DESIRE

Making it can’t be some thing, it’s got to be the ONLY THING. You’re gonna want to sacrifice, but you’re gonna have to forgo more than that, miss out on parties, on social rituals, all in the goal of achieving your heart’s desire, which you think will satisfy you but it won’t, but you’ve got no choice.

INSPIRATION

Its source is unknown. Sometimes you’re just standing in the shower, other times you’re reading a book, watching a movie. It’s not conscious, it sneaks up on you, and then your goal is to capture the moment. Don’t second guess yourself, that’s when you lose it, the truth is greatness is all about an edge, you’re not fifty percent better than everybody else, more like five. But that five makes all the difference. And that five is unfiltered, unjudged, oftentimes unstudied. Sure, chops help, but when inspiration hits you’ve got to run on instinct, be willing to break the rules, all in service of getting that inspiration down.

CONNECTIONS

You can’t make it alone. You need someone to lead the charge. This is the hardest part, finding someone who believes who will get you to your destination without ripping you off. The greats are socially awkward, but the conveyors see something in them, a spark, that they can bring to the public, to make money.

VISION

There’s a market for me-too, there’s a market for assembly line, the factory needs workers, but that’s about stardom, not art. What is it that you want to achieve? If it’s solely about making money, go elsewhere, you can make more there, especially today. If it’s about acceptance and accolades, you’re on the right track. You’ll get ’em, but they won’t be satisfying, they won’t fill you up. That’s the dirty little secret of the greats, they do it to connect with others and when they find out success doesn’t fix their lives they can’t do it anymore.

CONTEXT

You must be a student of the game, if you live in a vacuum you won’t succeed. You’ve got to know what’s already successful, you’ve got to envision your place in the firmament, you’re a salesman, and your art is your product. If too much convincing, too much backstory, too much explanation is required, you’ll miss the target.

BELIEF

You’ve got to believe you’re the best, that you have something to add, even though you’ll have moments of extreme doubt, when you believe you’re worthless and undeserving.

TUNING OUT THE NOISE

People want to put you down, they want you to be like them, the longer you listen the more discouraged you become. You are the game, everybody else is the audience.

PERSEVERANCE

Your one big break is not. The road is littered with not only bumps, but hills. The mountaintop is far in the distance, you think you can see it, but you cannot. Keep going.

CHANGE

He not busy being born is busy dying. If you’re repeating yourself, if you’re in a rut, you’re already in the rearview mirror. Admit mistakes, try new things, you stumble into greatness, it’s not about calculation.

LEARNING

All the time, you’re not only hoovering up information, mistakes correct your course. And you gain knowledge of people, you realize so many are full of crap. Finding those who can truly aid you is a lifetime journey.

GETTING SCREWED

You will be. If you were good at finance, you’d be working on Wall Street. But those people can’t do what you do, and believe me, they want to. If you’re worrying about leaving money on the table, if you’re worrying about getting ripped off, if you can’t stop thinking about dollars you’re gonna be destroyed, if you get off the launch pad at all. Sure, money counts. But if you make it, there will be enough. And with your name attached you can earn a living for the rest of your life, which those who ripped you off probably cannot.

RESTING ON YOUR LAURELS

You can’t give people what they want, but what they need. You’ve got to continue to test limits. Once you second guess the audience you’re finished, you’re an oldies act, you’re culturally irrelevant.

She didn’t obey the rules.

That’s another thing the working class believes in strongly, right and wrong, respecting the law, and the funny thing is most of us consider ourselves working class, or middle class, be sure to read today’s “New York Times” story on Wigan, a burg that always goes Labour that voted for Brexit, despite only 25% of UK inhabitants being working class, 60% BELIEVE they are working class. You never forget your roots. You might have an SUV and a sports car in the driveway, probably leased, but you remember when you struggled, and retain those underlying values, unless you WIN!

For far too long the emphasis in America has been on the winners. And that means money. Hell, the media wouldn’t even publicize the MacArthur genius grants if they didn’t come with 125k a year attached. Is it hard to believe we’ve got a culture where the best and the brightest, the elite, bend the rules in their favor in order to succeed?

Bill Clinton comes from nothing, he’s arguably a hillbilly. Hillary comes from something more. But after his Presidency Bill and Hillary blurred the edges, worked for anybody with the cash, barely different from a nitwit entertainer doing their act for a third world dictator. Couldn’t they say no? And they’ve got that bogus foundation wherein the money goes in and transparency disappears. And now their daughter Chelsea is a millionaire, really… This is what Bernie Sanders was railing against, the closed system, wherein the winners utilize their connections to keep themselves up and others down. Come on, why should Chelsea Clinton be worth eight figures, what has she done other than to be a member of the lucky sperm club?

And she’s fair game, everybody with a profile is fair game. That’s the social media world we live in, there are no sacred cows. Despite the media insisting our leaders, our stars, have gravitas and earned their status, despite Romney putting so many out of work.

The past has come home to roost. I believe in globalization, but you’ve got to take care of the losers in the equation, like Colin Hewlett in the “Times” article above, he’s 61, his weekly pay got cut from $665 to $318, you can’t make it on that. But you never hear these stories, because these people don’t have a voice.

And I don’t think Hillary should be indicted, that’s a right wing canard, one that ignores the law, which must show intent in a specific way, to give away secrets. But I do question the judgment of someone who refuses to abide by the rules. What exactly was Hillary protecting herself from here? Who are the people she surrounds herself with who told her to do this? Believe me, she’s not that tech-savvy. Why is it that every successful person made it by breaking the rules and they keep telling us to adore them?

I’m gonna vote for Hillary, you can’t give Trump the wheel, you can’t put the Supreme Court at risk. But at this late date I’m thinking David Geffen was right, he plays the Clinton game better than they do, he too rose from nothing, and he deemed them duplicitous, untrustworthy, and they are. Funny how the right wing label ends up sticking, being right.

But the right wing is all about gotcha and gridlock and paying fealty to shadowy rich people who pay their bills and pull the strings. When did it become an honor to be a court jester, that’s who these people are, the right wing representatives and the Clintons too, they like the perks, they’ll do whatever the rich want them to, they’re beholden to them.

And then you’ve got the Hillary supporters shushing Bernie and burnishing her image.

Of course Hillary is smart, experienced too. But she lied about the server, of which there were many, actually it was servers, and how are you supposed to trust her after that? She doesn’t care about us so much as herself, accumulating and maintaining power, no different from Microsoft or Facebook or all the other corporations that you ultimately hate. Then again, today we love corporations more than people, their products are more honest, whereas human beings lack backbones, at least those in the public eye.

We can’t make it here anymore. Whether it be the working class or the educated class that cannot live in Manhattan or afford a concierge doctor. That’s the story of today, how it’s all blown up in our own backyard. Republicans are for drug treatment as opposed to incarceration because suddenly it’s THEIR kids who are shooting up as opposed to THOSE people. And now that college is sixty grand a year…who’s got 240k lying around?

So the truth is Hillary skated.

But it feels like she’s guilty.

And feeling is everything today. That’s why Brexit happened, despite so many voting against their interest, being beneficiaries of the EU.

It feels like we’re getting screwed in America. Even those who jumped through the hoops. I don’t make a million dollars a year, do you? Exactly what did I do wrong… Not go to work in finance, not be college roommates with Mark Zuckerberg? Finance builds nothing and tech is all about breaking rules, asking permission later. And we need change, but who’s gonna look out for the little guy?

The musicians have been screaming for years. They’re a perfect metaphor for the country at large. They were swimming along just fine and suddenly their lunch and then their house and nearly their entire income disappeared. You couldn’t ask the government to help them because the government was too busy protecting richer interests. So now it’s a winner take all entertainment world, but the truth is music was just the canary in the coal mine, it’s completely a winner take all world, from top to bottom. Good luck getting a good paying job if you’re over fifty. Service jobs don’t pay the bills. Meanwhile, we keep hearing about billionaires.

My sense of right and wrong has been inflamed. My radar has gone off. I don’t want to make the Democrats lose, but how are we supposed to mobilize voters when stuff like this happens? Could be the only way to lodge your protest is via voting. That’s a good reason to support Trump. And the Hillary acolytes will pooh-pooh it, and say it’s dumb, and against one’s interests, but that’s exactly why voters are going the other way, they’re sick and tired of being told what’s right by people who believe they’re better than they are, supporting false gods all the way.

We didn’t see this coming.

But a rising tide did not lift all boats.

And despite the public being unfamiliar with the details, they know how they feel…left out. And they’re sick and tired of those who don’t respect the rules being rewarded again and again and again.

I certainly am.

“Wigan’s Road to ‘Brexit’: Anger, Loss and Class Resentments”

It’s 6.4% per month, which is three times that of Spotify.

And the hardest thing is to get people to resubscribe, it’s like getting back together with an old love, you kicked the tires, you had some fun, but overall it just wasn’t worth it, you’re looking for something better.

If you’re looking for something at all.

This is a music industry problem. The theory was that when Apple entered streaming it would burgeon and all problems would be solved. But it turns out people are tuning out. What now? Will they go to Spotify? Not right away. Because I’d posit a great number of Apple Music users signed up because of the ecosystem, they were Apple acolytes, they were entranced to check Apple Music out. They’re not hard core music fans, and what they found was not enough to make them stick around. Turns out a me-too service with a bad user interface is just not that appealing.

So what will bring them back?

Certainly not exclusives. This is a false canard. Exclusives are about cannibalization, drawing Apple Music users from Spotify, theoretically anyway. What is the special sauce that will resuscitate Apple Music?

It doesn’t exist, they blew it.

The mistakes were so many.

1. First mover advantage. As in Apple didn’t have it. When Apple was late to the game with iTunes and then the iPod there was no dominant jukebox software and no dominant MP3 player. Furthermore, iTunes was EASIER to use and the iPod was too, as well as transferring files at a high rate of speed, i.e. via FireWire. What was the Apple Music breakthrough? Hand-curated playlists? Which some found inferior? Spotify toppled Rhapsody because of the free tier, because of higher functionality, the songs started right away and you could fast-forward and reverse easily. Spotify had a huge beachhead. Being Apple was not enough to triumph.

2. Usability. It’s hobbled Twitter, which is similar to Apple Music in that people tried it out, were confused, and didn’t come back. Navigation was near impossible. Supposedly the UI is now better, but you have to pay to check it out, most have already used up their free trial, they’re happy at Spotify or not subscribing to any service, why would they come back? It’s like buying a lousy car, an old Fiat, a Yugo, and then hearing they’ve fixed the problems and you should come back, but you don’t.

3. Too much functionality. Putting files and streams in the same app is like putting word processing and spreadsheets in the same app. Imagine every time you opened Excel you got a Word document. And then you couldn’t find your Excel files. This is what using Apple Music is like.

4. Broken upon launch. Really, you released an unfinished, bug-ridden product in an era where we expect everything to work right out of the box, both our flat screens and apps, in an era where there are no instructions and there is no tech help? That’s just too much.

5. Jimmy and Dre. Stars are for entertainment, worker bees are for tech. The software is the star, not the creator, and in this case Jimmy and Dre were just front people, no one believed they could code, never mind navigate more than a browser. Sure, we know Zuckerberg and Bezos, but they earned their stripes, and they don’t brag about how rich they are, and they’re not about hobnobbing, but the work. Apple Music should be a functional product, not a creative one, and Jimmy and Dre and Trent Reznor have no experience in functionality, only hype.

6. Not an underdog. That’s right, we like our upstarts, especially in tech. Apple Music was launched as a holier-than-thou product by a self-satisfied crew and the sneezers who spread the word on new tech wanted nothing to do with it.

So how does Apple Music get on the right track?

By establishing a free tier. That’s it’s only solution. It can’t compete with Spotify without it. People need to be able to experience changes and improvements, otherwise they’re never gonna switch. And the free tier should never expire. Because unlike free HBO weekends content is not the draw, functionality should be. You can’t win via exclusives, they just piss people off. If Spotify can win without Taylor Swift and Adele, it can continue to succeed without the stars Apple Music might align. And the truth is stars hate exclusives, they only do it for the money. They’re fan unfriendly, and they leave too many people out of the loop, and in an era where it’s hard to reach everybody, you don’t want to leave out anybody.

And there needs to be integration with messaging, so people can share tracks. Messaging is key in today’s world, and Apple’s got a huge head start with iMessage, but it’s a walled garden, you can’t play if you’re on Android. But if you are on a competing platform you’ve got WhatsApp, and in China WeChat dominates. Apple needs to open iMessage for the opportunity to lock people into their ecosystem with new products, like Apple Music. Otherwise, it’s a death march, the iPhone won’t dominate forever, to the degree it dominates at all, because handsets have become a commodity.

And there needs to be a focus on the hard core user, it’s they who spread the word. With a churn rate like this Apple Music has too many looky-loos, and they don’t build a business.

As for innovation… There are a lot of new ideas, talent contests, earning placement on the homepage, but this would depend upon Apple’s brass looking down, into the pit, to those coming up, as opposed to hanging with the fat cats, leaving the public out. Didn’t Jimmy get the Brexit memo, that elites are abhorred? And out of touch too?

This is like digital cameras folks. As a matter of fact, 2016 is the year. Remember when we kept hearing that digital was gonna replace film and it didn’t happen? And then, after a decade, it did, film died overnight. Files are dying and streaming is now going through the roof. And we know that one enterprise dominates online, one app or site has 70% of the market. Right now, that appears to be Spotify. Which has a head start, but is not perfect. Its look and feel are not its strong points. Apple could have made headway here, but it issued a half-baked product instead. Kind of like with the Watch, but at least that was a breakthrough compared to what was already in the field. And they’re fixing the Watch. But convincing people to buy one, even more, convincing those who returned one to buy another? That’s extremely difficult. Kind of like getting people to return to Apple Music.

“Apple Music has one big weakness in its fight against Spotify”

History is being rewritten. The seventies are now seen as the advent of the blockbuster era, the decade that launched “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” which changed the paradigm forever, to not only high concept fare purveyed during the summer months, but high grosses too. If you’re not swinging for the fences today, you’re not in the game at all.

But it didn’t used to be that way.

It didn’t used to be that the Third Street Promenade was the epicenter of entertainment. As a matter of fact, Santa Monica was sleepy, all the traffic was east of the 405, walk down the Promenade and you might encounter tumbleweeds on your way to the $2 movie, no, all the action was in Westwood, just south of UCLA, where you could not get a parking spot and all the films opened.

Let’s see, how many movie theatres were there in Westwood?

Well, there were the Manns and the UAs and the… Nine edifices and more screens. And the Mack Daddy was the National, you entered on floor one but then ascended to floor two, where the seats poured down to a giant screen. That was the number one theatre in Los Angeles, possibly the world. But it no longer exists. It was torn down, L.A. is constantly reinventing itself, and for those of us who remember those days…we cannot forget when Westwood ruled and the movies did too, when the idea of lining up an hour before just to see the latest Brian De Palma flick was a common event. Movies were our lifeblood. Punk came along and put a dent in corporate rock, new wave too, but the movies didn’t waver, they paid dividends right up until…

“Heaven’s Gate.”

Now the focus has been on how that flick killed United Artists, but it goes unsaid that after that flop the artists lost control, the studios took the power back. And sure, Spielberg got his own way, but he was never one of the auteurs, I’ll even argue he’s a hack. He sold entertainment, slick stuff, whereas the greats from that era, their work had edges, it touched our souls.

Let’s start with “The Last Picture Show.” Peter Bogdanovich’s masterpiece. Dark and in parts unseemly, with a naked Cybill Shepherd to boot, watching that flick made you want to go to Texas, because it was so different, unlike the suburbs where I grew up, the movies were a window into an alternative universe.

And you can say “Paper Moon” was more mainstream, but really, creating a Dust Bowl flick in black and white? No one likes to leave any money on the table anymore, they fear alienating part of the audience, they won’t take risks, which is why the movies have faltered.

Oh, I know… You’re going to point to the small flick that floats your boat, the record that penetrates your brain, but what you don’t realize is back then the HITS did this. There was an experimental marginal fringe, but the best and the brightest were given free rein and told stories we just could not get enough of.

Like “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,” where Jeff Bridges lit up the screen and jump-started a career. Shot in Big Sky country, you marveled at the world created, you had no idea who Michael Cimino was, but you knew the flick was good.

And we did know who the directors were, they were stars often bigger than the actors. Like Francis Ford Coppola. Not only is the “Godfather” saga probably the best movie ever made, Coppola continued to test limits and I went at noon to the Cinerama Dome to see an unspooling of “Apocalypse Now” months before it opened wide, it too played for a week, just like the “Deer Hunter.”

“Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” might have gotten little respect, but the buzz on the “Deer Hunter” was deafening. This was before DeNiro was a star, most people had never heard of Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken was an unknown, but the rap was the flick affected you emotionally, it wasn’t a thrill ride but a saga. Funny how the humanity’s been sapped out of art, it’s all sheen, but back then character was as important as plot, and when you saw the “Deer Hunter”…

We did, my girlfriend and me, at the National, where it played for Oscar qualification, tickets were sold in advance. It was during law school finals but it was an unmissable event. We had no idea what to expect, but after seeing it we could not sleep, it affected us so much, the same way you drove home in silence after seeing your favorite band live, you were numb, you wanted to wallow in the experience.

So, we were all waiting for “Heaven’s Gate.”

Which is not as bad as they say it is, the legend eclipsed reality, before the film even opened. Kind of like the new “Ghostbusters,” which is already considered a flop. The truth is everything great triumphs after that much hype and notoriety, and if the female “Ghostbusters” is good the online brouhaha will be forgotten. But it probably isn’t, so it’ll stiff. Like “Heaven’s Gate,” which was just not good enough.

It’d be one thing if Michael Cimino made another movie right away. But he became a pariah and then a recluse, a bombastic self-righteous jerk who no one wanted anything to do with.

But the interesting thing is he was there at the apotheosis and the death. “Deer Hunter” was a long movie before three hour running times were de rigueur, it was all his vision, there was no source material, nothing to hook us other than word of mouth, the lunatics had taken over the asylum, the directors ruled. And then, after “Heaven’s Gate,” it was a return to what once was, light fare, only this time with a huge focus on hoovering up dollars.

And it’s only gotten worse. Entertainment was always a business, but other than in TV, the most mindless of media in the sixties, today entertainment is solely about the bottom line. We revere those who make the money, executives are king, everything’s gone topsy-turvy.

Michael Cimino died. After removing himself from the dialogue, after having so much plastic surgery he became unrecognizable. We don’t know whether he had that much self-hatred or was transitioning, right now we don’t even know why he died, but we do know he’s a footnote, known for bankrupting a studio and nothing more.

But studios were built on the backs of artists. And whether it be Quentin Tarantino rescuing the Weinsteins or… The spoils still come from the artists, those who are hated by the suits, because their genius can’t be quantified, you can’t put the odds of success in a spreadsheet, you’ve just got to trust them, these oddballs who wouldn’t fit in anywhere else but can hold the whole world in thrall.

Michael Cimino didn’t make that many movies. But he was more than a one hit wonder. And instead of being decried, he should be lauded. He was a highly educated guy who wanted to make films as opposed to money, he didn’t go to Wall Street, make an irrelevant app. He didn’t want to compromise, he wanted his vision on screen, he was in pursuit of greatness, which we rarely see anymore, despite all the protestations from Kanye and the rest that they’re pushing the envelope.

He was from a different era. When art ruled. When no one lived in a gated community. When the movie people flew first class, not private. When we not only saw the movies, but talked about them, endlessly. When people not only knew who acted and directed, but edited and shot too.

We’ll return to those days, when we give artists more rope, when we venerate them to the point the best and the brightest will leave money on the table to enact their vision. When society changes its values, when we realize it’s all about us as opposed to them.