Do you ever have that feeling that you’re just not doing enough? Or at least,
not quite enough things you ought to be doing. I’m experiencing that feeling
for some time now. I don’t know for how long, now. This last week for sure,
but it could very well be this entire year. I really don’t keep track of those
things. Also, I tend to start analysing those weird feelings —that feel more
like small breezes or nasty itches than actual feelings— once they come back
on a regular REGULAR basis. And that’s what’s happening now.
So, here we are. I’m producing tons of stuff every week, mostly with my
bestest buddy the GZA (AKA Gyz) and I’m usually perfectly happy with the
results to that work. But it’s like ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’, you see?
So, I figured I’d like to make something really real now. Something hard,
something that’ll take me some real effort finding out what it should become
and how it should become so. Something classic. Something big. It needn’t
be something fresh or hip or even new. Just something to keep me focussed
for a while. Like a book. Or maybe a series of paintings. A manifesto about
everything. A documentary. An opera. A pop record. Hell, a short story would
be nice.
So my friends, I’ve been thinking a lot about it and I guess I won’t be seeing
as much of all of you as we’d (might) like. I am going to be in my room. My
phone’s going to be off the hook for a while. ‘Moderate’ will be the key word
when it comes to party and bar attending. I predict an era of an almost
sacred devotion to working. Enough with the ‘macro’ thinking, it’s time to get
really close to the matter. And all because it’s simply something that I feel I
must do.
On the other hand, it could be a phase that lasts a week or so. I still surprise
myself often when it comes to ‘what am I?’ or maybe I just haven’t decided
what I want to be when I grow up. (When I saw ‘The Electric Horseman’ about
two weeks ago, I wanted —for the first time in my life— to become a cowboy.)
How, you ask, did I come up with this shit? Well, it’s pretty simple. Last
monday I went over to my friend Jeroen. We laughed some, made some
minor changes to the vogels website, saw ‘Spuiten en Slikken’ (which we
thought was just excellent television) and afterwards Jeroen showed me a
‘documentary’ called Tonite let’s all make love in London. A film described
in the picture displayed above as ‘Peter Whiteheads definitive statement
on the swinging city’. A lovely film on London Pop Culture in 1967, with
an extreme lot of A-level interviews with Michael Caine, Mick Jagger, Lee
Marvin (on mini skirts, hilarious!) and the best of ’em all’s one where
David Hockney monologues on the London Pub situation and how he
refuses to pay a pound for a beer in a club. Especially when it’s the
governments’ way of getting the workers into bed on time (since they
can only afford cheaper beers in pubs that close early, unlike bars in
San Francisco where bars close at the only reasonable time, namely
2 o’ clock). I was especially amazed with Hockneys’ hairstyle and decided
to check out all of his work soon.
What do you know? the next day I’m accidentally in the library (to meet
up with one sexy dame) and —as I have a bit of time on my hands— I
decide to check out his stuff. It’s all good. As in ‘nothing is bad’. Not one
of his works topped his looks, though. So I reckoned, I’m taking the hair
style and the work will basically make itself. All I need to do is forget about
these dreadful clubs and spend more nights in my studio.
To make a short story long.
(picture of me thinking by Menno Mono, who I shall not link to the mono
website again…)
