what we talk about when we talk on the Internet, and "machete" video with Thor & Friends (Patreon)

hello lovelies....

one housekeeping note: i mentioned yesterday that i might be putting out MULTIPLE THINGS A MONTH, and that this is a good time to CAP YOUR PATRONAGE! many people asked "will i still get All the Things?" the answer is yes yes yes. everybody gets everything...that's the way patreon WORKS. if you're a patron, you get all the patron emails, and if you're at a $10 level, you get all the perks of the $10 level even if you've hit your cap. that's the system. it's pretty awesome. 

a few people also asked about HOW they should cap...once you are a patron the answer is pretty simple: hover over your profile photo on the top right, click "your pledges", click "edit" and then check the box that says "Optional: Set a monthly max on your pledge". VOILA  !

if you remember,.,,,WAY BACK IN MARCH i did a last-minute ninja gig in austin with my friend thor harris and his band, thor & friends, at a space on the east side of austin-town called The Museum Of Human Achievement. The Museum Of Human Achievement has no social media sites, and i felt the wisdom of those ways when i was within its walls. they have, as i do, a golden email list, and they stay in touch with everyone who walks through their beautiful door...but they don't do facebook, twitter, instagram, ello, tumblr, flickr, snapchat...following me? no pun intended?

in this post having-launched-patreon moment, i really am feeling the capsizing of a certain era of internet (blogs, forums, email lists) having been piled high with its spawn (facebook, twitter, etc, listicle-internet)...and i really wonder where things are headed.

i see, so clearly, everybody's deep desires to commune, discuss and be with one another, to gather around the metaphorical campfire (or perhaps metaphorical water-cooler, whatever) and connect as humans Be-ing and not so much humans Do-ing. this is what we have done for thousands of years - share our stories in whatever way Fits Our Time.

how we even talk about the WAY we talk on the internet is so confusing....we all just get swallowed into facebook-speak and google-speak and i wonder if we even have a real consciousness, most of the time, about how we are spending our hours, our energy, our moments on earth.

it's funny. yesterday neil was dealing with an internet kerfuffle while trying to get work done and we were texting. i said "can't you shut off your phone and ignore it and work?" and his answer was "i can't. it's in the newspapers and in my email."
think about that for a second. the newspapers he's talking about aren't physical ones. and the email is the email on his phone - it IS the internet. but we (yes, we, this isn't just neil, it's me, it's all of my friends) literally cannot separate what we consider "the real world" from "the world inside our phones" anymore. we use our phones for everything from navigating streets to shopping lists to getting news to calling friends and family to getting office work done communicating with the babysitter about what time to grab the kid...it's an everything machine. i have released entire records (approved contracts, had meetings, approved artwork, and written press releases) from a chair in an airport with a phone in my hand.

the baby changes everything too - i literally feel sleazy when i hold and use my phone around him for any reason. why? i don't know, the reasons change....time, attention, presence.... something about it feels very wrong. maybe because this is the first time in human history that a mother can hold a child and not just take her attention away from the kid and give it to a book, or a television (not a two-way street there) or the telephone (one other person) but to THE ENTIRE WORLD FOREVER. there is no end. 

so i'm trying to not be too online around him when he's awake, unless i gotta be. and...define gotta be? it's hard, isn't it.

book of note, which i discovered in santa fe because he was speaking there (i missed the talk but a friend gave me the book):

"The Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv:

http://www.outdoorfoundation.org/pdf/LastChild.pdf

in the other kettle of fish on the other side of the cosmic internet coin, we've launched the

official facebook group

and it's blazin....and there's

the unofficial group

(also blazin), and there's the comments here, and there's the poor shadowbox forum

which is wallowing in neglect but is actually probably the best tool for what we need, but it's not plugged in to anything else, it's like a fuckin great VCR sitting in the corner, and there's

my blog

, which has become random and disjointed and more or less an echo of what i post

here

(see what i did there)....DUDE. 

no wonder this baby is looking at me weird.

i am thinking a lot about HOW to move forward with the future of this community and where and how we discuss. i know i know....patreon's social media system is very clonky, and facebook is easier. i also feel guilty about making everybody hop over to a third-party discussion forum where we might need to use yet more usernames and passwords. me & the team are looking into a world where we might be able to LOG IN to a forum USING OUR PATREON EMAILS....the same way you would "log in using twitter" or "log in using facebook".

all food for thought.

this is a post about the internet being scary and the internet being good. this is me having my morning coffee and dumping my brain on you.

OH AND....here's that footage:

"machete" live in austin with thor and friends.we had one rehearsal, be forgiving!!!!

YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQz1ztiiGig

FOR THE GERMANS, and for better quality,,,vimeo: 

https://vimeo.com/163472043

i love you. 

please dump your brains back at me, i'm reading the comments.

click through to comment; like to acknowledge you've read the transmission.

xxxx