Comes before attention.

Once everybody’s paying attention you can’t walk back your personality, you can’t undo the changes, whore yourself out to get noticed and that will be an imprimatur upon your “brand” forevermore.

But maybe you don’t care.

Kind of like Kim Kardashian and the rest of the influencers. Sure, they’ve got legions of followers. But it’s truly about fashion, style, something evanescent, skin-deep at best, which has no meaning.

But Bob Dylan and Eddie Vedder have authenticity.

What does authentic mean?

You can look it up in the Oxford Dictionary and find it’s “of undisputed origin; genuine,” but really it’s something you feel, it’s a resonance, deep inside, that what you’re encountering is human, albeit more successful, that the authentic person is making the same choices you are or would, or is more experienced and more informed and therefore you can learn from their work.

Learning…

That went out the window in pop culture long ago. Hell, just look at the movies! It’s been proven that fame attracts acolytes. But that’s very different from the flies drawn to the light of authenticity.

Authenticity means focusing on the art first. Even if it’s uncommercial.

Authenticity means saying no to that which does not feel right, which is evidence of your privilege. Kurt Cobain famously wouldn’t take a limo in South America, because he thought it wasn’t “punk.” He hated fakeness, he didn’t want to be that person either. He wanted his life to be a living badge of who he was. Unlike Bruce Springsteen, seen frolicking on David Geffen’s yacht. Geffen is rich, smart and connected. But sometimes you have to say no, because it doesn’t square with your fan base. Or make fun of it, kind of like Grace Slick planning to go to a school reunion at the White House to drop acid in the punch.

Now before you can become authentic you must become an artist.

An artist has chops and inspiration. No one emerges fully-formed, everybody woodsheds, and not only do they get better, they discover the path they want to go down. That’s the great thing about art, it’s not zeros and ones, it’s more free-form, you can make it up as you go, go your own way. As for inspiration… Talk to any creator, the irony is you’ve got to live a life to be inspired. If you’re on the computer 24/7 you’ll get little inspiration. You’ve got to go old school, experience the great outdoors, read a book, make a phone call. One of the greatest halls of inspiration is the shower. Some of my best ideas are hatched there. And they come from thin air, they’re not business plans built brick by brick, they emerge intact.

And then you’ve got to lay down your art when lightning strikes in an unfiltered way. There are always excuses not to work. You’ve got to get up early, you’ve got commitments, but artists know inspiration is fleeting, you’ve got to nail it while the thought is hot.

And you can’t self-edit. That’s death. That’s the antithesis of authenticity. Once you’re worried about the audience you’re inhibited, vast plains of creativity are no longer reachable. And contrary to what wankers say, much great work flows directly from the brain and requires little editing, it’s the editing that kills it.

Right now we’ve got music made by committee that fits a formula. It’s sleek and it shines and it sells.

But what we’re looking for is something with rougher edges, that captures the zeitgeist. You know it when you make it and people know it when they hear it but the truth is you can achieve these goals only on rare occasions, the rest of your work is not of the same caliber, it’s the filler between the hits.

But the people are drawn to the hits.

And by “hits” I don’t mean radio-fodder, just something you’ve got to hear again and again, see again and again, that you can’t get out of your mind, that you can’t stop talking about.

But in this internet era everything’s become quantified, we’re data-rich and content poor. Social media is about image as opposed to truth. But truth resonates.

And authenticity is just an element of the package. Wrapped up with talent, dedication, inspiration and creation. But it’s the conscience you must pay attention to if you want to stand out, if you want to be different, if you want to last.

Everybody’s telling you to take the money, to do it their way.

But the only way out is to do it your way.

Discover your way and stick to it.

You will always feel left out, left behind, out of it.

Everybody is cool in their own way. The old concept of coolness was based on scarcity. In a limited universe we look inward, in an unlimited one we look outward.

Posting is not belonging, just a facsimile thereof.

Everybody is a star. When there is no mystery, when everybody’s warts are revealed, there’s a great leveling of the playing field, the old icons fade and the proletariat is empowered. Right now all the talk is about personal branding, becoming a mini-empire, but not everybody is deserving of mass notice. The future is amplifying your identity based upon your work. Think local, not global. Especially in a world where those perceived to be global are not, they’re just the beneficiaries of massive publicity campaigns, how many people actually go see that movie, how many people actually listen to that album. You have such power and surprising impact as long as you stop shooting for the stars and focus on a goal you can see. This is the opposite of the seventies ethos, developed by the band the Police, who toured the world in an effort to achieve domination. No one has domination anymore, own the piece you’ve got.

Say no, not yes. In the information economy there’s too much, information that is. So you’ve got to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Read the headlines but not the articles unless they’re in a publication that filters for quality. Writing is a skill. “The New Yorker” is always readable, the links sent from other publications and blogs…are not. A concept is not a story. Most of what is written is ignored and you can ignore it too. You can never keep up and there is no catching up. Find your trusted sources and depend upon them.

You’re on your own, baby. There’s no tech help and no one will curate your Twitter feed, you have to decide who to follow. Which is why so many have abandoned Twitter, it’s easier to post photos on Instagram. Not that you have to be addicted to Twitter, but if you’re an information junkie it’s the best way to keep up to date. But you must forage the internet to find out who’s worth following.

Everybody wants your money. It used to be clear who was selling and who was not, and most everybody was not, but now they are. They want you to buy their wares on Etsy, spend your valuable time online looking at their stuff and promoting it. We’ve been overrun by salespeople, to our detriment.

It’s not news, it’s HYPE! So much of what fills the pages of newspapers and websites is glorified press releases, stories on subjects that are supposed to make you want to buy. Ignore the stories on the actors and musicians and all the rest of the purveyors. If you hear the movie’s good, go. If you hear the record’s good, listen to it. And then if you want to go deeper you can Google them and find a cornucopia of information. It’s all about time management, yours.

Tech serves us, not vice versa. We’ve been enraptured by tech for two decades, but the tide has turned, we’re not wowed by new websites and don’t need new devices and know that most of what is announced will fail. You don’t have to be first on your block anymore, with either hardware or software, you must see the Silicon Valley creations as tools, no more. Once they were the essence of cutting edge cool, but now you are.

Create in a vacuum. Read the Richard Russell piece in “The New Yorker”:

Richard Russell’s XL Recordings Empire

Although disappointing, it illustrates you must create and consume without distraction, without worrying about what others think, but only yourself. Artists dig down deep into themselves, but once Napster eviscerated sales they got so into interacting with their audience that they lost touch with the art. If the art is good enough, the fan base follows.

You’re climbing the hill every day. If you’re not confronted with something you do not understand, if you’re not flummoxed, trying to figure something out, you’re doing it wrong. It could be a political situation, it could be how to extract more power out of your mobile device. Life is about stimulation and we’ve never lived in a more stimulating era. Life is also about learning, and functionality. Oldsters have all the devices but don’t know how to use them, which is why youngsters run circles around them. You have to know how to change a light bulb, and the settings on your computer, you personally are responsible for making things work. If you depend upon others, tech help, employees, you’re losing touch. You never want to sacrifice your everyman status, because you have to reinvent yourself every day.

Ignore conventional wisdom. E-mail is dead, but it survives. Slack is superior, but you don’t work in a corporation. Do what feels right to you, no one knows your world better than yourself. Sure, poll your friends, take advice, but make your own decisions.

Define your own success. Much harder to say than do in a world that is hell-bent on making you feel inadequate. Revel in your personality and accomplishments.

Don’t be defensive. Everybody gets it wrong. Credit Silicon Valley for expounding this ethos. You fail, you pivot… When someone criticizes you for contradicting yourself laugh in their face, have principles, sure, but situations change and knowledge is gained and if you’re not willing to re-examine your positions and statements you will be left behind.

There is no center. No one has the answer, no one knows what’s going on, despite them telling you so. This is incredibly frustrating, but it’s the world we live in.

I finished the tapes. Now it’s your turn.

I can’t believe I dedicated 13 hours to a TV show. Sure, my mother was always telling us to turn off the damn box, to go outside and play, it was literally illegal to watch during the day, hell, she placed the damn set where there was an insane glare anyway, but by time I went to college I gave up television, and it stayed that way for fifteen years, you see it was a vast wasteland, a low-level time-suck, one wherein the producers didn’t respect the viewers and there was all this feel-good fakeness to the point it’d make you puke.

Then came “thirtysomething.”

Well, first came David Letterman. At 12:35 AM, before he was wearing a suit, when wrestler shoes adorned his feet, when anything went. Suddenly, we had a voice on television. Of course, we had a voice at the end of the seventies, on Saturday night, but once the original cast of SNL left it was never the same. Dan Aykroyd may have not soared on the big screen, but not a single man or woman plying the Studio 8H boards was as good as him thereafter, he not only acted in the sketches, he WROTE THEM!

And then came “The Sopranos” and it was all over, the music era ended and the television era began. Because there was more truth in these dramas (and comedies!) than you could find in any LP. The shows tested the limits, became part of the national discussion in a way no record ever did. There’s a universality in television, music has become niche.

To the point where I dedicated half a day to watch a screen take of a young adult book. That’s what blows my mind about the backlash, the book’s been hiding in plain sight for years, where were the parents then?

It was different in our era. Our parents were not our best friends. They had no idea what we were up to and the truth is today’s parents have got no idea what their kids are up to either, even though they think they do. It’s the human condition, a point in this series, does anybody really know what time it is, can anybody ever see another person’s identity, their hopes, feelings and desires, clearly?

Hannah wants Clay but she pushes him away.

If this doesn’t resonate with you, you’re probably one of the jocks, one of the popular people, the ones who hate the most according to this show. It’s good to have a wingman, like Jeff, but relationships are a risk you take on your own, and I’m not sure we ever figure them out, even when we’re aged and experienced. What’s the right thing to say? Do you ask again when you’ve been blown off? To watch Clay be tortured is to identify with the hell that is adolescence.

And the hell that is high school.

They got that right.

I know people say it was the best days of their lives, but why is it always those who were popular who never did anything thereafter? The rest of us, with zits, with issues, who were striving for distant destinations, i.e. good colleges, endured high school, and endured the abuse.

The only difference was our parents did not march down to the principal’s office to complain, we had to fight it out on our own. And I’m not gonna sit here and say that’s better, but I am gonna wonder if you can ever sanitize the cauldron that is high school. Hell, if your kids ever told you what was going on you’d lock the door and home school them.

And doing the right thing. That’s another big theme of this show. You watch the characters fail and you realize you’ve failed yourself, and you’re haunted by your mistakes, your inability to step up and do the right thing, even though it’s decades later, you think about going back and making amends, but unless you’re a friend of Bill W., you never do.

That’s right, life is full of regrets. And excuses. On one hand I admire those who manage to soldier on, but like in “Apocalypse Now” the horror sticks with me.

And no one is innocent. And no one is above the law. And we’re all in this together. Except we want to believe that we’re not.

Adulthood is about separating yourself from the pack, insulating yourself from hatred, but then you see their name, their picture, and it’s all brought back to you. It’s one of the reasons why I’m not on Facebook, why in hell would I want to connect with all these people I once knew, no way.

So this is the way it is in modern society. Television rules and music comes thereafter, if at all. Hell, Lord Huron’s “The Night We Met” has 38 million plays on Spotify (but only 8 million on YouTube, is the video service really the problem, I think not, I believe it’s going to fade away to de minimis stature all by itself). Even more rewarding is Roman Remains’ remake of Echo & the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon,” you can’t watch these shows without Shazam, you wanna know what numbers these are, that fit so perfectly in with the story, the mood.

And the juggernaut is just beginning. The buzz will not die. Hell, I didn’t watch the original “House of Cards” until six months after its release. And for all those parents and mental health professionals pontificating on the show’s impact, I wish you’d watch it first, why is everybody rendering an opinion without experience, then again art’s been the enemy for all time, remember Tipper Gore’s PMRC? Like lyrics are gonna ruin kids.

No kid is gonna watch “13 Reasons Why” and be surprised, this is the life they live.

It’s only the rest of us, with school deep in the rearview mirror who will be shocked, that it’s still the same, growing up is so difficult, you don’t fit in, you don’t know who to turn to, you think about ending it…

My inbox went quiet.

Are we in a constitutional crisis, is it the end of the world as we know it, or is it business as usual?

I DON’T KNOW!

The internet is de rigueur. Everybody’s got a smartphone. Technologically we’re up to date, but emotionally we haven’t digested the change.

Twenty-odd years ago we would have turned on the TV and been told what was right, by esteemed personages we believed more intelligent and more informed than ourselves.

But now we know most of the talking heads are overpaid wankers and the experts…EVERYBODY’S AN EXPERT NOW! My opinion is as good as theirs, so is yours.

And frighteningly, not a single so-called expert got it right last November.

So is this just an issue of two camps, each in their own silo?

It certainly isn’t about fake news, that’s a canard employed by those who are living in the last century. People have the power of discernment, WHEN THEY WANT TO! But they like reading stories that reinforce their viewpoint. But where did they get said viewpoint to begin with?

There’s been all this talk of the Saturday Night Massacre. And yes, Nixon had just been reelected, but we’d come off the sixties, an era of tumult, everything appeared to be up for grabs. But today our heroes are Ivy League dropouts who run the internet and billionaires, sometimes the same people. We’ve got so many channels we can afford to cut the cord. The wall fell and Communism ended and it was supposed to be clear sailing.

Only it isn’t.

So you flip the channels and hear diametrically opposed views. And this is one crisis wherein the written word does not suffice, we want talking heads, we want live, we want video, we don’t want to read, we’re living it in real time, EXPLAIN IT TO US!

But what they’re not explaining is how we got here.

I’m not talking the 109 days since Trump became President, but the changes in our country that allowed him to become President.

And one thing’s for sure, we’ve got no idea of the temperature of the country, will not until there’s another election. Hell, look at France, the good guy won, but the polls were off significantly, it was never that close.

And is this about math? With the Republicans in power so it’s business as usual?

Is this about carpetbaggers or ineptitude?

And it’s hard to see this as being confined to D.C. when our health care lies in the balance, when so many are struggling economically, never in my lifetime have more people been looking for guidance.

But we’re not getting any!

We’ve got a bunch of talking heads and no leaders, no one to get behind.

And it’s a veritable field day for the news business, this is what they live for.

And Fox’s ratings have taken a hit since O’Reilly got canned or is what’s happening here bigger than Fox/MSNBC, bigger than 538/Hannity. Is this what happens in a culture where money is exalted and everything else is trivial and those who’ve got it rule and those who don’t try to climb the greased totem pole and…

How can you trust the biased, money-making media to begin with?

It’s the best we’ve got, but it’s not good enough.

I have no idea what’s going on, what the pulse of the country is. There are no markers, nothing definitive.

This is the new reality. We can connect for free over thousands of miles but we’ve never been so disconnected in our entire lives.

There is no such thing as multitasking.

Short attention span millennials are a hoax.

We’ve got endless platitudes that are incorrect, their explanatory powers nonexistent.

It’s just you and me, arguing, going to bed looking at the ceiling wondering…

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?