A Man, A Mark: A Musical Poem About Art

What good is art? What good am I without art? 

They’re both fair questions, existentially speaking. I know I don’t want to live without art. What would I live for? Besides love… but they’re kind of the same thing.

That may or may not be tangentially what the PockRock music video below is rocking on and on about. Who knows?! It’s admittedly way out there, i leaned into that; and I leaned hard into my budding electronica side. I guess both thanks in great part to Mike D again.  

My best bud and I, both longtime Beasties fans, ventured pretty far out on a Monday night to see Mike D 5 D at the Belasco in Downtown LA… and b-boy am I glad we did. I’m a changed man, musically, having seen how a 58-year-old grown up b-boy can create something so completely different, yet still totally edgy and dope… as you’d expect from a fucking Beastie. 

Of course, he did grow up… somewhat… even while still a Boy. They all did. They all evolved as artists. Just look at License to Ill, which they’d tell you is somewhat cringe, but also raw and real, and revolutionary. Then came the giant leap that was Paul’s Boutique… which wasn’t just revolutionary, but evolutionary… for them and me. That album opened up so many sonic worlds, my classic rock upbringing could never keep up. It continues to. 

Now I’m not saying I’m trying to revolutionize anything with this PockRock experiment… but I’m definitely evolving, artistically. This is as clear an expression of what’s inside of me as I’ve made… and it might just be the weirdest, which I left space for, in part, thanks to the freedom I feel in Mike D’s unique new album, Thank You. I wrote the poem, sang, played all the instruments, recorded, mastered, illustrated, animated, and edited this thing… I lived with it, until I was able to birth it. And yeah, birth is a bit messy, but it’s nothing if not an evolution.  


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