On Life Cycles
“‘Lifecycles’ exist everywhere, from the junkie on the street, to the pop rap star doing the same thing over and over and over …”
So I was hanging out with my pops on Father’s Day (father and son serving up another metaphor for ‘Life Cycles’), and he and I haven’t had the chance to be by ourselves and just talk in a while, and amongst the assortment of items on the menu one was my blogging and rapping agenda (I do most of my recording at his studio). Like a lot of dads today, he’s not really all up on the fast-paced internet whatchamadoodoos; even more problematic: he does projects for, say, Danielle Staub of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, and it’s difficult to tell him with re. to being involved, one, I’m not into the reality tv much, two, I’m not really in the ‘breaking news’ blog pool (anymore?), and three, 90% of the people I do know and deal with are PAID to make fun of a Danielle Staub-person, or this person, and perhaps subsequently/in association might need to make fun of you.
All to say the niche-nuance of blogging is a little inscrutable to him, and I mention it to give context to his comment to me,
”you know, if you’re trying to be an artist, you have to be good. The blogging shit doesn’t help.”
It’s true. Any cross-sport, cross-media athlete gets no bonus from his prowess in the other field. Michael Jordan being the certified best basketball player in the world got him some press (nothing he was short on), but nothing in the way of professional accomplishment in baseball. It’ll be cool, at some level, if Joanna Newsom becomes the first Harpist/Sketch Comic, or Miranda Kerr becomes the first model-rapper but they both will need to do the double-and-triplicate slogging to get there. Perhaps only for the benefit of some extra hyphens in a bio.
[[hmmm, the tenor of this post is too essay-like for my purposes. I just want to post a couple songs about ‘Life Cycles’ ….]]
anydad, my response to him, that I might indulge more in the future, reminded me of an old song of mine “Life Cycle. The intro had two girls repeating/talking over each other:
Hello, we’re happy you you could join us at the school for the future. The subject today: Life Cycles, those spheres of routine and circles of habit that make up our world as much as matter, thought, or energy.
We have two demonstrators today. One will put a particular lifecycle under the microscope. The other will look at lifecycles in general. Lifecycles exist everywhere, from the junkie on the street, to the pop rap star doing the same thing over and over and over ….
So, yeah. here’s the song, “Lifecycle”, Mr. Wizard is the first emcee. And I follow him up:
I guess this is now a bloggy, rappy post? Not quite a polished piece of ‘synergy’, but I also just want to try out this Soundcloud platform some more, and at least steer a little more intimate and personal with my newfound tumblr peeps (thanks Will, for liking my more personal joints!) and just rinse, wash, repeat, lifecycle.
Oh, also, this clip set up the song as it was sequenced on my “TAN Demo” and is tangentially-related, but should explain itself….
Evolved TAN, Educated Rap by TAN3000
I recorded this a while back but there’s an au courant Radiolab meets Jay-Z and Malcolm Gladwell sensibility going on here — so much worse, of course! — but yeah. The intros were conceived as capsules, this one was preachy. But this one on sex/dating, for example, is more jokey.
In the interest of wrapping this post up, I think the ambition of cross-media tri-athletes give us the chance to break “lifecycles” and form new ones. when this song was done (circa ‘02 maybe?) I was living an indie rapper lifestyle and the lyrics are about the lifecycles there. I wanted to be Jay-Z or Eminem who were the Michael Jordan’s of rap at the time. But more than Jordan’s unapproachable basketball talent, his desire/need to look for more is the demonstration of our potential. Jay and Em have since been humbled by the same desires. And in the context of “lifecycles” this is all an organic part of how we grow as humans; the bloom of achievement (scoring 50, #1 album) gets the rose and followers, but the original cycle of repetition (the glut of people trying to ‘get better’), and the shit that got dumped in the soil (people who try and fail) all contribute to collective evolution, progress, etc.
