Which sounds like a lot, but when you do something (almost) every day it shouldn't be surprising how quickly the words add up. In retrospect, I could've written 645 songs, eaten 645 double cheeseburgers, written two-thirds of the pages of a Stephen King novel.
He must type really really fast.
I can type pretty fast, but I still need to watch my hands in order to do it.
Stenography is not on my to-do list.
Anyway, I was reading book about (among other things) evolution and extinction, and I was surprised to learn that nature is more artist than engineer.
The more we learn about the fundamental rules of nature, the more we realize there isn't any fundamental rules.
If nature needs to get to the other side, it doesn't just cross the road.
Nope. It, like a mad scientist with billions of years to just waste, experiments with every possibility.
Walking . . . okay . . . how many legs to you need?
Flying . . . sure . . . how many wings is that gonna take?
Big, little, rolling, drifting on the wind? What's more efficient, big fat me or an air-borne disease?
(Answer: The Airborne Disease . . . but it's eventually gonna need a host . . . which is where big fat me comes into play.)
And you would think that with all that crazy mass of experimentation, there'd be no way for Nature to learn from it's mistakes (hopefully like an artist does), but as it turns out, most of your DNA is junk DNA. Does nothing. It is the result of billions of failed attempts. Yet there it sits. Lurking in Nature's memory just incase the world changes and we need a refresher course.
Who knows? Maybe you'll need a tail at one point. You've got the instructions in every little cell in your body to make that happen.
So this morning, I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast while sipping my coffee, eating my eggs, and they guests were talking about the death of the Blog. How it started, how it blew up, how it went professional, how it became marginalized by by micro-blogging sites, and how blogs (just like this one) are no longer building audiences and just contributing to the background noise of the internet.
That's kinda sad.
And just a little worrisome. But it makes total sense. And I can track my own blogging timeline with the evolution and eventual extinction of blogs as a whole (don't panic, I'm not giving up yet), but I thought it might be fun to do today's Friday Five and take a look back at the sequence of events, how and what I learned, and maybe peak into the future.
Day One: The Primordial Ooze of Castle Park
A blog is a called a blog because it is a "web" "log" A diary with universal distribution. Take some inner thoughts, post them on-line, create a conversation about them.
It was to create dialogue.
Which is exactly what my first post was about. I wanted to create a log during the creation of my second album and encourage people to follow a long, and more specifically weigh in. I didn't have a marketing budget, so I thought this might be a fun way to generate a little buzz. I wrote about the process of crafting songs, how I got ideas, how I hit walls, how I got into the studio, and inevitably what I might be thinking on a particular day.
Musing.
As it were.
It was inconsistent, and poorly edited (oops), but a unique style was settled upon (I said "unique" . . . not "good" :), and it was meditative in a way that brought focus to what I was really working on . . . which was an album.
Day Two: The Cambrian Explosion of Commentary.
If you're not a paleontologist, and why would you be, then you'll be excited to know that the Cambrian Explosion refers to the era when nature just blew the roof off it's earlier conservatism and went hog wild with inspiration. Flora, Fauna, killer bees and great white sharks.
This is where my blog got wild.
You might not know this, but even I get bored with talking about myself all the time, so to keep it real (as it were) I starting poking around the rest of the world, applying my voice to stuff other than my self.
This is where I started to learn "funny." Where there were no walls, no limits, and there was so much oxygen in the air I could pump out all kinds of thoughts on any subject I felt like typing out.
This is where I get funny for the first time . . . ever.
Day Three: The K/T Boundary, The Extinction of the Dinosaur, and the beginning of "Wait . . . Dad?"
So the K/T boundary refers to the geological boundary between the Crustacean Period and the Tertiary Period. Why they used "K" for Crustacean is a book in and of itself.
I will not be writing that book.
Probably.
Anyway, there is a thin line of silt in the rock formations that contains a buttload of iridium, which doesn't exist much on earth. It's very heavy and has long ago been eaten up by the earth's core.
Comet's however . . . lots of iridium . . . and that thin line of soot just happens to be the line at which we no longer find dinosaurs.
Big Comet ergo killed the Triceratops.
Boo.
Anyway, my big iridium filled comet came the day I decided to pursue art for real. I put together a five year plan. Studied all the kinds of things I've done that worked (warm blooded, hides under ground) and jettison all the stuff that didn't (bloated brontosaurus bodies and the sound of T-Rex clapping).
This was serious business now. I need to generate daily content, get clicks, edit stuff. Look professional. Build a following. Get ready to drop an album on a waiting and voracious audience.
Go man Go.
Day Four: Mammals . . . Who Woulda Thunk?
Mammals really shouldn't be a thing. We need things to be just right. Not too cold, not too hot. Lots of food, lots of water, pleasant views. It's a miracle that we got this far.
In putting together content, I hedged every bet that I could see. Read books on indie music, studio production, live performances, blog writing, generating traffic, how to be controversial, but not too controversial, and mastering the social medias Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Whateverer.
"Whateverer" is not actually a thing.
I just made that up.
But the plan was pretty self assured. All I needed was for a single right set of circumstances to go my way. It might have seemed like junk DNA, but like a vestigial tail, I was ready for whatever.
Or Whateverer.
And just as I got rolling . . . well . . . I actually just kept on rolling.
I kept rolling like a tumbleweed, and not the snowball I imagined.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Experiment here.
Experiment there.
Waiting Waiting.
Kind of like jumping out of a plane, with God holding your rip-cord, while the best you can do is enjoy the feeling a weightlessness and not concern yourself with the ever approaching surface of the earth.
And then the strange thing happens . . .
Day Five: The Six-Fingered Man.
What could one possibly do with six fingers on one hand?
Play more piano? Would it help with opening pickle jars? Is it in anyway an advantage when it comes to consumption or procreation?
Freak show, or just fun at parties?
So one of my little experiments goes viral. And of course, it is in no way connected to any of my other stuff, so God was tugging on the rip-cord, but the shoot hasn't deployed yet.
F$#@.
So it leads to a conundrum of evolution.
What do you do with a sixth finger?
I mean, it's cool and all, but how many eggs you wanna toss into a particular basket?
I could move this blog over there, and in doing so, would have to write differently, would have to focus more on the controversial than the humanistic. Not sure if I'm cool with that.
Not even sure it would work.
And what of the the rest of the stuff. The stuff that has to stay in my name. What do I do with all that?
Hmm?
Actually the particular conclusion is pretty obvious. Gotta just wait and see.
Darwin waited 40 years before publishing his thoughts on evolution. I think I can wait till June.
See you again on Monday.
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