throwing out the occasional sarcastic comment like, "Shit, if I knew all you guys were coming, I would have got snacks."
The American South was built on slavery, we all know that. And slavery, at its core, is intimidation and terrorism. Humans are terrorized on a personal level to the point where they believe they HAVE to remain slaves. And that long honored tradition of intimidation continues to this day in places, and at times.
But those good ol' boys, stomping around outside my tent on the night of May 7th, didn't know what to do with someone who simply wouldn't cower and be intimidated. And someone who happened to be homeless at the time, and yet have a blog with 30,000 page views in a year. A blog that got more web traffic than most official sites in this area. Hey, it ain't my fault if your social media game sucks. Learn. Do the work. You can't buy popularity anymore, you have to get on the phone or computer and actually put out GOOD CONTENT. You know, like this post about you dumbass motherfuckers threatening to beat the fuck out of a homeless guy, who you KNEW was unarmed, in a tent, ALONE, in the woods. I actually heard one guy say, "If we beat the fuck out of him, he'll just blog about it when he gets out of the hospital." Yep. Welcome to the 21st Century. Cowards intimidating other people by brute force doesn't play well in a world where nearly everyone has a video camera. But, I wasn't going to blog about that night at all. I was going to just keep plugging away at my artwork and blogging and keep building the start of a little business.
But then I got hit with your $632 fine and fees for my donut BUYING arrest, and another 50 hours of community service, AND a 30 day jail sentence, suspended for one year. Did I mention that the guards threw a federal prison inmate in my cell the last of my three nights in county jail here? Remind me, I'll tell you the story sometime. He and I started talking art, and got along well. I'm pretty sure that's not how things were supposed to play out.
But then, my checking account wasn't supposed to get closed, which keeps me from starting an online store at the moment. And my new bank card, was supposed to ACTUALLY SHOW UP in the mail a week ago. Apparently it's "lost." And the studio owner with much of my artwork on her walls is supposed sell my stuff when people want to buy it, but she's been told not to give me a dime that I earn, because drawing pictures isn't a "legitimate" way to make money to pay my FUCKING RIDICULOUS FINE, which has somehow jumped to $732.
I make about $500 a month from my art right now. That's not a lot. But I came to Winston-Salem in June 2017, with $15, a little backpack with some clothes, and my art supplies. I didn't know ANYONE in the art scene here. From that humble beginning, I now make a small, but steady income, built entirely on drawing pictures that average people REALLY FUCKING LIKE to hang on their walls. I know a lot of people in this city now. And yet, the good 'ol boys keep trying to stamp me out like a termite. Or a nigger, back in the day when they could still use that word openly. Blacks aren't the only minority that gets fucked with a lot here. Homeless people are a minority as well, as are others.
Times have changed. And you guys haven't.
You want a war mother fuckers? OK you got one. But this isn't a war with tanks and bombs and guns and baseballs bats. OK, IT IS a war with guns baseball bats, on your side, at least on the night of May 7th it was. You know, the night when you guys couldn't figure me out, why I wasn't intimidated, and when I said the words, "Hoka Hey," from inside my tent. One of the guys asked what that meant. I replied, "Google it." Much to my surprise, one of them did. I honestly didn't think they were stupid enough to bring their phones with them to beat the fuck out of a homeless guy in the woods. When he Googled "Hoka Hey," his phone pinpointed his location, which is now on record. Not smart. And then, he saw where those words came from. If those of you reading this want to know, Google it.
Apparently, you good ol' boys want a war with a artist, a "worthless piece of shit," asswipe, artist who was homeless for years. OK. You got it.
But this is a war of ideas. A war for the hearts and minds of the people of this area. Guns don't mean shit in a war of ideas. You can only terrorize a coward, and I'm not one. Bring it on motherfuckers. Let's play.
I woke up this morning in a sketchy motel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It's definitely shady, but I think only one person has been murdered here in the last year, so it's not too bad as cheap motels go. I wake up slowly, and usually lay in bed for a while, picking my nose and thinking. As I transitioned from the dream world (which sent me a really weird dream last night), to the waking world, my mind drifted to the Johnny Cash drawing I started a couple of days ago, the Kelly Slater surfing drawing I wanted to start, and then crept back to the same problem that has haunted me since I first came to North Carolina in late 2008. "How do I make a living here?"
It's a problem that I struggle with daily. Technically, I'm homeless right now, since I moved out of the apartment I shared with my mom 3 1/2 weeks ago. A friend hooked me up with the money for this room for a week. It came out of nowhere, while I was talking about the tent I've been living in this month. Generally speaking, I like camping. But homelessness, or "urban camping," is not the ideal way to live. I have tons of stuff I want to write about. I have a lot of drawings I want to do. When I make enough to get a decent video camera, there are video projects I'd like to do, as well
Mostly right now, I want to start talking to people about building creative scenes. Art scenes, music scenes, BMX scenes, skate scenes, entrepreneurial scenes, whatever. On one hand I'm a creative guy who's mostly a writer/blogger. But I also have a totally unique way of drawing with Sharpie markers that I do. I'm also into watching the economic world and the dynamics of human society. I'm an amateur futurist, reading boring books and looking at the Big Picture of where our society is heading.
That's where the creative scenes thing comes in. The United States, and much of the developed world, is barreling towards a high tech future where tens of millions of human jobs will be replaced by some form of technology. A handful of really smart people are worried about this. But very few other people are paying attention. Our official unemployment rate is low, just 4.3% right now. But that doesn't tell the real story. Large numbers of people have simply given up on finding work. Tens of millions more people consider themselves underemployed, not able to really use their talents and skills in the jobs they hold to survive. A quick look into the future shows this is going to get worse. Much worse.
Some people, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg included, think that everyone should get a check each month just for being a human. Universal Basic Income, they call it. Professor and economic development expert, Richard Florida, says we need to make the tens of millions of service jobs into good paying, living wage jobs. Both of those ideas have some merit. But both would take serious, collaborative, bi-partisan action from business leaders, unions, and politicians. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
That leaves one viable option as I see it. Millions of us will need to create our own jobs. That's what I've been working on doing for the last year and a half. Living in a highly toxic environment that was always in financial crisis made it nearly impossible. I had to head back out onto the streets to really work to make it happen. Obviously, starting a small business from a position of homelessness isn't easy either. But that's where I'm at.
So I crawled out of bed today. The low budget motel bed seems incredibly luxurious after weeks of sleeping on a damp tent floor... or worse. I started working on the Kelly Slater drawing. I've been wanting to try my Sharpie "scribble style" on a really good surf photo for a while. I did a drawing of a duck dive by surfer Karina Petroni, and it tuned out pretty well. As I started drawing, I wanted to listen to something inspirational. This "Authors at Google" talk by Amanda Palmer, about her book, The Art of Asking, is a favorite of mine. At 20:16 in the clip she reads the story in her book about a young Australian musician using the platform Patreon to support her work. Amanda tells the woman how Henry David Thoreau, while living at Walden Pond, got home made donuts from his mom and sister every Sunday. He didn't survive quite as self-sufficiently as his book, Walden, let on. But it doesn't really matter. His experience in the woods by the pond turned into an epic American book. Even with the Sunday donuts. People helped him in his quest to "suck the marrow out of life," and he was still able to write a book that enlightened and inspired millions. Amanda tells the musician, and the workers at Google, "Eat the donuts. Eat the fucking donuts." With this room paid for (quite surprisingly) by a friend, I'm "eating the donuts" right now.
As I listened today, I realized that I don't need to finish the Johnny Cash drawing and sell it to pay for another week in the motel. I don't need to write and sell the zine I was working on last night to pay for another week. More than anything these days, I'm a blogger. I realized what I need to do is bring my different blogs into one, and write all the dozens of things on my mind in the blog, and share it with all of you in real time. I, too, have a Patreon page where people can support my work. What I need to do is just put all my good ideas in one place, and let you see my creative process. You don't have to pay a dime to read my stuff. Except the few ideas I will write on my Patreon blog before anywhere else. I'll keep drawing and progressing in my artwork. And I'll sell the drawings and zines I can.
But I'm going to take Amanda Palmer's advice, and I'm going to ask you, the readers, to help keep me writing. Help me share my thoughts and stories about creative scenes to all the people out there looking for a way to create their own jobs, their own businesses, and to revive the small towns, small cities, and rural areas that are struggling across this country. I want to keep doing this work. You can go to my Patreon page now, and sign up to help me out, starting aa low as $1 a month. Here's my Patreon page.
As for me, I'm out of food money right now. So I'm going to go do a little offline "micro job" I do to come up with money to eat. When I've done that, I'll come back to working on the Kelly Slater surfing drawing as I think about my next blog post here. Welcome to my weird world.
