The Ease of Starting Something...

I was struck again last night at how easy it's become to Start Something.  I use caps because it's one of the themes I've been wrapping my brain around lately.  How do you Start Something that others will find value in, and how do you get those people who would find value in it to know that it's there?

My main source of experience in this at the moment is obviously Milo, and I'm having some luck there in getting eyes on the site, and getting folks to know what's going on in Milo's world.  But this weekend I was asked for some help in getting an online presence for someone, and not in creative circles, but just in terms of a landing place on the web so that they might try some online advertising.  You need a place for the clicks to go, if you're going to be paying for clicks, and you have to have at least some bare bones information out there if you want the possibility of anyone finding you and what you can do for them.

So, for 14 bucks, I put up a free-hosted Godaddy.com site for Dan's Construction Services.  It's not slick, and it's not flash-animated, but it's definitely not ugly.  So, for 14 bucks for a year, I got up a real honest to goodness web presence that has the capability of growing into something that IS at least a little slick, even if it does have a Godaddy advert at the top, and for a little more, we might make it even slicker.

We can do some youtube videos for them, or a photogallery of the kinds of jobs they do.  There's so much possibility.  And that's really what I'm talking about here.  I spent a little more money on Milo, but ultimately it isn't that much.  I've recouped the cost in selling Milo Pocket Art, and it's now in the black. 

I'm obviously not saying that all you need to do is throw up a website and all of a sudden you'll have 14,000 followers and people building cults around you.  But, it's so easy to build something, and if you're excited about truly building it, the excitement shows.  People will find it.  And maybe it'll take advertising to get them to find it, but THAT's not that expensive anymore either.  I'm going to look into it soon.  Because I think I'm ready for that.

What are you ready for?

Go Home and Practice.

There are memories from childhood that make the hairs on your arms stand up and dance, in the best of ways.  This song, and specifically a few scenes from this video, do that for me.  The drum fill at 2:50 is the kind of instantaneous magic (combined with the overall fun of the cut) that can bring me out of even the deepest funk.  I remember seeing this video and thinking that there could be no better fun than dancing on top of a soundboard with two buddies, and that dancing while trading hats must be genius level awesomeness that only the British could have come up with.

Looking at it now, I'm struck by the fun again, but I'm also struck by how much Andy Summers reminds me of Harpo Marx, something that I'm sure was intentional on his part.  He makes a couple of faces that are pure Harpo, and even the dancing and camaraderie is very Marx Brothers.  It's still as fun a clip as I remember it, but having sat outside Wrigley Field and listened to these three guys a couple years ago, it's also interesting to think about where they were when this video was made. 

It's at this point that Sting is thinking about solo stuff, and the band is at each others' throats quite a bit of the time.  Soon after this the band will split, and the world will wish for years and years that they hadn't.  Having heard these songs on the radio as a small kid, when they were brand new, I loved the Police, but I grew up and became a musician in a world where the band no longer existed except in history and on vinyl/CD/magnetic tape.  (my tape recordings were so worn out that I think I have a warped sense of what key these songs should be in).

It's also pretty cool to listen to this as I'm finally starting to enjoy practicing for the first time in my life.  I've always had a really bad practice ethic.  I just hate it.  I've started to play guitar so many times, and after a few days just decided that life was too hectic, and I'd do it some other time.  But for the absolute first time today I found myself studying ii/V/I chord progressions because I wanted to, not because some teacher told me it was what I needed to do.  I've started really enjoying picking up the ukulele and practicing.  I'm not saying I'm any good yet, but I can see a time when I could be good.  I've always been a good singer.  Never had to practice much at it, and so I got by.  But this is something I DO have to practice at and I actually find that I love doing so. 

So what does that have to do with The Police or with this video?  Only that I learned "So Lonely" today, and I can play it badly.  But I am very certain that I will eventually be able to play it so well that I can do so while dancing on the soundboard, or trading hats with Andy Summers.  And that'll be a fun day.

We all hate practice in general, but for some reason I'm thinking that I just really needed to find an instrument that made me smile despite being bad at it, and not minding so much that it was going to take a while to be better.  It's just great fun to suck at this for a while, because every time I pick it up I really do get a little better.  And I keep picking it up.  That's the key.

Could just be because it's not very heavy though...  Happy Saturday night, everybody.