I finally finished watching la dolce vita. Two weeks and five attempts later…. I watch fellini less as a moviegoer and more as a student or artist in resident I think. Less for entertainment and more for learning. It’s a study for me I’ve come to realize. La Principesa asked me once, ‘why do you watch his movies if you don’t enjoy them so much? eventually don’t you just want to turn them off?’ this comment of hers did in fact make me turn it off for a few days, and inspired me into a deep contemplation as to why I felt so compelled to sit and study fellini all these years when it was true, in fact, I didn’t find great pleasure as a moviegoer when watching his movies… why couldn’t I just put the DVD back in its sleeve and send it back? why finish it? But as if a habit… I just continued to study the film more over the last few weeks. watching little bits here and there…  and I came to a deeper understanding of what was at play, for me at least. Just for me…. for me I have come to understand that its all about the art… I think of the Simpson’s… so many of my friends loved the Simpson’s… its not like I didn’t get the Simpson’s… but I just didn’t get why anyone would want to watch it… but they love it. and they love it because it is entertainment to them… and to me I just had this realization that its never had anything to do with entertainment to me… I never got into entertainment… that’s why I never got into sitting around playing video games with all my friends… or the latest Hollywood blockbusters…

but it has always been about art… so I laugh at the Simpson’s like anyone else… its true. I’ve seen it once or twice — I dare admit it, but it makes my stomach hurt… watching stuff like that… how do you describe it? low art? Versus high art? Or entertainment versus art? And really who’s to say. Perhaps the Simpson’s is high art and la dolce vita is low art? That last scene certainly was…. so yes there we are… I feel a rush now in my chest at this new realization. Wow. I have always felt guilty for this. for being such an outcast and not liking or partaking in the enjoyment of popular cultural phenoms like the Simpson’s or south park or sex and the city and all the other pedestrian stuff that flows in and out of human consciousness so successfully but seems to pass me by completely… has always made me feel like an outcast… like ‘c’mon Fishy why do you have to be so stuck up? this shit is sooooo funny…’ But like I said, stuff like that has always made my stomach hurt, made me feel guilty if I sat too long to experience it, for more than a few minutes and I start feeling anxiety inside as an artist… I start getting this panicky scared feeling that I am not being true to my bigger calling… crazy thing to feel I know. not even easy to write… but that’s just the way its always been for me… whenever I spend time watching stuff like that… always made me scared as an artist – terrified inside, quietly, just to myself… a subtle slowly growing panic that I wasn’t working hard enough or smart enough in that moment…

as an artist you are always keenly aware under the surface how little time we have here to make our statements… to achieve as much as we want to and long too… I think of Wes Anderson and his four films and then I compare it to how many albums I’ve made. or woody Allen or fellini… its sick and twisted and silly but I think we all do it… this constant state of anxiety that we aren’t completing enough fast enough… for me its still a money thing… its not a prolific thing… just always a lack of resources and money to record as much as I want to… but it does feel like a race against time… because you are always thinking about how time is going by so quickly… and comparing yourself to other artists throughout history… and yes, that’s it…. I don’t necessarily only compare myself to other singers or musicians… as I think a lot of musicians do…. but just artists in general… fellini Picasso Davinci Caetano… its all the same thing… just artists doing their thing… Fellini. His works are grand that’s for sure, if not wildly entertaining compared to what’s been created more recently. But you just cannot fathom the immensity of a work like la dolce vita. 3 hours. 8 separate scenes peaking to a crisis during the evening and ending at dawn.., all interwoven so seamlessly that you don’t even realize at first what it is you are seeing… a grand work… again, it’s a painting or a great album… but just done with film.

Dear Fishy, just to let you know, as a sign of the times, 94.9 Zeta is gone.  It has been replaced by Mega 94, a latin dance/pop/hiphop station.  So in South Florida, there is now officially no rock station at all.
Zeke

So its official. South Florida has no fucking rock radio. Two counties and what? twenty cities or more without rock radio. I left at the right time. that’s for sure.