Making your dreams come true through MS Paint

Folks,

I gotta lay it down, right here, right now. It is my belief that TOO many people involved in the art world (artists, musicians, actors, midget strippers) are taking themselves way too serious. Do I have to decode your hairdo to understand your deep running river? Do I have to look beyond your quirky choice of pant to see that there's a man with a plan? Does every artist have to BRAND themselves now? Like Chris Brown used to be the guy for DoubleMint Gum before he doubled his freshness and probation time by turning his fists into Umbrellas. Or like Ke$ha's brand is the "I don't care whose retainer it is and if I party too hard and poop my leggings that's too bad because it's obvious I went hardcore and there's glitter in my mouth" - that's her thing.

It's no doubt that I live in NYC and that a lot of fashionable people make it work out here on these pee and trash covered streets....

Work it!

But seriously people. Take a note from me, Jake Sanders; entrepreneur, self-made hero, musician, quick to pass judgment on people I've never met and all around tall guy...utilize clothes to cover your naked body and be comfortable, not as a chance to show everyone how witty or post-ironic you can be, and to forgo actual conversation. But more importantly, use MS paint to brand yourself! Set the bar low and then watch people's level of respect rise.

Check it!

What this says is "Hey, before we get off on the wrong foot let me introduce myself as someone who doesn't care for polish (that's polish like sheen, not polish like sausage) and I'm gonna hit the studio, do what it do, and then craft a banger. If we like said banger, great, and if not...at least I got a chance to create winning posters on Microsoft Paint."

That's it. Now a quick note - kids, be free. Do whatever you want to do and be whoever you want to be. Don't let my hasty generalizations stop you from buying all the expensive cheap looking clothes you can get your hands on. I can be thrown into these same categories as I always wear my lucky speedo underwear when I play a show, and I have at least 7 shirts with random sayings on them. Like "My other shirt is a broomstick" and "Honk if you like shinguards" or
"Kerry/Edwards 2004 - totally not gonna have sex with that camera girl"

Long story short, October 1 - get those hands on this album. The long and winding plug.

Good luck.

Knox, Knox....(review)

As the elder days of my life approach, I find myself asking questions once believed to be unaskable...

- while listening to the radio - "What are these youngsters listening to?"
- while watching tv - "Why does everything have to be so violent?"
- while sitting in a movie theater - "What happened to ambiguity?"

While the tender days of my youth seep out of the garbage bag of my life, I wonder if things have diminished in quality and craftsmanship, or have I outgrown the slobbery, hypnotic whirl of my teenage days where everything was new and all the experiences were mine to experience, and all the lessons mine to learn anew?

Let's take music for example. Back in the day when I started my love affair with hip-hop I started to realize that for me, the beauty of this genre was in the music. The rhymes were definitely a part of the picture, but the groups I listened to had a common thread; warm, wooden, vintage, funky sample driven production with a crisp finish that added a smokey note to the wine of my halcyon days.

Now with the advent of in-home music production that can actually compete with major artists, (yet only in competent hands, any yahoo can put loops together!) and the "I need it now and I can actually have it now" mentality, music and it's accompanying memory making ingredients have seemed to lose their luster.



All of these wonderings and wanderings were abated when I heard QKnox's "Meet Mr. Q" - a collection of no less than 30+ homemade beat blankets to warm this cold and lonely heart of a disinterested music snob.

With "Mr. Q" I see the progression of music stretching in both directions; historic and futuristic. With his latest offering, QKnox asks the listener to engage in a temporal freeze frame. A timeless landscape that is created from the limestone of some old and new soul and jazz records, shaped by the hands of the present to craft a gift to the future. In another way it seems QKnox takes ancient relics, crushes them into a powder and forges new metals and alloys with which he builds a new and fantastic world.

QKnox gives a tip of the hat to his musical heros while maintaining a stance that is completely his own. "Meet Mr. Q" takes me back to those smoked out cars of my younger days when the music made the magic happen. This is a treat to listen to and it's an album that can be delved into again and again, as new twists and turns are available from each successive listen. Keep your ears out for Captain Jean Luc Picard. He's all over this!!

As we continue to try to scrape what goodness we can from the crusty innards of life, it's nice to know that someone is walking behind us, picking up the scraps that we forgot, and giving them back to us in shiny new packages that make us remember when things were right in the world and we took time to appreciate.

Favorite Tracks -

Find a New Way - Something about this is yum.
Call Me Up - genius Chromeo reimagining

http://qknoxbeats.bandcamp.com/album/meet-mr-q

Nam Myo Ho Renge "If you build it they will" Kyom.

As a musician entrenched in an ever changing medium, I feel it's my duty to keep my ear to the streets and see what other folks are listening to, practicing on, who they're playing with. It's tricky to keep up with everything and stay relevant. You have to observe what other folks are getting into so it can help you get out of routines, help you break through self imposed limits and other glass ceiling type inventions. However, sometimes you'll find yourself on stage or at a rehearsal, looking and listening to everyone saying "Did I miss something?"

Such was the feeling when I looked around and noticed every jazz musician was a Buddhist. I had heard about Herbie and done my own research into Eastern mythology and had always had a resonate feeling with that bunch. But now it was reaching some kinda Pod People level. EVERY serious cat playing jazz was a Buddhist and I thought, "am I missing something?" I started feeling remiss in my jazz duties. Like when people started quoting other songs in their solos, or people started playing A Love Supreme chromatically rising when the heat got turned on. These are gimmicks but they hint at a very real concept; when you hear that next level shit you just know it.So what was I hearing in these peoples playing that wasn’t there before? Had their spiritual beliefs manifested themselves aurally? Then what about Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Mormon musicians, or that Satanic band from Oslo Dark Funeral?

"We need some goats and some virgins and some Zima. It's on our Rider!"

Did their take on spiritual nature not make the cut? Was jazz just reserved for some First Class Buddhist’s Only Lounge where they chanted and ate grapes and bean pies and wore saffron robes and fucking dominated Donna Lee for 20 choruses?

"18 more choruses boys! How high the moon indeed!"

My thoughts -

The musicians who turn to Buddhism or any religion are showing a dedication to something wholly larger than themselves. It is ridiculously easy to get wrapped up in music and think that YOU are the one calling all the shots and pulling the strings and it all relies on YOU. What’s different for those folks who bring religion into the picture, is that they are relinquishing elements of control to something other than themselves. Buddhism is very much about cause and effect and this is a huge part of jazz. When something occurs on stage it’s absorbed, transcribed and redirected at lightning fast speed. People who are not focusing on how they are doing personally are going to be better suited to translate this language and give the audience a clearer picture of the true nature of the musical exchange.

Do you need to be Buddhist to get these results? No. I’m of the mind that every little piece of information has it’s place at my table. As I go through life I take what lessons I can from where they poke out and assimilate it to my conceptual understanding. It makes sense that musicians that rock have spiritual coals in their fires. It’s just a question of how deep and bright you want your own fire to burn.

Mountains, Mole Hills, and Mordor

You know the scene -

You've been working hard on a project and it comes to the point where you've edited everything out, added and subtracted every known plug-in, used different instrumentation, thought it would be a good idea to bring the synthesized Chinese Moon Guitar into the mix, took it out, decided to sing all of the lines and then play them backwards through a high pass filter....and there it stays.

Finishing. It is the one thing most creative people cannot get there heads around. At the beginning of an idea, at the genesis, you see it all in front of you; like what Frodo thought when Gandalf gave him the ring;

"I got it. Into the volcano. We'll be back in about a week. Yeah yeah yeah no no no I got it. Bang! I'm Frodo Baby!"

But as you start coming up to the sculpting and shaping, editing and thoughtful reflection on what the true nature of your work will be the direction and passion seep out. It's so much funner to say to a room full of people "We will eat freshly baked brownies!" than to be the person who now has to make a roomsworth of brownies.

Almost everyone I know who is a dreamer is awesome at conception and development, but it takes a certain person to deliver the goods. In Anthony Kemp's book The Musical Temperament he says that highly creative people who are successful, exhibit characteristics of both genders - the female ability to stop and admire the color, contour, scent, dynamism of a bed of flowers; and the male ability to schedule, appropriate, delegate, shape and process those feelings into a tangible product. I do not believe in gender stereotyping as such, and these terms are used to codify the point, not to exclude or deny anyone; the fact remains that to be a "successful" artist one must possess both the ability to dream and create, and a knack for getting things in understandable packets that folks can take with them.

The title for this post says it all.

Mountains start from a small pocket of gas somewhere deep in the Earth and slowly over time and with much refining they become majestically huge and objects of wonderment, except to the poor Sherpa who has to carry your Sleep Number Mattress to the summit.

Tenzig's number is 34.

Mole hills are made by moles I'm assuming; I'm not a mole man myself.

Mordor is explosively filled with dragons and all types of evil bad assery.

These things are not entirely linkable but that's not the point. The point is that your man Jake Sanders had an idea, and saw that shit all the way through! Finito. Done! Game = Changed.

Seriously:

Creation is half of the act of creating. It's the funnest part. The other half is sustaining, nurturing, guiding, plugging, and finally letting go. You can sit on a track or a painting or a script for YEARS and nothing will ever come of it because you may feel it's undone, or the mix is off, or just a little more exposition here would be... - it'll never get anywhere. My good friend Ben Senterfit says "Once your done, you're halfway there."

So what you can do is learn to slowly melt your ego off of your projects and learn to trust yourself and your networks. I believe a large contributor to the unfinished aspect of the creative individual is lack of organizational skills as well as lack of business savvy, but the core of it is plain old fear. What are they gonna say? It's not up to snuff with the material I listen to! I don't sound like Stevie! I can't orchestrate like Gil Evans! It's not country enough, those aren't real chinchilla screams, I'm not convinced....bottom line here folks - It's either gonna flop or fly - and both will ultimately leave you with the same question: What's Next?

With my latest album I have found all of these lessons out over and over again. The reason I wanted to post this is because if you feel this way, it's not gonna go away. It's always there. It's the fear of flying, it's the teary father at graduation, it's the feeling you have when you go up a flight of stairs and you think there's one more for you to land on - it's natural baby! It's how we go about the struggles of life that really show who we are - not the fact that we learned once and are better for it and thank God that's over! These things keep popping up because it's good to keep checking yourself - And it's been happening to artists forever - Emily Dickenson wrote -

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me;
The simple news that Nature told
in tender majesty.

Her message is committed,
to hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me.

Written in the 1860's she is talking about her fears of unknown people reading her material and judging her. She's basically saying what Erykah Badu is saying when she introduces "Tyrone" on her Live album - "Bear in mind, I'm an artist, and I'm sensitive about my shit."

Everyone has hangups and just because someone is established in a field does not mean they're above these feelings. I just saw a YouTube video of the late and monstrous Michael Brecker talking about how he HAS to practice or else he feels like he's a scam artist.


Creative people out there: Finish your work and move on. Find a producer to help you, find a writing partner to help you, talk to your friends about how they finish. Check out David Allens book "Getting Things Done" - read THIS BLOG - find a deadline and go for it. The sooner you clear your head of the "Unfinished Symphonies" (which was unfinished because Schubert DIED) the sooner you can get to more creation -

Jake Sanders - The WhaleHawk

Tips on Creativity -

Hello friends,

This is a sheet you can use to inspire you when you are feeling low on creativity. What follows is a list of what helps me personally when I'm getting into the creative mindframe. Keep in mind this may not work for you, but it could one day so keep it handy!

1 - Wake up on time and whatever you do, don't drink the milk because it smells sideways to me.

2 - Take a break from writing to practice distance looking, chair cleaning, and judgingly commenting on people walking by your window i.e. - look at that woman! She does not skip meals.

3 - Try to signal for help using the Morse Code on your heating pipes. If you don't live in an apartment or are not trapped in a prison of your own design and you own your house, good for you!

4 - Think about what the ancients used to do when they got low on creativity...they probably murdered mermaids.

5 - Take an online course where you learn the ins and outs of sausage tubing. Vomit.

6 - Change clothes.

7 - Science is hilarious because we invented numbers and words. We invented the tools we use to explain the shit we don't understand. Thank God you're not a scientist.

8 - Translate your deepest saddest memories into a different language and then translate it back to English to see how foreign people hear your sad ass stories.

9 - Explain your way out of a room filled with socialists. Explain your way back in.

10 - Finally, just take it easy and clear out your mind. Breathe deeply and come to an understanding that all things being equal, each moment you engage your mind in the pursuit of creativity is a chance for your to connect with a version of your self that is free of constraint and worry and nothing but pure energy and honesty can come forth.

Thanks everyone!
JakeSanders aka WhaleHawk