For those of you whose curiosity
led you to the "Recordings" part of 4tvs.com, you
probably wondered what the hell "Palaur" is. This
recording has been in the works for over 2 years and
will be released in a way that no other artist has
ever released material.
For nearly 2 years I struggled
with how to "rid myself" of this part of my life. For
many songwriters, "ridding" yourself is simply
recording your feelings. When you cannot, it's
difficult to move past them. Music has definitely
become that for me. Once I finish a song, I can put
the subject matter behind me and undertake another
challenge. Palaur has always been different
though.
For 9 1/2 weeks in early 1998, I
went through the most emotionally draining roller
coaster of my whole life. After having just gone
through an incredibly depressing divorce just 5 months
previous, I became engulfed in a situation that took
my entire being and destroyed it. Women can certainly
do that to you. My "follow your heart" mantra for life
cost me my sanity, my job, nearly my career and almost
my life. I am not being overdramatic here. Knowing I
had 30 hours until I could see this person again, I
took quite a few sleeping pills so I wouldn't have to
be awake without her. At one point I must've stared at
the bottle for 10 minutes, wondering "what if". I have
never told anyone of these days. They changed my life
forever.
What makes all of this so unique,
was the way this period was documented. The diary I
kept was detailed to each waking moment so vividly, it
is difficult for me to reread them. Included in the
diary are nearly 30 different Instant Message
conversations between us that were simply cut and
pasted from the computer to the journal with
absolutely no editing. Our situation was such that we
had to rely on this as our only form of communication
sometimes. Imagine a scripted story, unscripted.
Hearing exactly what each person felt and said,
unbiased. Unlike letters which are one-sided, Instant
Messages provide a dialogue in real-time. Why I had
the wherewithall to save these is beyond me. Maybe I
knew this day would come.
As well as the written accounts
through the journal, IM's and E-Mails, there was the
music that was written that was some of the most
passionate songwriting I have ever accomplished. Not
only audio of this music, but video of me singing and
creating it. Add to that actual video of us, pictures,
and even audio of my talk show that she was on many
times...you have an amazing collection of multimedia
that adds to an incredible true story. A story I could
never have gotten across through simply a CD, a book,
even a movie...it requires a medium that allows the
audience to interract with it, and use all of their
senses on THEIR time. You can listen, watch, and read
at YOUR pace. That my friends, is the
internet.
Starting May 1st, 2000 I will
introduce Palaur.com. I hope I can pave the way for
other artists to release material in this manner. Sure
video clips, and mp3's are nothing new...but to
incorporate them into a story that you have to follow,
well that's exciting. And that's how this will work.
You won't be able to just download all the goodies and
read the journal if you'd LIKE. The pictures, video
clips, and mp3's are linked within the journal, so you
have to find them as the story unfolds. Once you've
gone through EVERYTHING, there will be a final page
that allows you to access all the multimedia available
on one page. You will not be able to skip ahead here
either. It will hopefully be an experience that takes
some time. And my favorite of all the goodies on this
site is at the bottom of each entry: "Send Reaction"
& "Read Reaction". Everyone will be able to click
on a button, jot down some feelings about that entry
and move on. In time the reaction pages will be much
more intriguing than the story itself. This is what I
will really make this site special. I've always been a
fan of having the audience interract as much as
possible.
It does of course raise the
question of how I will monetarily support this. It's
about 10 times the work of putting a CD together and
there's nothing tangible to sell. Well right now i'm
looing into a way to charge maybe $3 or $4 for access.
I figure with over 30 minutes of video, 12 new songs
and all the other goodies, that that's a fair price. I
know everyone's insecure about credit cards on the
net, but I'm at a loss for any other way. I guess I
could have you actually MAIL me a check for a
password. How WEAK is that though? Any suggestions for
solving this problem will be highly
appreciated.
So now you understnad why it's
been 6 WHOLE days since my last entry. Y'all thought I
was DEAD or something.
Honestly, I hadn't the
slightest idea what the hell to give you guys
for a video, so I was waitin' for something
cool. And something definitely came up. Heh
heh. My video compression program only allows
me to make 1 minute MPGs because it's for
email. For Palaur.com, I'm gonna need it to
be a little bit longer. So I've been trying
to compress old footage through different
programs to see what I can do, and I turned
myself into Maxx Headroom. It was pretty
cool. The audio doesn't sound like Headroom,
but the video is perfectly DEAD-ON. That or
it's a killer Katharine Hepburn
impersonation...you decide. This is a little
clip from "Ordinary Joe" now starring Adam
Headroom. Hope you enjoy it. CLICK
ME.
YouTube
link added
02.13.09
As far as 4tvs are concerened,
it's been a nother long week of driving and calling.
At this point there's a million maybes, so hopefully
next week some stuff will pop-up.
Oh, and please write
back on your feelings about Palaur.com, I really am
awaiting your reaction on this one...