(This is an excerpt)

Let’s shake off the chains that are connected to our brains
Let’s be free from the land of the foolishly brave
Let’s not fight for causes where victory is a loss for us
Let’s find our own goals that mean more to us.
I cry tears of lyrics when I listen to our future generations degenerating,
As we squander education, it’s disgracing
And as I get older I feel guilt for the youth
Because it’s no longer what my parents did
Its about what I do.
I try to only think about finding solutions
But I’m lost in nostalgia, mirages, and illusions.
I can’t let the past sleep -
I fear it will be the deep sleep of the dead
And as I try to look ahead, I’m so afraid of what’s next . . .

I’m gonna regularly practice my grandiose speech. Once I get more comfortable with it, I’m gonna cease all other types of speech.

This is geared towards promoting music, but it should be easy to apply generalize these tips to apply them to most kinds of self-promotion.

1) Find pre-made markets: Promoting a project is very expensive in terms of time. The same way you try to find the most bang for your buck when you buy things, you should find the most efficient ways to spend your time. Rather than try to promote to random people, try to focus on places where people who are likely to like and support my music would be – at live events featuring music similar to my own, on the websites related to similar artists, in places where people into art and creativity in general are likely to gather, etc.

2) Share the process: Art is exponentially more enjoyable and enticing when you are connected to the process in some way. Any time you interact with people, you have a great chance to connect them to your process. Don’t shove it down people’s throats, but encourage them to ask about your project and your creative process. If they are interested in learning more, make sure you tell them more.

3) Give them a taste: You can tell all kinds of people about the stuff you’re working on, but talk is cheap. The best way to get people to see you as an artist isn’t to tell them about your art – it’s to show them your art. If the telling gets someone interested, that interest will quickly get old if there’s nothing more. Make a promo CD, put some free songs online, do what you need to do to make sure you’re putting your art where your mouth is.

4) Be ready for a sale: Not everyone you talk to is going to buy a CD on the spot. Not every visitor to your website is going to order a CD their first time there. Still, some people will want to buy immediately. If they can’t, they may end up forgetting, losing interest, or spending their money on something else in the meantime. You should always be ready for a sale. If I’m on your website and I want to order a CD, I should be able to do it right away. Don’t delay the sale by making me go through some unnecessarily long or complicated process first, make it quick and simple. CDBaby is great for that. Don’t rely on CDBaby though. If we meet in person and I want to buy a CD, don’t make me wait until I have access to a computer to get it and don’t tell me you’ll have copies on you another time. Have it ready.

5) Be easy to find: It’s so frustrating when I google an artist whose performance I enjoyed and nothing comes up. It’s frustrating at first, but then I usually forget about them. Don’t be forgotten. Make sure more info is available for people who seek it out. In this age of information, people should be able to easily find your music and (going back to tip #2) info on your process (i.e. bio, blog, etc.). Try googling yourself to see how easy you are to find.

I recently saw the movie “Waking Life.” What a strange movie. It’s definitely not for everyone. Visually, it’s a unique movie. The movie was filmed live-action, then animators basically drew over the video. Even without considering the animation though, it’s pretty unique. The majority of the movie consists of the protagonist having conversations with a series of eccentric people – and by conversations, I mean he listens to them talk. This sounds like a formula for boredom, but the strange animation style, the quirky characters, and the subject matter discussed makes it quite interesting. If you are interested in existensialism or any related or derivitive movements, the subject matter will definitely appeal to you.

As I said, the protagonist spends a lot of time listening. His behavior is startling because for most people, it’s hard to imagine having “conversations” without actually speaking. It’s natural to want to chime in with your own opinions, thoughts, and experiences, but one of the advantages of being human is that we don’t always have to act “naturally.” In this case, taking the unnatural path can lead to interesting results. People tend to say a lot when you just let them speak. Try it. Of course if you don’t speak at all, the other person would probably stop speaking too, but try keeping your thoughts to yourself for a while. Let other people guide your conversations and see what they have to say.

People constantly joke about how they have 100 (500? 1000?) different channels but they still can’t find anything to watch. Have you ever realized how true that joke is? I’ve found a much better alternative.

Netflix.

I was a member several years ago but cancelled because movies were sitting on my desk for weeks instead of getting watched. I’m home a little more now than I was back then, so a few months ago I decided to give it a try again. I am so glad I made that decision. It’s such a simple but good concept. Make a list of every movie you want to see, then they’ll get sent to you one (or more, depending on your plan) at a time. Shipping is super fast (at least in my area). If I put a movie in the mailbox before the morning pickup, Netflix receives it the very next day and I receive the next movie on my list the day after that. In addition to that, I can watch a lot of their stuff online without having to wait two days for the mail. Now I rarely find myself hopelessly flicking through channels trying to find something the slightest bit interesting.

Hmmm, this might not just be a Netflix thing. Maybe I’m becoming a convert for the subscription media thing. I just tried out the free trial of Microsoft’s Zune pass, and I will probably be purchasing a subscription. With the Zune pass, I get unlimited access to most of their catalog of music. In the time that I’ve been trying it, I’ve discovered tons of new music and found a bunch of songs that I’ve always liked but never had. I’ve been tempted to get Zune Pass for a while, but what finally won me over is the new feature that lets you keep 10 songs per month.

Yep, I think I’m definitely a subscription convert if the price and terms are right. With Netflix, the speed of shipping combined with the always-available online content makes it well worth it’s cost, which is about what you’d pay to rent two movies. With the Zune pass, $15 a month always seemed like a bit much for me considering the fact that if I cancelled my subscription, all my music would be gone. However, $15 for temporary access to the full Zune library and 10 songs to keep permanantly is a great bargain.

OK. Gushing rant over

I haven’t felt the urge to blog in a while. I’m not sure why. It’s not because of a shortage of topics – somewhere among my possessions, there is a scrap of paper with a list of blogging ideas that I didn’t want to forget. There have been times when I forced myself when I didn’t feel like blogging, resulting in random irregular updates and tons of never finished posts, but this time, I decided not to. I figured if i didn’t want to blog, then I shouldn’t. I don’t think it’s just been the blog, I’ve been going through a partial internet withdrawal.

Oh, I’m still online all the time, but lately I’ve been much more of a passenger on the information superhighway (why don’t people use that phrase anymore) than a driver. I haven’t been blogging, I haven’t been posting in many forums, I haven’t been publishing youtube videos like I planned to.

My withdrawal is partially due to computer issues. After a recent upgrade, my video card failed. I could’ve moved back to the old hardware, but that would require a reinstallation of everything to move back to the old stuff, then another reinstallation when the replacement card came – and this would be on top of the re-installation I already did when I upgraded in the first place. So, I sent the card back and waited computerless. After what seemed like a really long wait, I got the replacement card, put it in, and my computer was up and running. For two days. Currently I’m waiting for the second replacement. In the meantime, I’ve had the use of my lady’s laptop, but it’s not the same. I’m used to using my own computer with my own settings, programs, etc.

Will I be blogging regularly when my computer’s up and running? I don’t have a clue. I will be posting some stuff on youtube though. I have some video of Philly singer/poet Rhapsode performing at this year’s Odunde, a short stop-motion film I made with a friend of mine, and video of myself performing at The Knitting Factory in NYC from last month.

Who know what else the future will hold . . .

I am a house dancer. I haven’t always been a house dancer – I haven’t always even known what house music is – but now I’m a house dancer. Lately, I’ve been running into a lot of people from my dancing past. It’s made me reflect on my dancing history, so while it’s on my mind, here’s my story . . .

The early years

I grew up listening to hip-hop, reggae, and soca, but I was not much of a dancer. As a young teen, I never went to clubs and the parties my friends threw usually involved a bunch of us hanging out at someone’s house, so I never danced in public. I didn’t start dancing in public until I started visiting colleges toward the end of high school. Some of the colleges I visited threw parties for their prospective students – I can still remember awkwardly two-stepping through those nights. Once I started college, I got more comfortable on the dancefloor.

Until my second year in college, I never did more than two-step. Over the summer after that first year, I visited Barbados with my family. While I was in Barbados, I saw a guy dancing to soca, and something clicked in me. I suddenly understood how to move my waist to the music. After that, when they played reggae or soca at college parties, people knew to find me on the dancefloor. The girls loved it because they knew I could dance and that I did it because I enjoyed it – unlike some guys who simply see dancing as flirtation and foreplay.

Circles

I was living in Philadelphia in the summer of 2000. I was still learning the city and I was just getting used to the idea of going to clubs. One night, I went to 700 Club with some friends. It was a while before I realized this, but it was really a life changing night for me. Now, 700 Club is known as a hipster club, but back then it was a lot more mixed. Cosmic Cat, who later became one of my favorite Philly DJs, was spinning that night. One of my friends introduced the group of us to a girl that she knew. At some point in the night, I was feeling the music and I started doing this step I had learned from watching breakdancing on TV as a kid. I only knew the one step. The friend of my friend came up to me and yelled over the music.

“Do you battle?”

I wasn’t really sure what she was talking about, so I just yelled back, “No.”

I don’t know if this girl misheard me or what, but her response was, “Aight! Let’s go!”

She stepped back with her arms wide, pushing people back as she moved. Within seconds, there was a big circle cleared in the middle of the dancefloor. She jumped in the circle and started dancing. I had never battled before, but at that point I would have felt stupid backing down, so when she stepped back and looked at me expectantly, I jumped in and did my thing. Looking back now, I can’t imagine myself not looking silly that night. I did my one breaking step and I did horrible imitations of the cartwheels I had seen Capoeristas do. I have no clue what else I did, but the two of us went back and forth several times, so I guess I did throw some other moves in the mix.

At the end of the night, as we left the club, random people kept walking up to me, congratulating me, giving me pounds, etc. I had an amazing feeling – it was one of those times when I can say I was truly high on life. While I was battling that girl, I was caught up in the music and the moment, but it was the ego stroking that came afterward that originally made me fall in love with the circle. When I walked into that club I only knew the friends I went there with and the one girl I was introduced to. When I left, I was the center of attention and it felt like everyone loved me.

After that, I started going out to clubs regularly. At first I’d go with my friends, but they never wanted to go out often enough to satisfy my dance craving, so eventually I started going out on my own. When I started going out on my own, a whole new world opened up to me. I’d walk into a place full of strangers. I’d see a circle or I’d spot other dancers and we’d form a circle, and then suddenly we were friends. It was instant community. Once you share a circle with someone, there’s some kind of bond. You might know nothing about their personal life, their home life, etc., but you know something important about them. You might not even know how they look – there were plenty of times when I didn’t recognize someone, but then when I saw them dance, I instantly remembered our last meeting.

House Music

Over the time that I was getting used to dancing in circles, I gradually became aware of house music. As a child, I never heard of house music. Later, I was under the impression that house music was like techno – excessively loud, mind-numbingly repetitive, and annoying. When I finally understood what house is, it was kind of like watching a movie that just had a plot twist. You start thinking back to things that happened earlier and understanding them in a new light. I realized that many of the songs I had heard on the “urban” stations as a kid, songs I loved back then, were house music. Some of the music that Cosmic Cat was spinning was house. That Baltimore club music I had gotten into a few years earlier was a particular style of house. Some of the music I loved so much at Crimson Moon was house. The more I thought about it, the more I could see that throughout my life I’ve been in love with house music even though I didn’t know what it was.

Before I was aware of house, my aim was to learn to breakdance. When I saw breakdancers, I tried to study and learn their moves. At home I would try to learn to stand on my head and to do the six step. As much as I tried to learn, I never felt comfortable with many of the movements. My awareness of house music ushered in a new stage in my dance journey. I realized that house was the music I felt most comfortable moving to. It inspired me to try things I’d been unable to do when I was trying to breakdance, and now they felt right. I started learning Capoeira, which has greatly influenced my style of dance, around the same time that I was becomming aware of house. Also around this time, I stopped caring about being the center of attention when I danced. If I was surrounded by good music and other dancers, I was happy. When a good DJ spins house music, you feel the music in a spiritual way. When you’re in a circle of dancers, you know you’re sharing that feeling with others. The world outside of the circle starts to disapear.

And Now

There are people would be shocked to hear that I don’t dance to reggae anymore. Now, it’s strange for me to think that it’s been 8 years since I first stepped into a circle. I’m constantly growing as a dancer as I learn from other dancers and try new things. After a three year break, I returned to Capoeira this year. Capoeira is making me stronger and more flexible. Capoeira and dance, they each help prepare me for the other. When it comes to dancing, I have no idea where I’m going. I’d love to continue to learn and develop, but outside of that I’ve never had goals. Dancing is just something I love to do.

I’m gonna initiate conversations with people I have seen before for the sole purpose of identifying them.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“Errr, I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, I sat next to you on the bus two days ago.”
“Oh”
“. . .”
“. . .”

For the proper effect, the awkward silence, which should last a minimum of 8 seconds, is followed by walking away.