People are People are People

                                       People are People are People

                                                      by Wilbur Witt

     Back in the day, when I first came upon Facebook, if you could follow it you were lucky. The entire idea of a "wall" was confusing. I pictured it as a sort of cyber graffiti where everything hung in limbo and you could pick and choose as you read. I even went down and bought a book (which I never read) about an inch thick instructing me as to how to explore this new site,  and ran straight back to MySpace. 

     Time and tears went by, and I collected dust. My YouTube channel got properly hacked, causing me to rebuild, but that wasn't necessity a bad thing. It was sort of like having a garage you always meant to clear out, but never did, and then one day the house burns down and you say, "That'll work!" all that, and I can't even remember my MySpace password anymore. (Is there still a MySpace?) I drifted back to Facebook and to my surprise it had began to make sense. Maybe it was my understanding, I don't know, but communication was actually possible. 

     Basically I'm a writer. Forty-two years in music, three novels, and scores of articles, a couple of TV shows, I'm pretty much settled into this writing thing. Strangely, for years I didn't refer to myself as a writer. When I was in Nashville my agent told me never to tell my neighbors that I was a country music writer. The locals considered that trashy. It was better to let them think you were a dope pusher, anything but a writer because that was a blatant admission to being unemployed!  So, I still had that frozen in my mind and almost never told anyone that I was really a writer, but that's what I am. When you see what I call income it's almost always a royally on something I've written. 

     The net result of this is I churn out articles. I pick a topic and expound on it. I've very recently discovered blogging and that is fascinating. I was disappointed with Facebook because almost no one was reading anything I wrote. By this time I was confident. If no one was reading my stuff it simply couldn't be my fault, Facebook was falling behind in MY expectations. Couldn't be anything else. I considered trashing the whole Facebook thing again, but I came upon a concept and noticed something. It wasn't like YouTube, where you counted the pennies until the check rolled in, it was "organic." The ebb and flow of Facebook was driven by PEOPLE! 

     YouTube is commercially oriented. When you turn a country music comedian loose in a situation like that what you have is the proverbial fox in the hen house. In no time at all I'd figured out where Youtube's jugular was and I had viral videos. I thought Facebook was the same but it wasn't. Facebook people READ! The rule of thumb with YouTube was two minutes and fifty five seconds. Get it in, get it on, get it done, and get on out. Use the right loading format, make it hard and fast, mix in a little music (even if you steal it) and the ads will come, and that's what you were really after, the ads. 

     I liked blogs because of their perpetuating nature. You could always improve on a blog. Unlike a video, or song, if you had a second thought you could improve on an existing work, even contradict it if need be. You can't really re-record a song, nobody will buy it, but if you add to a blog people will follow you like a soap opera and each new entry feeds new life into the blog. Than I discovered something else. You can post the links to Facebook. Ok, now here comes the readers from WordPress, and BlogSpot, and people from Facebook clicking the links and your readers increase, which is a good thing. Add Google + and Twitter and you're off and running. That, and it's awfully nice if you really have something to say. 

     Then you find people. At first I friended almost no one. I was a firm believer in the premise that if you make a better hamburger people will come. I equated self promotion as a form of prostitution. Well, I changed. As other bloggers became aware of me and I noticed that Facebook was making suggestions on my news feed about people who may want to friend me based on mutual friends I began to do The math. Couldn't hurt. All they can do is ignore me. I began to offer friendship based on these suggestions. I didn't like the sterile nature of Facebook friends, however, so whenever someone accepted my offer I thanked them and actually looked at their page, learned a bit about them and began to follow what they said. 

     You can't possibly  know everything about everyone, but you can get the drift of your followers and frankly, write what you believe your audience will read. I mean, don't lie, but tell it like it is in a way that they'll like to hear. It also helps that I use an iPad so that I can't write any faster than I can think. That, and a little Texas common sense, which is like the garlic on a good steak. Say the things that people want to say, but can't, or don't know how, so you say it for them. Like yesterday. I jumped all over Islamic fanatics. Now I did this because I don't like Islamic fanatics. They're stupid. They are running a three legged race with our government, but people dodge writing about it because a) it's politically incorrect and b) they don't wanna get blown the f#%k UP! But it needs to be said, and I have Muslim friends who tell me THEY don't like them either. People are generally tired of all that crap. And, like most people, I'm tired of having the TSO reach in my pants because 1% of 1% of the world's population can't properly read the Qu'ran! Now there are exceptions to everything. If a twenty year old FEMALE TSO officer wants to screen me I'm cool with that, but it's always a fat guy with a burr haircut. Not cool! Makes you almost want to say, "Please be careful, I just applied my medication."

     I try not to insult anyone's religion. Frankly I don't care what god someone prays to. I've been married five times, been in country music for forty-two years, and thought PMS meant "pack my shit,"  so you'd be SURPRISED what I believe and I don't share it here! I'm not here to convert people, I'm here to make them THINK! Suffice to say I don't dodge a subject just because someone may get their shorts in a knot. I look a topic squarely in the face and tell it like it is from the slant of an Austin songwriter. 

     My aim is to entertain, and perhaps in the process, make a point. Sometimes I'm wrong. I do try to check out my facts a bit these days so my neck doesn't look so red, but when I see something in the news such as the radical mother of two idiots who killed an eight year old boy trying to come to America to visit her scumbag surviving son in a prison hospital . . .OMFG! Don't get me started! And she's an ugly bitch, too, and that's just unforgivable. 

     People are people are people. Once you realize that you can generally communicate and get along you have the basic understanding needed for this new world. That, and re-reading your posts helps. If your post doesn't entertain you then it won't entertain anyone else. It all boils down to communication. It doesn't matter if everyone on the planet agrees with you so long as they understand you. I read it all. I try not to personally attack anyone. I stay calm (my doctor tells me I'll live longer that way) and rest firm in the knowledge that when in do read a bad article, or blog, I know that after a big plate of bullshit there's nothing like a good cigar!  

Thoughts on Getting Old

                                                Thoughts on Getting Old

                                                            by Wilbur Witt

     Well, I finally bowed to the pressure and got a checkup. I wasn't really surprised that my blood pressure was high. To be honest I knew I needed medication for my cough which is brought on by allergies, and I've had all my life. Of course, the doctor leaped on my cigar. We negotiated, but she's right. I have limited my cigar to one over morning cigar with coffee, and maybe one in the evening while sitting on the porch, and to be honest that hasn't affected me adversely. I enjoy my morning smoke, and don't crave them all day. I now take a little pink pill for my blood pressure, and I feel good about that. 

     When you're young you wonder what's gonna get you in the end. As you round the corner of sixty, and approach seventy you slowly become aware of what your fate will eventually be, and this is not a bad thing. The idea is to have a quality of life that is happy, healthy, and not a burden on your family and friends. It's nice to be able to just move a box without having to plan the move. However, that having been said, this is the period of realization that one is not twenty-three anymore, and most likely will not see one hundred twenty-three. 

     The very fact that I am writing this article reflects my basic optimism about life in general. Seems that I never was given an even break in my life, and that's a good thing. It prepared me for this final stage. I had polio and encephalitis when I was three and a half years old. That's an eye opener no matter who you are. Then, at eighteen, I was crushed between two cars in a filling station parking lot. Boy! Now THAT dates me. How many of you remember filling stations. For the uninformed there used to be businesses where you went to get gasoline, and that's all they did. You'd drive up, a guy would ask you  what you wanted, they would fill your tank, clean you windshield, check your oil, and take your money, all while you sat comfortably in your car. Well, that's what I was doing on June 13, 1970 when a woman named Hilda came into my station and ran headlong into the car I was servicing, standing in front of it, getting both legs broken in the process. 

     All of this made me a winner. And, contributed to my mental problem of believing I could do anything I put my mind to. I not only learned to walk all over again, I climbed telephone poles for thirteen years. When I quit that job and plunged into the music business I couldn't sell a song to save my life, so I invented Weird Wilbur, wrote adult country and sold THAT!  When I couldn't get a gasoline credit card I worked until I owned not one but three mansions in Berry Creek. When I couldn't get distribution for my music I worked diligently until I had them on iTunes because I could clearly see the end of the old order and the beginning of something very new and exciting. Publishers sent my books back over and over, but I self published and in time the world saw the birth of things like Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and my books are now world wide. You can even download them. 

     When you have a man who does these things you have a man who generally thinks he's right about just about everything. You tell him he's getting older and needs to take care of himself and you get, well, resistance. What I needed to understand was that I couldn't run I second gear all the time anymore with the motor revving at 4000 RPMs . I needed to shift into overdrive, let the motor run slower, and actually produce more product with less effort. In a word I had to throttle back. This is very hard to do. I have to learn this trick. 

     I don't want to become lazy. I definitely don't want to be one of those old farts who uses his age as an excuse to have other people wait on his every beck and call. I will continue to produce. If I can't be the singer ill be the writer or producer, giving advice about things I've learned over the years. I will write better books, selling more, having more money. If the weather in Texas doesn't suit me I will buy a winter home in California. I will survive. 

     Everyone gets old. Everyone dies. On every tombstone there is a date, a dash, and another date. The idea of life is to concentrate on the dash, not the dates. In the meantime I'll be sitting here writing and taking  my little pink pill. 

Reflections on a Good Cigar

                                          Reflecting on a Good Cigar

                                                       by Wilbur Witt

     It has been one hell of a week. Not one, but two tragedies. Now the conspiracy grinders pour out their theories, and we all have to sit through that nonsense. In the midst of all this I finally managed to get a good night's sleep last night. Woke up,this morning and went to my back porch, poured a cup of coffee, lit a Cuban seed cigar, and read the news. 

     This time of year in Texas is nice. Temperature is about seventy-five degrees, low humidity, a lot like California. Texas only has two seasons, too damn cold and too damn hot, but for a period of about thirty days between the two it is actually very nice. The Yankees call it Spring, I think. 

     The cigar and a good cup,of coffee makes me think, and when I think, I write. I have this expansive back porch, like you'd see on a hotel in the old west, really like the porch Judge Roy Bean had, that I have my mornings on. Leads to the pool, and a playground area. Actually quite nice. I was just prejudiced because my condo in SoCal had a view of the desert and Mount San Jacinto, while I have a view of the main drag in beautiful downtown Killeen here, but my area is nice, and the fire trucks and police provide a lot of entertainment. 

     I got off cigarettes. Got on them out in Cali and let me tell you, when you quit cigarettes, and go back to premium cigars it's like you quit smoking!  With cigarettes you concentrate on inhaling because there's no flavor and the damn things only last about three minutes, so it's like having sex with a girl in her twenties. You know it's not going to last that long so you make it as hot as fast as you can and hope to God she's impressed. Now a good cigar!  Half the battle is keeping it lit. You might need to relight here and there, but it lasts a long time. And there is flavor. You don't lunge into inhaling, letting the aroma drift over your nose and mouth, and the cigar is never quite completely smoked. Somewhere along the band you set it down and let it die with dignity, rather than crushing it out and breaking its neck like a cigarette. All this, and you can still relight it should you refill your coffee and wish a few more minutes. 

     My cigars smell so good that when I was going through my last divorce and living alone at Berry Creek, my soon to be ex came by and accused me of having a woman in the house. I had this guilty look all over my face because I had been smoking in the house and what she thought was a woman's perfume was the lovely lavender smell left by a box of Cubans my son had smuggled to me. 

     This house belongs to my husband in law. He's married to my ex. They live in what used to be my house about two miles from here and I keep this place up for them. I also sideline as day care for five of my grandchildren, all under seven, and we grill on the porch every night. I have the alarm set on my iPhone to go off at 5:00 PM. It's that buzzer alarm sound, and when it goes off the kids think it's saying, "EAT, EAT, EAT!" They run to the porch and dance around the grill like wild Indians. 

     All this gives me time to concentrate on writing and selling what I've written. What's held me back for so many years is the fact that I had to work to live and the writing was always secondary. Now I can write and develop, and finally just come out of the closet and admit I am a writer. That freaks my sister out, I think. How a writer makes money is always a mystery to the uninitiated. I've made money writing. Ask the IRS. 

     I've got to finish my fourth novel, CenterVille, by October. Going to visit my son in SoCal for his retirement party, and while there I'm going to try to sell it. Then I'm going to write a book called, Solutions. The blogging thing has been kind to me. I didn't take it seriously at first, but so many bloggers out there have helped me, and it did a lot of good to "mix with the crowd," that I have developed more, if that were possible. When you're a songwriter you work in the dark recesses of some studio somewhere, usually alone, and there is little or no interaction with others. This new medium is social, and that's a good thing, I think. 

     I've decided to stay on Facebook. I've noticed that there are a lot of people that prefer that format, and they like to read what I write, so the click of one key doesn't tax me much and it keeps old friends happy. I don't worry so much about quantity anymore, opting for quality. I would rather have one person understand what I write than ten thousand hits that ultimately go nowhere. 

     I'm caving into pressure to see a doctor. Not a damn thing wrong with me, but my ex, and my husband in law, with all of their health issues, simply cannot imagine that anyone can be sixty-one and doing fine. They thought I was losing too much weight. No, since Cali I've just been eating right and I weigh what I SHOULD weigh. They worry about my prostate. Nope, works just fine, I have a nineteen year old girl friend. Of course they don't like my martinis and cigar, well, pardon me for being a man!  That, and my people tend to live into their nineties, and I think genetics might have something to do with that. But, to pacify them I will get a check up. Then I'll just go back to living. 

     I don't feel as if this is the final chapter of my life. I feel that I've just graduated from the school of life and the best is yet to come. I grew up in the sixties so I'm unimpressed by all this talk about Obama being a communist Muslim. How'd anyone come up with that?  Aren't communists supposed to be atheist?  I'm just a simple old boy from Austin so these things are way over my head. I'll just keep writing, trying to blend in a little west Texas common sense, and make sure, "EAT, EAT, EAT" happens on time every night. 

Size Doesn't Matter

                                                  Size Doesn't Matter

                                                       by Wilbur Witt

     As I venture deeper into the world of blogging I'm gaining new respect for this unique art form. The biggest thing that has impressed me is the way a blog can reinvent itself. In the music business you write a song, it hopefully will be recorded by someone other than your brother in law, and then equally hopefully, it will achieve some notoriety and will be listened to by enough people to help pay the rent. The bitter pill is that once the tune makes its run that's it!  Good, bad, or plain, it rises to number whatever on the charts and then it invariably finds its way down, until you only hear it as a golden oldie, and no one makes any money off that. 

     A blog, on the contrary, reinvigorates with each new additional post. I didn't understand this at the onset, and made a new blog with each idea, which I thought of as an article. I treated them like a song, watching the individual postings rise, and then slow. Then, one day I added something new to one of my blogs and was snake amazed when the entire process began again. 

     So I started updating my blogs with additional thoughts, or links, to keep my readers up to date with whatever subject that particular posting was dealing with. Also, I began to study the kind of people who were kind enough to read what I write, and started to tailor my posts toward them. Why give someone mustard when they have clearly indicated that they prefer ketchup? I began to use a thesaurus for the first time in my life, and I've written three books, working on the fourth. What was happening was this medium was exercising my abilities. 

     I don't get into gimmicks, either in music or writing. My main contention, has always been content. Write something worth hearing, or reading. Don't labor your audience with boring, poorly written content. Have something worth saying and say it. Also, I've mellowed with age. Time was when I would jump on very controversial subject matter and slam it. I hate to admit it but I'm becoming politically correct. I learned this in a stretch limo in California, and I won't tell you what I did, but let me just say it was a doozy! Everyone was so impressed. Now I go for the  more discreet approach. I make my point with an undercurrent which I have found makes my case much better. 

     Lastly, don't write just to fill lines. Say what you're going to say. Say it eloquently, say it with finesse, but get it said, and get out!  Size doesn't matter. Sometimes, when I have an exceptionally long entry, I will do my oral read, and if it comes off too preachy, then I will consolidate some lines, or thoughts. I don't want my reader to wonder when is my post going to get good. I try to always be good. 

     I read an article today announcing awards to civilian writers who had developed major stories this year. BLOGGERS!  Imagine a medium where anyone can pick up on what you're putting out. This is tantamount to having an opportunity for every producer on Music Square listening to your song! The publishing word is wide open now. Where before people would only read material published by big name authors, now a good blogger can make a name for themselves, and just like YouTube changed the format of videos forever, the blogging template will become a style all it's own. And it's all right there just waiting to fall into your hands!

     

The Making of the Let The Light Shine Video

                                   Why I Made the Light Shine Video

                                                       by Wilbur Witt

   

     My nephew sent me a song. He has a band, and they have been developing their sound over the last few months, sending me clips, and to be honest I haven't heard them turn out anything bad yet!  But this song struck me. The young man, Curtis Hooper, was sitting in a garage. In the beginning of the piece there is thunder, and at first I thought it had been mixed in until I remembered that we had just had storms a few days before and I noticed Curtis is sitting in a garage, which was classic!

     His voice is riveting, reminiscent of John Fogarty, but not imitating. As he elevates the volume he slides into an old Memphis whiskey sound which punctuates and emphasizes the impact of what he's saying. And what he's saying is profound!  The song is blended perfectly. It begins simply, like a prayer. From there it crescendos into into a perfect hook, "You can tread on me," which sets up the title line of the piece. When Sean sent me the song he titled it, "Overcome," but when I heard the song the very first time I knew the title had to be, "Let The Light Shine (On My Face)." This was the only edit I saw needed, and that came from my years in Austin and Nashville. I thought the title "Overcome" somehow diminished the power of Curtis' voice when he sang those words. 

     The song does a perfect round, returning to its core concept once more, not laboring the refrain, but reinforcing it perfectly. The only guitar rift, if you can call it that, is at the very end and Curtis reinforces the theme of the song as it fades out. 

     When I heard the song I heard all these things. It was a master piece of songwriting. When you've heard, and written as many songs as I have you endure most of them, but I couldn't stop listening to this one. The video that came with it was a simple one. Curtis was sitting in a garage. The mix was fairly good, even though I know it was a demo, I had no complaints. 

     Jackie didn't pop into my head at first, I was going to just improve the imaging. I was so overcome by the song i was focused on Curtis, but then, as I worked on it and listened to what the song was really saying, I realized the anguish of the human condition was so there, weaved into the fabric of the lyrics that it was like a subliminal message to the soul.  At that point I thought of Jackie's story, but I didn't think just placing the old pictures of her with her daughter would do justice to this song. I began to search my photos, and some of them leaped out at me. As Curtis sang, "You can tread on me" the first time, I put in a still frame of Jackie cocking her gun and winking at the camera. The classic defiant seventeen year old girl, ready to take on the world, with a full life ahead of her expressed all the exuberance of youth.  With the words, "Let the light shine on my face," she appears in a dark business suit, heading for court, a court that would intimately destroy her life.  The next image is to the line, " I will win this race," and she is looking at images on a cell phone, pictures of her children that she would never be allowed to see again. Her smile belies the pain in her eyes, and she is pregnant with the child that would be ripped off her breast at birth. 

     

     With the  line, "The writing on the wall" is sang we see the image of a twenty one year old woman, aged, and resigned. Curtis returns to the title line, and while he sings, "Let the light shine on my face," he reinforces the resolve of the singer to overcome adversity, and as he does, iJackie cocks her gun and symbolically fires it at an unfeeling world.  

     The marriage of song and image is perfect. You don't even have to know Jackie's story to realize there's something very emotional there, emphasized by the soul of the song so beautifully delivered by Curtis. This song gives me the same feeling that I get when I listen to Dylan singing "Times They Are A Changing." Without going into a rant about the injustice Jackie endured, suffice to say this song, and this video expresses the heartbreak and resolve of all young mothers who miss their babies. Sometimes, in the vastness of the universe, two perfect notes are sung, and two souls merge for a brief moment to give the rest if us a heart rending message. Curtis and Jackie gave us such a moment, and we all should give them our appreciation. Thank you guys. 

http://youtu.be/8Nw_42SpSGg