You can dream. You can dance, for inspiration. I can just film some stuff.

Forget lighting, all that nonsense, I can do up my bloopers, do up my last transmission

I don’t need anything for haunted microscope I’ll just keep developing it, it won’t be august, that’s for sure. How long is the mix? Like 15 minutes? That’s how long the video will be.

I’m trying to look for my notes on this and I can’t find them, there’s home alone and thats supposed to bridge to it, but wheres all that business about

oh here we go, haunted garden

Yeah I got a big burly garden. There’s a possibly scary shed. I’ll just make the “Haunted Garden” video in my garden. I just thought of it then. There’ll be the Microscope mix of all the songs, the Haunted Microscope EP for the main tracks, and a minimix with a video called “Haunted Garden” make 10 minutes long and I’ll shoot it in my garden.

Basically the microscope is about analysis and understanding, but in the haunted garden, past lives and old lives are trying come at the new house. So in the garden, the ghost of our old life . . . appears.

Old lives haunt you in the garden. So you can’t get out the microscope and understand because old lives haunt your thinking.

In home alone, the house is a sanctuary and a womb, so there’s acts.

Past lives keep trying to invade, they lurk out there.

In the shed lies oblivion is what I said, my own death? Ghosts want to help to my death? I want to make this spooky.

Just the suggestions. I’m safe in the house but it’s haunted by neurosis and empty existance, the ghosts are trying to get me out of the house, the represent past lives. Through the tangled vines, they shephard me to my death.

Hang Em High: The house of heaviness, home alone, where ghosts I’ve left behind lurk.

I’m safe in my womb but I’m cold and alone and it’s not real, it’s too eery. I’m doing business but I’m not, i’m rocking a crowd but I’m not, I’m in bed with a girl, but I’m not and suddenly it goes dark.

I’m weeping, I’m dead, I’m cold, it goes dark, and I realised it’s all like a haunted miscroscope.

And it’s all dark crazy flashing light plays and the ghosts going crazy at the windows of the house and eery images or psycho schizo freak out

but it’s the home alone buzz, it’s not real.

Rain: The call of the night, of the possibilites

Polyps: The ghosts anthem, of deep ghosts in the night

Pretty Ghosts:  the warmth of the memory, maybe a girl, i’m looking out the window and seeing myself differently amongst the ghosts

maybe have pictures of my name on posters for gigs that have passed.

Doubt: Is the classic man, who removes all doubt in mysterious style – i’m getting ready in my suit and the ghost of the dj wonders where I’m going . . . to the haunted shed / garage

Paper Tigers: Is the sad submission to death and bargaining with regret,

It’s Too Late: Afterworld of happy memories

So what’s the connection? Home Alone is the Hobbit to Haunted Microscope’s Lord of the Rings.

Home Alone has a narrative and little clips of songs and haunted microscope stuff, ending with

“When there’s nothing to prove and nobody to prove it to, then you sit alone in your house searching for yourself . . . hoping you don’t get lost . . .”

While Haunted Garden is just a really long music video.

So I’ll do home alone and other stuff like aucklands most wanted, last transmission and bloopers, in preparation for the haunted microscope coming down the line.

thats a good system I think, to be continually producing supporting content that hints at a bigger content package coming, so even if I dont do the haunted garden video, it’ll meld to something else, but the home alone will represent that time, and hint at future themes.

So home alone ends with me hoping I dont get lost inside my head, and haunted garden starts with the tempo ramping up to the crazy drop.

home alone is:

- happy pov around the house – part 1

- sitting alone in odd light, smoking with decks part 2

weird portraits part 2

- sinister pov, flashes of haunted, ghosts part 3

- possibly shots of “outside world” part 4

- final mash up of all themes and resolution. last shot still sitting alone in silence part 4

pretty easy really.

Such an existential day. I’m not quite sure what I mean by that but it seems appropriate nonetheless.

I slept in because I felt like it, and ate some sugary bakery goods for my lunch. It just wasn’t the day for me to really care. Passively I observed and prompted myself. I sort of realised I can, it doesn’t matter what I choose to accept I am – but aversely, I certainly failed to rise without having once again reverted to unfounded anxieties.

Each day I have to renew and reacquaint myself with the avenues of my analysis which takes me to a resolution I can then rest with. Every day is a journey. So although today I realised there was no desperate need to rise and fight for my business, and maybe that does suggest I’m finally growing into that realisation, at the same time I still sadly pondered my helplessness and where my fate would lead me.

Some girl from my high school came to get DVD’s done for her wedding, and somewhat passively I received the familiar emotion, this time almost outside myself, of lost days being young and stupid, innocent, it was in her smile, in her laugh, but also in that was buried a maturity I hadn’t seen then and it was testament to the fact those days are no more.

I couldn’t have run a business when I was a teenager, so I should be thankful I dawdle existentially and still make a good living in my own way, but so many mornings I wake having taken on once again, so many perceptions on that will take me half the day to undo.

It is all about time slipping away. That is one of the purest themes of my art, since before I even realised what it was, except in the aftertaste, in the afterthought, more layers of complexity are laid out as to what constitutes that theme.

I was obsessed with archiving at one point, like it had to be done. But the other night I couldn’t help but feel that part of the faded passion, the faded desperation, was in realising that to be obsessed with the past is to give up on the present, just in trying to understand why I’m not driven to archive any more. Is it because I’ve given up and no longer care that it’s important?

As kenny rogers says, there’ll be time enough for counting when the dealing is done. But I just felt somehow I would come to understand more fully what was going on, the trajectory I was on, that it would provide clarity and direction. I’d find what could be brought forward and enshrine that which could not.

I was relaxed in a somewhat passive way, I felt existential, I knew of my lingering anxieties as daily nuisances, insisting of me that I can’t relax because I’m hurtling towards dying alone and unfulfilled – and even though I have a slight chest infection, it didn’t seem enough to stop me, from just being okay. Time passes, it does, you can’t stop it, and in that movement lies emotive inspiration.

Except once again I think of the short circuit videos, it seems to make me so restless, and feel unresolved, and what does it mean, this unsettling emotion, like I’ve just dropped off the planet because I can’t find half an hour worth of tape?

This is the artistic resolution I arrive at these days, that this emotional struggle with time is a story itself, one that everyone must know in themselves. And thats the strands that make up the story as it now exists in the present. The story is about saying that it’s not just about the past or just about how we deal with the past or just about the present being a product of the past.

It may be painted as, or disguised as nostalgia, regret or whatever, but it’s just another dimension of the ultimate story.

What does not having evidence of the past really mean? That it never happened? In the context of the story I’m not sure thats the point. If what happened 5, 10, 15 years ago matters in the context of the narrative then I guess it matters, otherwise . . .

Perfect day by Lou Reed seems like such a melancholy song, that suggests how things can be perfect even when they really aren’t. It seems to represent some perverse kind of closure.

When I began taking orders this morning I was warmed in a tiny way by considering the role I play each week in helping people do their CD’s and their DVD duplication and tell their stories, their narratives, to make their story come alive. It made me think of Kurb TV and how I could do that as a “now” thing, as I slice of who and what I am now, the businessman who’s past calls him back. The story as it is today.

But then again to be pulled down by the thought of the short circuit material that may be lost, and then just to write through it until the feeling goes away.

I think what this all means is this, a change in how the tense of the story is represented.

Up until now it was all about what happened and then what happened next.

Now it’s about whats happening, it’s about now, now is the subject, and all that came before just feeds into what the story is now.

Now is what matters, now is now, now is the moment that exists, the past is just back story.

Me as internet star, me as a DJ/event promoter, me as an activist, me as criminal, they’re all stories from the past that I’ve got to build both ways, stories in the past, stories in the future.

Sadness and regret over lost footage and forgotten memories maybe a theme to explore in itself.

But what is so upsetting, is it having to feel as if all those experiences mean nothing? That having done all those things were just . . . man, I dunno. What an epic struggle with the narrative. All I know is the footage thing keeps getting me down, and maybe if there’s nothing that can be done about it, I just have to make that part of the story.

I was a internet sensation. But there’s no real evidence. I toured arund trying to be an internet sensation, it didn’t really work but I found little bits of magic. Was the magic in the video thats been lost, or in the fact that as it turns out I was never an internet sensation at all, I just had to believe it to make myself feel as if I was worthwhile, that I hadn’t wasted my life.

It’s funny because in looking back at what happened, it makes perfect sense, and maybe that’s the story to be told, not the story of how it was and if I can come back, when there really isn’t much to go back to, those are just early memories and they only play a supporting role, they aren’t the star.

I guess I just have to feel as if no songs I did, no videos I did are that important that they should stop me doing more songs and more videos. And if it is a story about a guy who doesn’t do any more good songs or end up doing the videos he wants to, then I guess thats what the story is.

When the common person comes across my thing, they probably just see a random video, they don’t understand anything about the show, they just like it, somebodies told them about it or they were in it.

I want there to be a real narrative though because that’s what will connect people to it, that they start to get the story, then they want to see from the beginning.

And they see how lo-fi my stuff is they see the Steve video, and all I have to do is better than that, so they see a journey from where I am now to hopefully a more prolific future where I drop new videos every week.

I’m hoping once I’ve done some kurb videos I will be comfortable behind the camera again and keen to climb the ladder and do something more challenging.

Also, I have to recognise that it’s the space that’s allowing me to get into all this stuff. If I didn’t have the space, I wouldn’t have realised how little footage I actually have to use for my backstory stuff.

It’s okay to chill for now while I get ready to move forward with new levels of sustained energy. Recognising there’s a problem there is part of providing the solution and the way forward.

I’m best to do all my kurb and romantech stuff first, building up to it. My pirate stuff, because the pirate is another good angle to come in on.

Of course part of that narrative I’m drawing from there to here to beyond, is that I once was a ratty drum and bass DJ, and I got on myspace and became some fake kind of internet trainwreck parody, and then I got into business, and there’s as much to work with in my poor, obscure, yet meaningful past to the future where I work with insane artists on insane projects and my desperation is all the more amplified.

And in that, maybe it puts into relief a simpler time when I was just a loser DJ, just a loser drug dealer, just some loser wannabe on myspace.

I will build a Romantech archive, and I will do my best to recover the lost reality compound files

I just hope I have enough tatters to string a flimsy story together that will get this damn thing off the ground.

Just been having a bit of a funny old freak out over potentially lost Reality Compound and Short Circuit material.

There were a lot of problems along the road with losing footage, tapes going missing, computers, hard drives stolen, negligence, whatever . . . so what I have left is very skant as it is.

It really wasn’t that much of a big deal I guess but when someone remarks or reacts to my video stuff, I kind of respond by feeling a sense of wasted opportunity, which is not really something I can hang onto if I want to move forward, because I want to go to a bigger place, step up to a new level with it now, and I can’t be getting all excited just because somebody said they liked my video.

Creatively I have to push on, and push through.

But I have to be coming from somewhere too, I can’t just pop up out of nowhere at this stage without any evidence of the journey that brought me to this place I’m at now, because everything that happened with Romantech and Reality Compound and Myspace is all part of the story.

It’s not about reaching back to the past – but it’s about a series, a continuum, a story that has depth and background.

But when it comes to putting together the pieces of the puzzle, it gets me concerned creatively, how am I going to bring this together?

How am I going to communicate that important precursor, prestory, preface . . . this is like the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings, I’ve got to be able to paint a picture of how it was and what happened before.

All the old vibes are dead aside from me still walking around carrying them with me, all that stuff happened years ago, but I wanted that to be part of the story, that I left Reality Compound behind to be the Kurb business guy, but still the vibe calls me back, and tells me there’s no point in being some rich guy and just letting go of everything that was once important.

And all those old storylines are waiting to be rediscovered, except, no one will remember, no one will care anymore, so that’s why I need as much evidence from the past as possible, to paint out that side of the story.

I mean the whole idea about Reality Compound is a story that is happening, that is unfolding – but I want that rich past to help me to define that. I guess that’s just part of the creative challenge, and it’s nowhere near as challenging as what I have to do now to bring myself back to the level I once was and then go beyond it so that people might care where it all came from.

I guess that’s the way I have to face it and deal with it, if there’s nothing to tell the story for me, I have to tell it – I have to bring it to life, documentary style, or kind of like a Lost thing where you see glimpses of the past that fill in certain narrative themes for the audience.

It’s not about what happened in the past – I mean there’s some really interesting stuff there about how I arrived at where I am now, but it’s what happens next, about my rediscovery of my purpose there, that is the story I’m now telling.

But in the story it is very much about relating to the past, but at the same time there’s no reason we can’t have new adventures, while introducing old characters, it’s very much about the tone of the narrative.

I guess even if I am freaked out that I have lost even more of the past, so it creates the incentive to recreate it to bring my story forward again.

Remember that even the original Reality Compound had a back story, which was loosely based on reality.

And now the new Reality Compound has a back story too.

But I guess whatever happens, in whatever ways I fail – including if I fail to bring “the way it was” to life – Reality Compound is the story of the little guy who wants to be a big deal, and we’ve all been growing up hanging onto these dreams, failure and humiliation, and then the redemption and resolution that follows is all part of the story.

If I fail to present the backstory then that’s just another failure, but a failure to embrace – as part of the new story, whatever the new story will be, because that’s what I have to worry about first.

“And in the meantime we try . . . try to forget that nothing lasts forever . . .

funny how it all falls away . . .”

Weird day. I had to get my BMW fixed, so I had to hang around for a few hours, at the caf and such.

I read a blog that said people aren’t interested in reading your diary, they need you to know how to help them. They also said a lot of other stuff like spending 2 or more hours on a post. Sheesh, come on!

Emotive music played, and later, I stood in my garage looking for evidence of these times gone by, old boxes of stuff. Things in the past seem distant and unrecognisable.

It’s not like I didn’t know, in fact, was that the feeling I was experiencing once when this strange sense gripped me?

I always see myself, just turned 19, working packing kiwifruit boxes. I used to feel strange and it was there that those feelings began. What happened, what changed?

Is that the feeling I was trying to understand back then?

. . . That this is now, but one day, I would stand in the garage and wonder what had happened? Was it a sense of gravity, that all things shall pass, but one day I would feel the shock of actually seeing so much change, not just a projection of inevitably how things must be, and that everything changes?

When a year goes by you realise time has passed, but when 10 years go by, a lot changes.

To say you’re sad or you miss something is to simplify the thing completely, to experience in the first place, is to have inexperience, you’ll never be that person again, you can never really re-experience.

This is all good material. I need to take these ideas back into my art, and use them to create the kind of gravity that is required of powerful art, that’s what beauty is in a lot of ways, understanding.

Maybe I have always . . . – I have been made to play the character that must let go of the dream, and that is the heroic struggle, not the struggle to achieve but the struggle to just let it go, and show that that is it’s own tragedy and at the same time victory in itself.

Nothings really changed, I have these feelings that are like huge walls confronting me, and art seems to be the only way to deal with them, it’s just what exactly that wall is, has changed.

The longer it gets, the more mysterious and distant the past seems, what is the accumulation of this feeling is it the acceleration of death?

Is each faded photo or document just another record of how close I tread, marching toward my own demise?

Once I would have suggested it is the feeling that time is running out, but I always knew time would run out, or in fact, we make our own time, over time what we choose to define us changes. Our priorities change.

Do I make myself feel guilty that I don’t want to rave out up the front any more? Is it too condemning in it’s evidence that I’m moving on? It’s a hard one. I don’t want to hide from the truth. That’s often what artistry is about, expressing a truth that can’t be expressed in words.

But I would really like to understand what I’m being told. The message is that the time is now to be who you want to be, because one day I’ll look back and think off this time and wonder what became of it.

I think of how exciting it all was once. The streets and the night and the music.

I was young then, and it is the young that believes that it must part of the future, that it must find it’s voice, that I know I can’t shout any more, there’s no point to my shouting, it is for youth to demand attention, and for me to know better and to simply do my work.

I don’t make my art to draw attention to myself, to make people think I’m awesome. This feeling wells inside me that I can create something resonant, that says something. So I’ve just got to go and do it, maybe people will not think much of what I’m doing or saying, but that’s not the point, it’s not about having a career being a guy who makes videos about a character I play and writes my own music for it.

It’s not about a career or impressing people, it’s just about doing because that’s what I am. It’s an artistic singularity where what I am and what represents me moves closer to synchronicity.

You’ve got to believe the magic is still there, that if the story can’t exist in reality then I have let it out and make the story myself.

I really like this how to be awesome Idea.

It’s pretty dumb but I like it because it’s kind of flash in the pan, I can do the free report, and 1 or more stupid videos.

I was up at the radio today feeling like I am not doing enough actual real stuff, no I’m not making highly relevant dubstep, I’m doing my stupid free report on how to be awesome.

creatively thats what I feel like doing. I’m sure if it matters I’ll feel like making beats again and if not then well whatever, people change.

I like the idea of my newsletter because I don’t like making an average wage, I hate it, that’s why I can’t get on with it creatively because I want to be making awesome money. That’s just how I am. So being outcome focused, no less, I keep an eye out on my needs, and my directives, in order to go about things in a way that seems natural for me.

Like getting a fridge, I got no fridge to put my food in. I just don’t some hulking great thing, just something I can fit in my beamer that will cost less than $100, I don’t want be spending my money on appliances and furniture, it’s quite boring, as I’m sure you don’t want to hear about it all.

I’ll feel a lot more normal once I have a fridge, but fridges cost money baby, and what better way to get a fridge than having a newsletter where I can just give out whatever in the hope that eventually somebody somewhere will buy something and

In fact I may aswell make turning my full marketing abilities on myself evcentually some kind of long term goal because I can see how it would all work it just that dark nagging reality that I’m just not that great.

Well not right now. I want to be awesome! I have been slightly awesome, but I think in reality I’ve got a dose of what it’s like to know you’re not awesome and I really want to step it up. All the way.

I want to be awesome. Ironically, I don’t know how, but I think that’s all part of the story.

The desperation, the craving. When a fridge and some new shoes won’t be enough . . . even a sweet Audi . . . you need do discover your own personal awesomeness!

Well . . . get the free report I say. I’m going to write it, then promote it. A lot of serious people might think it’s a joke. That’s kind of because it is.

But behind the joke is a grain of truth that is at the centre of us all, that we want to be better, but why, and for what end?

I wonder if people will be upset that it’s silly and there’s nothing about being awesome, or whether I only attract people who like stupid jokes. Whatever, as long as they buy me a fridge.

Call Matt on 027 684 8250 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 027 684 8250 end_of_the_skype_highlighting for kurb promotions service in auckland: cheap, fast and fair!

Kurb Promotions: Grey Lynn / Sandringham / Glen Eden offers:

Auckland CD duplication and Auckland DVD copying: Cheap and fast – super cheap deals on runs 1000 or under, great free pick up and delivery service – graphic support and free set up – simply a great service

Colour Copying Auckland: Another super fast,  and super cheap service – need 50 – 1000 colour copies

Online marketing for small business and online music marketing – including graphic design, web design, seo, online advertising, email management, social media, complete online marketing packages.

We’re also getting into video marketing – as always, cheap, fast, and fair! We make videos for online promotion, and we market them!

<!– @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } –>

My creativity is bursting up in small starts, I’m not back into writing music yet but I am kid of like uhh yeah well I’m gonna do this Haunted Microscope and my videos and maybe try and start an indie dubstep band nand if I can do all that this year that’ll be all good.

It doesn’t seem that hard any more I just gotta psyche up for it and open the mystic triangle.

The celestial eye or whatever y’know like zen or whatever it is. It’s all about the vibe in the space, I’m not quite sure on the details but when you are able to mellow and centre heavily – well, I’m going to tip out musical compositions, that’s what I do. So I’ve laid that egg, I just need to hatch it, I’m sure I’ll get on it any day.

But often I feel like soulless and lifeless like I don’t really want to, it’s more pronounced than ever. Part of me thinks I’m just on some buzz that I’ll recover from, especially because I suprise myself, I get these creative bursts, now I just have to step them up into action, to a new level of action, for me. I think it’s coming because I know ultimately if you don’t create you may as well just die.

And I’m like . . . am I going to die? Am I gonna run out of juice and just linger?

I don’t see the point of not trying to express, that’s why it’s a weird mood, maybe I’m just charging up. Lucky all my old ideas are mostly the same, and what’s more I’m like, do I need to make even more money?

What’s the point? I make good money, why do I need more, just to be a dickhead? Just to run and hide and say I can’t be bothered being who I really am? Y’know?

Is who I really am some rich dick? Or is it honestly time to go, well um, that’s enough money, so I won’t be on the street, so can’t I get on my buzz now?

I don’t care, any more. It’s not about being in Pavement and being on 95bfm and being some cool kid around town, that’s for kids!!! I just wanna do my thing naturally. My art!! I don’t want to play some bullshit gig, I want to film my self trying to tell a story. I’m a business guy, I dress up as a pirate, I make beats, whatever.

You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t know anybody. Who cares, I’m happy where I am. I realised that I’d rather just be happy doing what I want to do, even if it is shitty. I’m a business man afterall.

I just don’t seee the point in more money than I need. Once I had all these ideas and they’ve matured, maybe not all worked up about it but they’re still there.

All I need is a fridge, for my butter and milk and that. After that, it’s about art.

Maybe I will go after it. Maybe if I sit here it won’t come to me, I have to go out after it . . .

]]> http://romantech.co.nz/blog/2010/05/romantech-in-small-bursts/feed/ 0 http://romantech.co.nz/blog/2010/05/romantech-through-the-haunted-microscope/ http://romantech.co.nz/blog/2010/05/romantech-through-the-haunted-microscope/#comments Sun, 09 May 2010 02:48:32 +0000 Matt Romantech http://romantech.co.nz/blog/?p=456

There’s been a bit of an incident, and now I veer off in my own independent direction. But as I always knew, I’d be moving forward with the Microscope project because that’s what I saw as my direction, and now I’m building up plans around executing the Microscope project my own way, doing my own thing.

Soul Science and Dojo Inspectors simply just goes in the pile with everything else that was meant to happen and kind of did but didn’t and therefore I’ll have to use my Romantech site to display, curate and present everything that I’ve done before. Am I going to present the gory innards of the implosion that happened, the surrounding incidents? Who knows. If it’s appropriate to how the art is to be presented.

It’s like Data:bass or Further or anything else, it goes on the pile, maybe it’ll be resurrected, maybe not, but there’s a place in the timeline, in the narrative to say in this time I was actually active, I’m not pretending it never happened, there’s still a chapter to be read in the story that takes us to where we are now.

And where we are now in terms of music is the Microscope project which is the musical partner to the Haunted Garden. That’s me for the next few months. Working on Microscope and Haunted Garden, trying to get the Romantech website up to a new level where there’s actual stuff to be explored and a narrative structure emerging, and then plugging into my other video work and my newsletter stuff which will probably be coming from another direction, the kurb promotions and business direction, hopefully to meet somewhere before the end of the year.

The “Haunted Microscope” will consist of:

- The Romantech “Microscope” EP

- The “Haunted Garden” 10 minute video and minimix

- The “Haunted Microscope” Full Length Mix

Then a web development and web marketing campaign around that

As I say heading up to the new year I hope to join that with whatever headway I’ve made with my youtube and newsletter, and also the retroactive work on my website, and then forward from there in a unified creative direction.

The songs I am keen to consider featuring on the EP and minimix are:

PROBABLES:

Polyps
Pretty Ghosts
Hang ‘em High
Trinity
Journeys

POSSIBLES:

Paper Tigers
In The Morning
Peace At Last
Rain
Mountains
Lost Dreams

So yeah, some of these songs won’t make the final line up. The issues are that Journeys and Trinity while very solid, are both very similar. Paper Tigers, Lost Dreams and Peace at Last have strong elements but are still a little bit ragged and unfocused. So I think now I’ve spent this time mapping out, it’s really just time to get back into the tunes and doing it, working up the Romantech website and archive and looking at how I can get started with my camera and my newsletter so I’ve at least kicked things off there by the time the Microscope project is ready to launch, and I can think more about how to bring those together, and start pushing the promotion once I’m happy with whats there, what I’ve created that I’ve made available to promote.

Keen to hear me DJing some sweet drum and bass?

It’s a mix of big party choons, a few tougher numbers and my typical smooth liquid funk.

http://dnbshare.com/download/TOUGHLOVE-DJROMANTECHdjmxDec09-320.MP3.html

It’s the official “Tough Love” mix.

OH WAIT YOU WANT TO FIND OUT ABOUT MY MARKETING MUSIC SERVICES – THIS IS MY ACTUAL MUSIC, I MAKE – NOT MY JOB, FOLLOW THE LINK

Mmm so yeah I’m thinking of kicking off my newsletter and not giving a toss. Why not. It’s a good idea to have a newsletter you can make money flogging junk and stuff, i’m kind of good at that.

I guess I’m thinking who would want to read it? I don’t know, why not try it out?

The main idea is also a small step toward video.

It’s just been so hard, I’ve been trying to do this for years now! I’ve got to break this mutha down. If I can start with one newsletter per month, I can then move toward a newsletter and a video per month, plus a free song, and well, we’re good. We’ve got our format.

How hard can that be? The thing I like about it is unlike video, with an automated newsletter you can go back and improve the newsletter, which kind of makes me think of it as the top rung of engagement, in fact if it only ends up being a couple of hundred people and less than half of those even read the thing then that’s fine by me.

But I’m embracing the small step because I hate having a goal and missing it and then ending up discussing it and overanalysing it to beyond meaning, and we don’t want that on the newsletter. The newsletter can be actual me trying to do some decent writing and putting together something decent, and even if I don’t – as I say, unlike a youtube video I can just go back and change it.

No problems. Wait no, lets be serious. If I make it too crazy and all Reality Compound then it might put people who are into serious drum and bass or serious marketing off but if it’s too serious it’ll be boring.

I think I might of been saying it’s all about framing. Do the reality compound stuff but in such a way that drum and bass and marketing people can enjoy. Try to keep it edgy and amusing without offending the mainstream. Do marketing, but make it interesting, relevant. Show off your music, video and other content, but be real, not all indulgent.

Really aim to give people something decent

Use the story, use philosophy, because y’know, this is really all about the ideas I had since I was a young kid that I would be an author one day. Now it’s author 2.0, it’s author of my own destiny.

It’s author as character in their own story it’s an author combining the different media – video, newsletters and blogs, music to tell a story in a new way.

The whole RC dynamic of being a “real character”, which is not really me but a caricature of myself.

Another problem is about the idea of keeping it real vs. trying to not offend anyone and ending up a pussy who can’t say anything that’s real becuase it might offend someone.

I want to be transparent, but isn’t it so burdensome from an entertaining perspective to have to explain and justify everything? If I want to sell penis enlargement on my newsletter because it’s rock and roll and I don’t care, do I really have to explain it and justify it to my readers?

Do I just not sell penis enlargements at all and avoid the problem? Do I only do things I can justify in a sentence?

I just have to come up with a way of working with that content that my audience will accept.

Or that I feel . . . well I think I will have to shave off some raw edges. I think if I decide to promote penis enlargement I better be bloody clever about it.

Play the character of myself. The character of myself would sell penis enlargements on his blog because I’m crazy and he would do that.

The newsletter is a new level ofcloseness to the “fan” – I think I really just have to try it, basically, become my own client.

I think the newsletter is a better goal long term anyway, I mean so what if I can use youtube and be hilarious and irreverent and tell a story that I actually live in, what’s the next step? I become a more dynamic individual to play to the audience? I get a segment on tv? I get together with darcy and work on scripts and shoots?

Isn’t that all a bit typically far reaching? Why don’t I send them to my newsletter so you can maybe build up 150 people who give a shit and buy something once in a blue moon simply because there’s something I’m doing they like. Maybe they don’t like the music, or the marketing stuff, don’t care what I think or they dont think i’m funny or my philosphies are very incisive. As long as they have some reason to read it, i’ll keep reviewing what i’m doing until it’s as good as i can do.

How can I meet the objectives without a list? Something I can work with, improve, make money with as well as work on the detailed process of reconciling my music, my business and my new creative directions.

What if it becomes a bummer like this blog, instead of being cool and awesome, just becomes a depressing testament to how belaboured the whole creative existance has become?

I think that means I need to change up my style. I can ramble on here on my blog, I might still continue to spew words onto the page and send them off for backlink building, ramble on generally, but my newsletter is where I put together episodes that are actually relevant and attempt to tackle the broad range that is my platform.

That’s the whole challenge of a new kind of narrative.

There are some people who will put up with information when they want entertainment and some people who will put up with my attempts to amuse. . . yeah nah, but here are some drafts I’m working on:

But first . . . why not sign up and try it out?

Sign up for Matt’s Newsletter: -Tips  -Downloads -Stuff -Good

Name:

Email:

We respect your email privacy

<!– @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } –>

FIRST DRAFT NEWSLETTER: INTRO

Hi it’s Matt here, I’m doing this newsletter.

It is a story, but there’s promotion and creative tips, music to download, and deals on offer.

So even if you don’t like learning about promoting stuff online or not interested in getting music, or videos, or stuff I think is cool, insider deals from my business, kurb, or any of what I’m into, at least it might an interesting story.

Having a newsletter for your project is a great way of building up a group of people you can reach out to but people will tune out if your newsletters aren’t any good. That’s why I want to make all my newsletters super hot – snappy with lots of good material – promotion tips, free music to download, hot hot links, new videos, tears, laughter, and great deals.

What I’m doing here is pretty broad, so it won’t be valuable for everyone, but the people I’m left with will be valuable to me, valuable connections, valuable community.

hopefully

Part of the reason a newsletter is so effective as a money making tool is the ability to make offers that generate generous commissions. I’m not here to persuade you to buy something you don’t need, but to make you aware that these offers do allow me to make generous commissions on sales and whatever I can do to help you to support me by purchasing any of these digital products I’m happy to consider.

That’s why as well as advice, tips, free downloads of content I’ll also be offering special “insider” deals – ways for you get free stuff, but mainly I’m here to write my newsletter, push my content other content I think is exceptional or provocative, if we make a deal and I sell some junk and get paid, well that’s a bonus.

DRAFT CHAPTER ONE, TAKE 2

Internet Money Internet Fame

I had a little taste on the tip of my tongue of internet fame and it was good. I miss the myspace days. But I was broke, it wasn’t real.

But the stuff I learned while messing around on myspace refined my knowledge of internet marketing, because it worked. When something works once, it will often work again and again and it did and I learned reasonably fast.

If your content is poor than you’re not able to be trusted. High quality content embues trust. In my case, I can write well, it makes people trust me.

see this is the second take. on the first take, I got too far into an indulgent narrative. I always tell myself to get to the point of the narrative, which opens the door for information of value to come through.  I just need to build the steps, create a clear trail for my audience to follow.

They see a video or whatever and end up on the list,

but I really like the idea of burying the information of value into the narrative.

That’s where I see philosophy coming in, just like any narrative.

Setting/framing, plot/narrative, music, video, alternative content and media . . . conclusion, information, resolution in 500 words, far less than whats here. Snappy.

DRAFT CHAPTER ONE, TAKE 1

At 18 I’d probably read to many modern classics for my own good, my beatnik road movie only got me as far as a job packing kiwifruit on minimum wage, I stood there at the assembly line enduring the monotony in my mind, and once in a while in a tiny moment, I felt something that was about more than me just standing there doing some job.

Well I always got good marks in school but I didn’t do much that was smart after that, 5 years later I was still an idiot. I thought I could be a club promoter. I learnt to build sites in dreamweaver, a bit of SEO, adsense, but anyway, I was broke by then. But myspace changed everything. For the first year I just hung out.

Then I started to do this thing called Reality Compound and the timing was perfect, it was outrageous and took off amongst the local kids. Then I got one of those friend adder bots. Pretty soon I was doing pretty well.

]]> http://romantech.co.nz/blog/2010/03/romantechs-marketing-music-dnb-rc-newsletter/feed/ 0 http://romantech.co.nz/blog/2009/12/myspace-tiger-penis-a-bridge-too-far-for-romantech/ http://romantech.co.nz/blog/2009/12/myspace-tiger-penis-a-bridge-too-far-for-romantech/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:40:26 +0000 Matt Romantech http://romantech.co.nz/blog/?p=319

Oh man  I saw some twitter marketing thing on the news last night, how depressing.

What about the days of myspace when it was dangerous and sexy. Twitter is full of nerds. Dweebs. Squares.

I’m not into their marketing tip, even though it’s kind of my game in my business, I’m like, nah. Too many nerds, and they bring down my vibe, I’m serious.

I’m trying to elevate, trying to ascend, and I don’t want to know about all these nerdish dweebs and their vibe it’s not my buzz, it’s not what I want.

This girl says to me she saw my videos on youtube and I guess I’m like yeah sure, god.

Y’know, depressing, where did all the vibes go. Yeah okay, I realised it was not real enough. I couldn’t carry the game, so I had to regroup and prepare. And now I worry deep down that I’m past it and regret when some girl says she saw me that I never picked it up and took it all the way, and yet isnpt that ultimately the goal I’m reaching for?

My narrative, to take my camera in hand and paint a picture, and write a song that belong with it and it’s all a story that tells of how things were, are and can be?

mmm. That’s why I refined my character. That’s why my past as a myspace guy will be a part of my new character but not as defining.

But I reach for that old myspace buzz where people were paying attention, peoples behaviour hasn’t changed but the channel has changed, and I can’t find it, and I hope I haven’t changed, I don’t seem to have that crazy energy any more I wonder if I can find it when the red record light switches on.

And creatively I have been obsessed with bridging from myspace to what I’m doing now. Yes, the key plot is I have reinvented myself as this kind of business guy, and I just happen to be a DJ, this DJ Romantech who makes drum and bass.

But the call of myspace is too strong, amidst my crazy schemes to get rich and do my mad marketing the legacy of myspace calls me, I could be somebody, and I so desperately have a story to tell, and deep in my heart I long to rediscover all that was pure and innocent in a fantasy, in a girl, and that is a story.

All very dramatic isn’t it.

But yeah, the bridge. I think the bridge is an unacknowledged element, that as I push forward with my notoriety, deep down it nags my character that I don’t have the girl, and harking back to times past.

I am going to be heading back to kingsland to film my masterpiece! That’s what that space will be for, so what am I looking to develop in the new reality compound?

The kurb marketing buzz

The auckland pirate

The modelling agency

Girls

Short Circuit

And of course the myspace stuff which is the legend of the tiger penis.

What of the Tiger Penis. “Don’t talk to me about tiger penis.”

Speak not of the tiger’s penis and it’s terrible power! The tiger penis is the secret intriguing storyline, where I might pay tribute to Mr. Asia, of course it will become apparent that tiger penis is a code for something, but exactly what, no one knows.

Just that it’s uncertain, shady and lucrative, so you’re going to see me conflicted in my quest for the powder, which will sway from literal to metaphorical without explanation.

This will be the platform also to reintroduce myspace as myspace and tiger penis stories are tied in at the root, so the tiger penis will be associated with a better time where perhaps I wasn’t as wealthy but I was a cool myspace guy, and many different visions of the past call me back to better times, hopes for better things than simply becoming rich and powerful.

And the music tells these stories.

so lots of stuff, y’know girls, tiger penis, and some of the other stuff I planned, will depend on what’s available, but really I just need to set up my platform, the intro of a few episodes, the pilot episodes that tell the main story, so then I’m actually free to add random stuff, and only advance the storyline once a month if I need to.

But what is the main storyline? The saga of the tiger penis, girls, and my desperate need for recognition that initially will be revealed mainly through kurb business, but as I become more established on youtube, getting back into the celebrity baiting

Short Circuit and bridging over to that would be part of the next step too, i know once my platform of pilot episodes is established I can begin bridging over to that and bridging over to romantech stuff, but for romantech I might just add random videos of me djing and not even explain anything so it’s just basically this unexplored statement that I am a DJ.

Also the modelling agency would provide regular fodder, pretty girls in weird situations. I just need lots of regular stuff I do, different character sketches, so I can slip story in between it.

Graham is a sketch I can do, and also the older details of the quest for the tigers penis, trips to the butchers, asian marts, oh and of course the debt collecting I was gonna do.

We’ve got our characters, jailbait, sweatshop, Ian, Graham so again it’s kind of like . . . just focus on building the bridge, establishing that platform and then seeing where it feels comfortable going form there, I might decide to focus on the music side of it and just be really freestyle and abstract.