Paul Hanson Clark

                Who is Paul Hanson Clark? According to his blog, he lives in Omaha, Nebraska. That’s all I know about him. I don’t even know if that is true. Otherwise he remains an online mystery. Most of the comments on his poems are additional poems by him. No one knows why he does this, creating his own world to comment on. It forms a loop of work which is constantly feeding off itself. Honestly, it is a pretty interesting world.

                Paul Clark wrote his first piece “Fat” on February 22^nd, 2011. After he wrote it, he kept on adding to it. “Skinny” and “Average (in two parts)” came next. The final addition mentioned how he never wants to be famous. I like the language in it; it feels stark, harsh, bitter and sarcastic. Staying anonymous may help him remain obscured behind countless words and phrases. Note this title is repeated twice. 

                “It Makes You Think “Which Wolf”” takes a different approach. Here we’re treated to a really bizarre mash-up of various themes. Wolves after the three pigs go into a bar. Already we have the wolves bored of violence. Instead they revel in agitation. The entire poem has some bizarre circular logic to it. If a joke and fairytale came together with Catch-22’s perverse logic it might look something like this poem. 

                Mortality is faced in “That’s Annoying, But Whatever”. He bothers people with checking his phone. The comments (which are larger than the poem itself) explain visiting an old childhood friend. My favorite comment of his comes at the end, as he thinks about how he almost got electrocuted. Somehow he knew his body was conditioned to live its life. Towards the end of the comment poem we see a certain ‘flashing before my eyes’ about the ocean.

                In “Gatorade” he is pretty funny. He makes $800,000 a year insulting others. Perhaps he is Tosh.0. Of course in such a mocking poem he needs to mention Sarah Palin, frog legs, disappointment, and passing out in front of a church. The words used are strong, difficult but funny. His comments yet again compliment his original piece.  

                Mountain Dew garners his attention in “Oh a Goodie!” He mentions the great beverage in a tweet to Mountain Dew’s official account. In that tweet he mentions why he’d be a good handler of the Mountain Dew twitter account. For Paul Clark is a humanitarian who believes Mountain Dew can change the world, he knows what joy it brings to extreme sports. Mountain Dew never tweeted back at him, showing Mountain Dew doesn’t care about twitter people. 

                 This was a great discovery for me. I enjoy randomly stumbling upon something on the internet and just exploring every nook and cranny. Since Paul comments on his own posts it creates a sort of commentary on commentary. Most of the work serves as an endless hall of mirrors with the emotions getting reflected over and over again constantly shifting into something new. My recommendation would be to explore it for a little bit, follow him on twitter, and explore the alien landscape. Following him on twitter provides a more condensed version of his ideas or perhaps the roots of his main thoughts. 

I guarantee you it will be weird. 

Struggle of the Bedroom musician

Life is hard for the bedroom musician. Nobody respects a guy who goes up to an audience and mumbles into a microphone:

“Hi, I’m going to play songs from my laptop.”

Then for the next 45 minutes you see this guy pretend to jam out on a better laptop than the one you have at home. Of course, there’s always the chance that he’s just playing MP3s out of it as he’s winning solitaire games. Usually there’s one or two of their friends in the audience as plants. After the show they usually say what a great job the guy did nodding his head back and forth along with staring blankly at a computer monitor. 

Life is hard for these artists. It used to be acceptable to have those kinds of concerts. No longer can anyone tolerate it. You just don’t have the labels as interested. Each time a guy comes on stage with a laptop the audience groans. Only somebody like The Field, who plays decadent dance music, can get away with this. And even he included actual musicians on his second album.

Some labels like 12k, City Centre Offices, and a few others accept this as a legitimate art form. But for most, one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do. Waking up in the morning and writing MP3s just has been sort of frowned upon. Thus, you either need absolutely amazing material (Like Washed Out), or, more realistically, you need to flesh out your live sound with a full band, like what Toro Y Moi does (and should continue to do).

Besides the obvious joy of having actual friends, being a bedroom artist now carries a derogatory connotation, like you can only be bothered with this before you go to sleep or after you wake up. Heaven forbid you actually spent time on making this good. See Jandek as a bedroom artist for further evidence that there’s something a little off about it.

Plus (and this might be the most important) without those other bands members, you’ll never get sweet advertising money. Do you really think that WAVVES would be as successful if he didn’t have Mountain Dew? Of course not, he’d be living on the streets. Just like Twin Shadow is the spokesperson for Robitussin, or the Polyphonic Spree advertises for Prozac. It just makes sense, and having a creepy, lonely dude explain that to you doesn’t have the same effect. 

So if you’re going the route of bedroom musician, fine. You can write those songs in your PJs, but keep in mind at some point, if you become successful, you’ll need a group of musicians good enough to learn the songs but not good enough to actually make it on their own. Perhaps you have a music teacher friend, or a guy who does weddings. It doesn’t matter so much where they are from, but that they will propel you to another level. As you grow together, you’ll gain access to Converse’s recording label and someday use Motel 6’s warm welcome to all touring artists.

A-level doesn’t involve being alone anymore.