End of All Things: a music video

Some time in the middle of the summer I got inspired to film another music video. I was walking in Central Park listening to the Egyptian remix of a Britney Spears song "Gimme More." (Sadly that is not one of the gayest things I have ever said.) The song was both sexy and haunting. Sadly Ms. Spears' own video for Gimme More, the song that was about to inspire my next few months, debuted on an album called "Blackout" where I'm quite sure she spent most of her time blacked out. Therefore her video was dare I say lack luster.

As I walked through the park I began to think of the evolution of humanity over the past 100 years... and how "far" we've come. "Give me more. Give me more." played over and over in my head. I thought about how dangerous human beings can be and how rarely our appetites are ever really satiated. After all: to be human is to constantly feel the need for expandtion. If you disagree, ask yourself why happiness isn't constant.

I started to think of the next hundred years. Where would we be?

I began to conceptualize a music video.

The original premise was that technology and our advancements go so beyond us in the future that we lose that which makes us human. We evolve into something "greater" than human. Almost Godly. Technology makes things so readily available to us now... can you imagine what will be readily available to us in the future? If and when everything we ever wanted is a click away... won't something inside us inevitably die? In a sense, wouldn't our soul cease to exist? I thought this was something worth examining.

Realizing I do not have the Copywright for the Britney Spears song, I decided to take it a step further and enlist my very talented friend Will Pailen to write and produce a song based on this premise. Will was totally on board. Over the phone I described everything I just wrote and more. I explained how the theme is the death of humanity but that somewhere there is still hope. Will would later come back to me with the hook of the song... a hook that was EXTREMELY catchy and one in which I quickly fell in love with.

"It's at the end of all things now.
Now is the end of all things,
Here at the end of all things, now
And we're starting to feel it.
But at the end of all things,
It starts a new beginning.
Here at the end of all things now,
We can lift up off the ground."

It was and is brilliant.

I loved the idea that the end of one cycle begins another. And slowly the concept of the video shifted to a  celebration of the human spirit and the cycle that one human spirit can go through.

It is our ability to love that makes us godly. End of all things is a music video about the depth of the human heart and the ability it has to transform us.

Thank you: Will Pailen for writing an awesome song. Colleen Katana for being so beautiful and jumping on board to do an overnight shoot which lasted until 9 am!!!!! Brian Kainowski for not only being an awesome assistant director but for lending your shoulder in rough times. Tiffany Garlick for making Colleen even more beautiful with your paint. And Tony and Jeremy for letting me steal lighting equipment and smoke machines from the bar!!!

Months ago, before the song was even written, I edited a few promos together to get some "hype" going. (You can check them out on my facebook page) One of the promos ends with "Legends are made of this stuff." 

And when it comes down to it, love is the only force that makes Legends worth passing along.

Bad Haircuts and hope

Don't think I don't think this is funny!!! 


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So a few days ago I decided on my day off to do something different with my facial hair... facial hair that has taken me a long time to perfect. But I thought what the heck it's time for a change. A nice haircut would help "sharpen" the look also. So I went to my favorite barber who I have been going to for years now and asked to cut it a little shorter on top. As a side note: I have given my barber so many challenges on re-inventing the fade and mohawk, I've lost count. And he usually pulls through victorious. So I tip him like a rock star. But this past Monday He cut the fade a little un-even and for the first time in 5 years I went back and had him perfect it a bit. He of course was happy to oblige. Later on I realized that the top was too long. I didn't want to bother him so I decided to get the clippers out and do it myself. BIG MISTAKE.

Long story short:

It's going to be a say something hat kind of month for me. And every time I get a look at myself in the mirror IT CRACKS ME UP!

I was reading the Artists Way last night because I felt so lousy and it talked about not listening to your inner critic. Well right now my inner critic has got his finger pointed at me laughing his head off at how dumb I look (literally like Jim Carry from "Dumb and Dumber"). Every time I get a glimpse of myself I am extremely aware of all of this. And I can only hope that this is one big challenge to tune that voice out. So I thought I'd laugh it off and invite every one else to do the same.

Here's hoping!

A nightmare

About three years ago I had the worst nightmare of my life.

It all began when a good friend of mine was reading "The Secret". His world was changing right before his very eyes just by changing his perspective. I watched things change for him. As a matter of fact he started a "vision board" with a photograph of an actor he admired and less than three months later he was playing a role that the actor made famous. I witnessed the miracle and therefore decided to begin reading "The Secret".


At first, it seemed repetitive. It explained the law of attraction over and over. You get what you give. Such a simple concept. And so I slowly read on putting the book down here and there.

I'll never forget the night I didn't put the small book down. I was laying in bed feeling relaxed when something in me clicked. What I was reading made sense. It was as if the repetitiveness was a necessary tool in cracking though the walls I had built around my sense of worth. Possibly for the first time I let myself dream and believe I could in fact be whatever I wanted to be, do what ever I wanted to do, love who ever I wanted to love; as if I was a forgotten god who realized what he actually was. It was with out a doubt one of the most peaceful moments in my life. It literally felt as if I had unlocked a door inside myself that released endorphins throughout my body. My body, my mind, and my soul were all telling me "Go for it". And I believed them. I fell asleep in what could only be described as "THE MOST ZEN" state I've ever been in.

I awoke in the middle of the night from the worst nightmare of my ENTIRE LIFE.

The nightmare:

I am sitting in the passenger seat of my brother's old pick up truck. A professor of mine from college is driving. We are on the street where I grew up. It is night time. As we approach my house I notice that the neighborhood is still and silent. As I look around and as we get closer and closer I realize there are no lights on. We are two houses away from mine when I see four figures out in front of my mom's house standing in the street. I try to squint to make out who they are. I sense danger. We are now very close and I can see even in the darkness that the figures are unlike anything I have ever seen. They are shadows. And I can feel the hostility in a way that words could never express. I remember thinking in the dream, "HOLY SHIT...What the fuck are those things? They are going to kill me!" I scream out to my professor to "BACK UP". He seems confused, almost as if he can not quite make out the figures himself. He slows down a bit as I continue to scream. This all happens very fast. As we arrive to my mom's house we are now directly in front of the figures. Do you remember the bad guy in Terminator 2 and how he was like this liquid shape shifting thing? Well these shadows were like that BUT DARK and they jumped on the hood of the truck and violently began pounding on the truck with the force of a bulldozer. One of them broke through the windshield and as he began pouring himself into the truck to kill me I woke up.

When I woke up, I felt as though I had just stared evil in the face and lived to tell about it. It was so scary and so real. I have had a lot of nightmares in my life and a lot of dreams in my life. There are two dreams that feel as though they have transported me to another place  and this was the first nightmare that felt that way.

It was so weird to me that I had gone to sleep just a few hours prior to this, in what was the most peaceful state I had ever experienced.

So every once in a while I asked people what they made of all this. I've gotten interpretations ranging from "It was the Devil challenging you" to "It's the duality of the universe. When you let so much good in, it leaves room for the bad" to "Shadows represent the unknown" to "Your ego was fighting for it's life". All of these made sense.

So three years later I am researching it. And this is what I found on the internet at the first sight I looked up.

To see you own shadow in your dream, signifies an aspect of yourself which you have not acknowledged or recognized. It may be a quality about yourself or a part of you that you are rejecting or want to keep hidden. These qualities may not necessary be negative, but can be creative ones. Alternatively, the dream may mean that you are in someone else's shadow. You are constantly being overlooked and are fed up with it.  

To see a shadowy figure in your dream, represents characteristics which you have not acknowledged or incorporated into your own personality. Alternatively, it symbolizes the young, the helpless or the under-developed.

Three years later I am still wondering. Maybe it's because I spent 29 years trying to figure myself out and I'm still not sure who I am. You find something, or some one you love, and then things change. You change. You get inspired and then uninspired.

Today I am uninspired.