I want to talk about story and art and what they communicate.

Obviously, my approach to story and art are very heavily impacted by my world-view. No sense apologizing, right? I believe that man is engaged in a struggle. Either it’s a struggle with God, “I’ll have it my way,” or it’s a struggle with self, “I’ll have it His way.” (That’s gross oversimplification. I’m sure 12 of you just had 3 thoughts each that don’t fit into this construct. My apologies. Oversimplification is never fair to anyone, and I just did it to myself.)

Struggle does seem to be a fairly universal theme for humanity. I mean, we live in North America, in a time where income and wealth are at unbelievable heights, and yet we all seem to struggle. In my time as a bank manager, I got to interact with people who could personally write checks that blew my mind. One of them was what we all commonly refer to as a cat lady. None of them was content. All struggled for something different, something better, something more.

I think good art reflects (and helps instruct us in) the struggle. This seems to me to be as true in art that doesn’t reflect my world view precisely (like In Good Company, a movie about the corporate struggle that seems to understand corporate life incredibly well) as it is in art that does reflect my world view (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’s treatment of Edmund, for example, which makes my rebellious self sick to my stomach when I think about it and compare it to how I receive grace).

It’s not an attempt to instruct. Life instructs us every day — I watch my tomato plants grow and naturally think about the complex nature of how what I put in to the little cup they’re growing in impacts their growth. That’s a lesson. The tomato plant didn’t wake up thinking, I’ll show him today. But it did because of its nature. Art’s kind of like that.

It’s good for us. It’s fun too. If it’s not, you may want to start picking different stories, different art. It draws our attention in ways that we don’t always expect. It engages our hearts in creative ways. It keeps us thinking.  That’s why I value art and story. That’s why I want to teach my child to cherish good art.

I think I have a fairly vast bank of of musically related memories. This comes up at random times as Pandora plays various stations based on the 90s musicians I listened to. Literally as I wrote that sentence, it transitioned from DND by Semisonic to Closing Time. Doesn’t get any better than that.

For example, I read Taliesin to Jars of Clay’s Much Afraid album. Every time that album gets shuffled to in Itunes, I find myself trying to remember if I actually liked the books. My brother Matt and I played incredible amounts of Gran Turismo to Semisonic. On repeat. Hours and hours.

Caedmon’s Call reminds me of… well, everything. Particularly things to do with my wife. Requesting Somewhere North at a Derek Webb concert before I was engaged to marry my wife and finding special significance in “I have nothing to my name… but I can give you that.”

It’s interesting how potent music can be… even to one who is fairly inundated by music, even perhaps in danger of distraction. Are there any songs that hold special memories for you? What about mundane memories?

It was only four or five years ago that I was happy to spend money on albums to find out if I’d like them. Of course, I was single and had extra time to waste then too. I found all kinds of new albums that I liked, and to some degree, I became a little more knowledgeable about music that I liked. Now that I’m a little older and have family commitments, work commitments, and other things that I’d like to accomplish, it’s become difficult to find new music that I like. I’ve got the stuff that I liked five years ago, but I can only think of one or two artists that I’ve gotten to know lately that I’ll listen to for the rest of my life. I don’t hear as much new because I don’t go out of my way to.

So, I’ve started trying to find ways to find music that I like.

Of course, there’s Pandora. But, Pandora mostly plays me stuff I already know. There’s Itunes’ genius (yes, I gave Apple all my music info… they already own the rest of my life between the Iphone I carry and the Macbook Pro I work on)… but the genius so far isn’t such a genius. It hasn’t shown me anyone that I was interested in acquiring.

So, I’ve started in on Ilike. The principle on Ilike is that you tell them who you like and they recommend others you might like. So far, I don’t think I’ve told them enough for them to craft very good suggestions, but I’m hopeful that it might become as useful to me as Netflix’s recommendations have become. I’ll keep you posted. Now, you tell me: 1. How do you find new music? and 2. Who’s your favorite musician that you’ve gotten to know in the last year?

Music publishers want Apple to pay more. Not more per song, but for more things per song (in the end adding up to more per song, so I guess it’s all the same, right?) They’re arguing that in addition to paying a royalty when someone buys a song, Apple should also pay when someone downloads a movie or tv show in which the song is played, when someone samples a track, and when someone streams radio through Itunes.

Here’s the deal: I understand that in the past, these folks made their money by figuring out how many different ways they could charge for the same transaction.What they need to understand is that if they want to make money in the economy we now live in, they’ve got to create new things to charge for, not new ways to charge for the same stuff.

Take, as an example, Derek Webb’s latest album launch (note: I still haven’t heard this album. This is simply a discussion of the business wisdom behind it). You can go to a store and buy it, probably for somewhere between 12.99 and 24.99, depending on the store. His label will get paid, and will eventually pay him a pittance.

You can also go to his store. He offers six different ways to buy his new album. There’s a digital download for 7.99, there are options if you want to pay a little more (15.99 gets you a documentary, ringtones, desktop backgrounds, etc, along with the album, and there’s a $60.00 package that comes with the digital copy, two physical copies of the album, the documentary DVD, a t-shirt, and participation in song selection for a cover album). Derek has gone the extra mile to be accessible to every fan possible. Don’t have much cash? Buy the digital download, hear the music, and hopefully love it. Have money and love the artist? Get all the extras.

And, he’s already seeding the concept of his next project. People are going to help him select songs to cover. He’ll then record the covers and put together the album. And then he’ll sell it.

Think about that whole process. What are the chances that someone having invested their time into selecting the songs would turn around and not buy the resulting album? Those people are going to buy. So, Derek builds community, gives his fans a chance to buy extras, and guarantees that his next project (side-project, most likely) will have guaranteed buyers. It’s brilliant!

He’s likely going to make more doing it this way than if he sat back and tried to figure out how to bill the establishment for it three times.

All that to say, the economy has changed. Music publishers, take the warning. Help your people to understand how to sell in this economy. Can you make money in this economy? Absolutely. You just can’t do it the way you used to.

I was sitting recently, listening to Derek Webb’s album She Must and Shall Go Free. It’s an album. It has great individual songs on it, but it is a cohesive unit, 11 or 12 (I can’t remember) songs that form a flow of thought. It’s a wonderful thing. Caedmon’s Call’s 40 Acres feels like this (as does Share the Well), Andrew Peterson’s Love and Thunder feels this way, and the best example (in my favorites) is Rich Mullins’s A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band.

I love listening to albums that are albums. MP3 players, Itunes, winamp, and all those other convenient things with those shuffle buttons have kind of ruined albums for us. We hear whatever song randomly comes next (or, in the case of Itunes new Genius function, whatever song they think sounds good to follow up the song you’re listening to). We don’t usually sit down to listen through an album; we let music be the background we do things to, and we don’t exactly catch any continuity.

So, sometime this week, turn off the shuffle feature and listen to an album. You might find that the artist put some thought into the direction that the songs take you. That’s the sort of stuff that makes an album worth paying for.

Ah, my dear wife will cringe at this topic. She knows where I’m going with this. It seems like everyone has some band, album, or genre of music that they like but don’t necessarily want to admit to liking. I don’t think it’s pretension, I think it’s just sincere embarrassment.

Take yours truly, for instance. I don’t have longish hair that sweeps down over my eyes. My jeans aren’t inordinately patched. I don’t dye my hair. I don’t wear eyeliner. But, I do, on occasion, sing along ridiculously to whatever pop-punk I can get my hands on. It might be Blink182, it might be ReliantK, it might be Brand New… but whatever it is, it’ll make my wife roll her eyes (rightfully so) and it’ll make me play air drums.

Whew. I just admitted it. So, now I’ll put the question to you… who or what is your guilty pleasure listening?

I’ve gotta go find Rebecca’s eyeliner.

I’ve posted the lyrics to this song once before on a Monday… today, you’ll just get video. I’m starting a new job today, and this morning I’m listening to this song. It’s a good reminder of the things that truly matter.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhalHoKRsOU]

Can you tell that Andy Osenga has a song for every occasion? Yep. True fact.

Aha… the question mark. It changes everything.

Things to listen to is usually where I tell you what I’ve been listening to that is awesome.

Add the question mark though, and it becomes your chance to tell me what to spend some Itunes money on.

It’s been a while since I’ve found any new music. Can you help? I’d love to see some suggestions.  Hook me up!

Tonight, we were cooking and I popped this album into the CD player. It has legs. Seriously… this is like 10 years later? (Stop to check their website… yep, released in 1999.) This album is well worth picking up if you never heard it… or even if you did. It’s a solid, no skips listening experience.

A lot of times when I go back to albums I loved, I find that I loved them in spite of their quality, not because of it. This album doesn’t fit that mold. Lyrically, it’s gold. There’s depth, there is beauty, there are really great analogies, like 40 Acres of redemption to be found just along, down the way.

Seriously, go buy it… from a store, from itunes, from wherever. You won’t regret it.

I had a great reminder tonight from a dear brother that the best motivation to keep doing something is simply that you love it.

(aside directed at Sam… if I could, I’d bring you real chips, because your statement that “you eat a bag of chips when you’re not thinking” was the only thing I disagreed with all night. /End aside)

There is a reason that I read so much… I love it. There’s a reason that I watch the same movies over and over with my wife: I love them (and her). There’s a reason that I don’t do so hot with writing: I have not made steady my affection for it. I don’t love it. Or, I don’t love it more than I love eating a bag of chips and watching 30 Rock reruns.

It’s a problem. It’s a discipline problem. But, if I start to think about it like I think of “discipline” I start to chafe… it’s the same reason I was never a good runner. The idea was good but the work part of it was too hard.

But if I loved it… clearly, you do the things you love. So, maybe the thing to do is… just choose to love something different. Love different.

love different is a trademark (registration pending) of the Andrew Mackay Media Empire (AMME), all rights reserved… any similarity to trademarks belonging to fruity computer companies are coincidental, I swear. Also, you owe me a bag of chips for reading this paragraph.