Selling Out Isn’t Possible by Kevin Barnes

Are you a sell out? Yes. Don't let it bother you though, cause apparently I am also a sell out, and so are your parents and everyone you've ever known. The only way to avoid selling out is to live like a savage all alone in the wilderness. The moment you attempt to live within the confines of a social order, you become a sell out. Once you attempt to coexist you sell out. If that's true, then selling out is a good thing. It is an important thing. If we didn't do it, we'd be fucked, quite literally, by everyone bigger than us physically who found us fuckable.
The pseudo-nihilistic punk rockers of the 70's created an impossible code in which no one can actually live by. It's such garbage. The idea that anyone who attempts to do anything commercial is a sell out is completely out of touch with reality. The punk rock manifesto is one of anarchy and intolerance. The punk rockers polluted our minds. They offered a solution that had no future. Of course, if the world would have ended before Sandinista! was released then everything would have been alright. It didn't. Now we have all of these half-conceived ideas and idiot philosophies floating around to confuse and alienate us. I think it is important to face reality. It is important to decide whether you are going to completely rail against the system or find a way to make it work for you. You cannot do both -- and if you attempt to do both you will only become even more bitter and confused.

When I was younger, and supported my parents, I chose to float between the two. A lot of people choose to do this. There are so many confused young people running around now polluted by this alloyed version of the tenets of the punk rock manifesto. Of course they're confused. It isn't possible to be in chorus with capitalism and anarchy. You must pick one or the other. Very few people are willing to do it, though. The worst kind of person is the one who sucks the dick of the man during the daytime and then draws pictures of themselves slitting his throat at night. Jesus Christ, make up your mind! The thing is, there is a lack of balance. When capitalism is working on a healthy level, everyone gets their dick sucked from time to time and no one gets their throat slit. It's impossible to be a sell out in a capitalist society. You're only a winner or a loser. Either you've found a way to crack the code or you are struggling to do so. To sell out in capitalism is basically to be too accommodating, to not get what you think you deserve. In capitalism, you don't get what you think you deserve though. You get what someone else thinks you deserve. So the trick is to make them think you are worth what you feel you deserve. You deserve a lot, but you'll only get it when you figure out how to manipulate the system.

Why commercialize yourself? In the art industry, it's extremely difficult to be successful without turning yourself into a cartoon. Even Hunter S. Thompson knew this. God knows Duchamp and Warhol knew it. Some artists are turned into cartoons and others do it themselves. I prefer to do it myself. at least then I can control how my cock is photographed. Why should it be considered such an onerous thing to view the production of art as a job? To me, the luckiest people are the ones who figure out a way to earn a living doing what they love and gain fulfillment from. Like all things in this life, you have to make certain sacrifices to get what you want. At least most of us do. If you're not some trust-fund kid or lotto winner, you've got to slave it out everyday. People who wanna be artists have the hardest time of it 'cause we are held up to these impossible standards. We're expected to die penniless and insane so that the people we have moved and entertained over the years can keep us to themselves. So that they can feel a personal and untarnished connection with our art. The second we try to earn a living wage or, god forbid, promote our art in the mainstream, we are placed under the knives of the sanctimonious indie fascists. Unfortunately, there isn't some grand umbrella grant that supports indie rockers financially and enables us to exist outside of the trappings of capitalism.

The thing is, I like capitalism. I think it's an interesting challenge. It's a system that rewards the imaginative and ambitious adults and punishes the lazy adults. Our generation is insanely lazy. We're just as smart as our parents but we are overwhelmed by contradicting ideas that confuse us into paralysis. Maybe the punk rock ethos made sense for the "no future" generation but it doesn't make sense for me. I like producing and purchasing things. I'd much rather go to IKEA than to stand in some bread line. That's because I don't have to stand in a bread line. Most people who throw around terms like "sellout" don't have to stand in one either. They don't have to stand in one because they are gainfully employed. The term "sellout" only exists in the lexicon of the over-privileged. Almost every non-homeless person in America is over-privileged, at least in a global sense.

Obviously, I've struggled with the concept. I've struggled because of the backlash following my songs placement in TV commercials. That is, until I realized that the negative energy that was being directed towards me really began to inspire my creativity. It has given me a sense of, "well, I'll show them who is a sellout, I'm going to make the freakiest, most interesting, record ever!!!" ... "I'm going to prove to them that my shit is wild and unpolluted by the reach of some absurd connection to mainstream corporate America."

I realized then that, for me, selling out is not possible. Selling out, in an artistic sense, is to change one's creative output to fit in with the commercial world. To create phony and insincere art in the hopes of becoming commercially successful. I've never done this and I can't imagine I ever will. I spent seven years not even existing at all in the mainstream world. Now I am being supported and endorsed by it. I know this won't last forever. No one's going to want to use one of my songs in a commercial five years from now, so I've got to take the money while I can. It's the same with pro athletes. You only get it while you're hot and no one stays commercially viable for long. It's not like Michael Vick is going to be receiving any big endorsement deals anytime soon. As sad as it may seem, one of the few ways most indie bands can make any money whatsoever is by selling a song to a commercial. Very very few bands make enough money from album sales or tour revenue to enable themselves to quit their day job.

Next time you see a commercial with one of your favorite bands songs in it, just tell yourself, "cool, a band I really like made some money and now I can probably look forward to a few more records from them." It's as simple as that. We all have to do certain things, from time to time, that we might not be completely psyched about, in order to pay the bills. To me, the TV is the world's asshole boss and if anyone can earn some extra bucks from it and they're not Bill O'Reilly, it's a good thing.

She Died and My Cushion Didn't Even Help

I brought a cushion to the funeral but it rained and instead of being buried they put her up in the tree because the leaves were so wide the rain wouldn't hit her. It was actually pretty wonderful though a lot of folks were freaked out about it. I don't know. I sat and thought it was pretty wonderful and I thought that if I ever die, which I DOUBT, then I hope its raining and I hope they put me up in a palm tree and then I thought how dramatic it would be if they put me in a palm tree and then lightning struck me and my body FLEW OUT towards them and it was like I was playing one last joke on the world of my friends and reletives. But I figured that if I ever die, which I DOUBT, I'll probably be buried in the ocean or maybe by then I'll be buried on Mars or Europa anyway and really if you think about it it never rains in those places and even if it did there aren't any palm trees anyway.

Thoughts Threw Frosted Windows w/ Giant Birds, Buddha and Missed Things

I had a dream last night where the Universe was fully explained to me and it was so simple! So simple, in fact, that I cannot recall a single detail. But I remember it was quite beautiful and obvious. The only other thing I can say about that is that as I was coming back to consciousness the first thought I had in my head was that Buddha was super right on about it all! I wish I knew why the fuck I was thinking that. And now I have a strong hunger for food. I also had a dream that a group of pagans or druids were holed up in the middle of the woods outside of Ann Arbor, it was actually more like a swamp, and in the very back of this swamp was an old graveyard and in the very back of this graveyard was the largest tombstone except that the tombstone was knocked down and whoever's grave it was (they were important) had been dug up and it was empty. So there were all these druids or some crazy shit hanging out around this empty grave and their leader had antlers like a deer and he was also robed and hated everything. So this girl had disappeared from the city and everyone somehow knew that the druids had her and were keeping her hostage in this empty grave and I also remember someone telling me, "The Thunderbird sits on the over-turned headstone and kills anyone it wants". A Thunderbird is some crazy shit and I guess it was being controlled by these druids and just picked up this girl in its scary claws and took her to the swamp. We were all about to go into the swamp to rescue her when I woke up. I might have had this dream before.

There is other stuff too but its all too weird to think about. Oh yeah so I was driving to work today after waking up from my Buddha was right dream and on NPR they were talking to these Buddhists in Ann Arbor who go diving into garbage for stuff like coffee pots and diamond rings to sell and I thought it was weird all this Buddhist stuff all at once and I was trying to decode the message if there was a message and THAT'S when I realized it had snowed and by this point my coffee was cold and I was late for my Building Systems class so I had to put the Buddhist stuff on the back burner and its still back there simmering. I'm too hungry to figure stuff like that out. I'm also really tired too, so tired in fact that if you actually knew in your mind how tired I was you would call me and try very hard to convince me to go home and sleep for a while even though its like 30 minutes away, "It don't matter none!" you would passionately say to me and you know what I'd probably listen to you because I'm THAT TIRED.

The funny thing about all this is that I sold my car, I sold my hats, I sold numerous pints of blood, I sold my bed, my dresser and my books, I sold my shoes. With the money I made I went out and bought a new car, some different hats, some fake blood, a new bed, an Ikea dresser and some books I haven't read, and some crazy shoes. I put all these things where I thought they should go and when I sat down to look at them all I realized I missed my other car, my other hats, my real blood, I missed how comfortable that old bed was, how well my clothes fit in that antique dresser and how good those books were, really when I thought about it hard enough, how those old shoes were so much more comfortable. So now I walk everywhere, I comb my hair, I am careful not to cut myself, I do not sleep, my clothes litter the floor, my books are paperweights and my feet are constantly bare. The end.

The Lamp of Power from The Seven Lamps of Architecture

"In the edifices of Man there should be found reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue - which gives veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organization - but of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky; for these, and other glories more than these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his thoughts, with the work of his own hand; the grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some Cyclopean waste of mural stone; the pinnacles of the rocky promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into fantastic semblences of fortress towers; and even the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a melancholy mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from the images of nameless tumuli on white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy clay, into which chambered cities melt in their mortality."