GRASSHOPPERISM #17 – “Find Your Audience, Find Your People”

Who do you write for?  Who do you perform for?  Who are you selling your product to?  Who do you call when you’re blue?  Who do you celebrate with?  When something truly remarkable happens, who do you text?  And when something really weird is happening, who do you want to share it with?

No matter what you do, who you are, whatever point you are in your life, your career, your art, your creation or your life, I believe that it’s important to know who your audience is and to be able to find your people.  Find Your Peeps. Find Your Audience.  And commit to them with loyalty, communication and love.  Above all Love.  And Love is not a dirty word.  It's that feeling of connecting with people on a level that is greater than yourself.

I’m here in the Mayan Riviera, and as this photo shows, I’m hanging out with my Dad.  Dad, being my dad, my father, my friend and once of the foundations for being a Grasshopper, is definitely one of my Peeps.  Here, in Paamul, I have many peeps.  Many people that share the same vision for how life can be lived.  Differently.  But not differently.

I was talking to some friends on the beach yesterday, and someone mentioned that here in Paamul it seems that people live counter-culturally.  I thought for a moment, and then said that maybe that’s only a perception.  Maybe the way people live here is only counter to what other people believe is normal.  To live outside the box requires a box.  And, I’ve never lived inside that box, so actually other people’s lives look counter culture to me.

'Counter-culture' is such a strange term.  Culture itself is, to me, humans interacting.  So, is it counter to normal to lay on a beach looking up at the birds for more than just a holiday?  Living among sea turtles?  Living outside under palapa roofs with the internet but without wearing underwear?  Or is that simply another way to live?  Another culture?  And there are so may cultures around the world.  What’s important to me, is to be able to relate to people, to culture.  To find your Peeps.

Without getting terribly philosophical – even though I already have – and I ain’t no philosophy professor – I merely have a simple Bachelor’s degree in Humanities & Global Studies – I’m going to attempt to explain how artistically finding your audience is like finding your People.  An audience is like a really large group of super awesome friends – people who understand you and want to GET you – and who you get to take along for the ride with your creations.

When I sit down to write anything - a song, a story, a Grasshopperism, piano pieces - I have an audience in mind.  It’s good to be both broad & universal and also specific and detailed with the audience you choose.  Music is one of the ways I use to connect with an audience, and here’s how that works for me in songwriting:

First you begin with the intro.  The introduction.  The opening credits appearing on the screen.  That’s usually a musical introduction.  A riff.

After you’ve established that the song has begun, then comes the first verse.  The verses are the story.  The verses are for me and my intimate audience.  Truly the people that will want to delve into the meaning of the song.  The narrative.  That is when I have a specific audience in mind, and the details of the song are directed at them.  

Once you’ve detailed the characters, set the scene, determined the feeling of the song, the tempo, the vibe, then, comes the chorus.  The choruses are for just that: the Chorus.  The group.  To sing along.  To celebrate or commiserate together.  That can be as universal as one word sung over and over like my song Shine or a whole song that feels like a chorus such as Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road.  A broad musical landscape that makes people feel a certain way.  Like a grand group of Muppets on The Muppet Show (the original 1970's version) coming in with Bernadette Peters​ when she sings Believe In You to Robin, Kermit the Frog​'s nephew.  (If you watch this, try not to cry with great, effervescent joy.)

The chorus is generally followed by a 2nd verse.  The 2nd verse is where you can elaborate on the story.  Get the characters in trouble, show a little emotion, get a little angrier, show off other elements of your hero or heroine.  And that is then followed by that chorus.  Always coming back to that chorus to remind people what this song is about.

When the bridge comes, that’s usually where I can to go wildly and freely to what I like to think of as the complication is the story, the conflict building, the murder, the first kiss, the jump off the bridge and the freeing of chains.

Following that, you might have a solo, or series of solos, a musical introduction to the next scene.  There are also pre-choruses, interludes, and changes to time, feel, tempo, key, and infinite numbers of elements that can be thrown in.  But when you combine together these elements, you generally have some format, a form.  Something to follow or to just throw out all together.

Verse 1 followed by a chorus, then Verse 2 with another chorus, the bridge and then maybe a solo, maybe a 3rd verse and finally a resounding or sad or simple or Ewok​-celebrating-in-the-forest-on-the-Endor-Moon chorus.  Many times a double chorus to hammer the point home, and always leave people wanting more.

Finally, and occasionally, an outro, a fine to end.  The credits rolling.  And maybe trailing off with a fade.

This is merely a song and a song form.  But the point is that this song form caters to a specific audience.  An audience that is familiar with 20th & 21st century modern, Western popular music.  Popular music is anything that a lot of people like.  It’s not just our modern view of Pop music.  Pop just refers to what's popular.   Popular music has ranged over the last one hundred years to encompass Blues, Swing, Jazz, Barbershop, Ragtime, Rhythm & Blues, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Acid Rock, Country, Trip Hop, Euro Pop, Hip Hop, Metal, Neu Metal…I won’t continue because the genres get so broad and also so infinitely small.  The point is that this format is one that artists from Cole Porter​ to Louis Armstrong​, Buddy Holly​ to The Beatles​, CeeLo Green​ to Lorde​ have used to get YOU to listen.  To be their audience.  Adele​.  Well, she’s got this format all over everything she does.  And, Adele is awesome.  (And quite sexy, too.)  

That’s the form and so that’s what I write to.  But not all audiences will enjoy this form of style.  Jazz and classical and avant garde audiences prefer different forms.  So, if I were to write for them, I’d change my own format to find that audience.

The strange thing about this to me, is that this idea not only applies to music & songwriting.  It applies to all art forms.  Form to reach an audience is intrinsic to dance, film, writing.  And, I believe then that form also applies to one’s cuisine and taste for food.  The recipe.  The chef’s style.  The grape grower and the wine maker’s format for making good wine.  The creation of chocolate and coffee, too.  So, then, it must definitely apply to all products.  The creation of products all require in inventor that can choose to use an existing form and bend it just a little, or the inventor can throw out previous forms and invent by not inventing what has been done in the past.  No matter what, they must build on or against something.  And the audience plays a giant role is what is created.  

Any creation has an audience.  But even further, each of us, in our great uniqueness as individuals, reach out to find our own audiences as people.  Those who make us feel even more ourselves.  To me, finding your people, is like finding your audience.  Finding your peeps is not just to find friendship, it is to find belonging, home, community, at times, survival itself.  Certainly Minnesotans need their peeps to get through the Hoth-like winters.  And Paamulians have survived hurricanes, fires, explosions, dengue fever, all with the help of their Peeps.  Buddhists might call this your sangha.  Corporations might call this your team.  

My peeps are everywhere.  All around the world.  There are not in one place.  They are everywhere.  My peeps know me to my core – or at least close to the core.  I don’t need to have to have to perform for them or prove anything to them.  They accept me fully - and when they don’t like what I’m up to, they support my change & evolution & reinvention.  Peeps - your people - are not necessarily who you grew up with, but they can be.  There are not where you live, but can be.  They are not who you work with or who you play music with, who you write with or protest with or politicize with, but, of course, they can be and hopefully some of your People are those people who you share those common experiences.  Peeps “reach across the aisle” to be beyond-friendship to me.  Someone that understands you and makes you feel understood.

Life can be a lonely place.  And, friendship, family, lovers and partners can sometimes make you feel even lonelier.  It is the disconnection from the ones we love that can that drive you into a dark and lonely place.  But your Peeps - they can see you in it and just let you be.  They don’t judge.  And sometimes they say, “Get the fuck up, you jack ass.”  Or, “Wow, dude, when’s the last time you went surfing?”.  Occasionally, they might just say, “It’s cool.  It’s all good.  I forgive you.”  Or simply, “You know what?  I love you.”

For people who create – which to me is all of us – our audiences are the ones who want to watch us, want to listen to us, want to feel what we make, want to dive into our creations.  I don’t have children, but I imagine that love bond is quite deep and there is risk in letting your children do new things and great pride when they do something extraordinary.  It may seem strange to some people, but that is how I feel about my songs, my performances, my records, my writings, my work as a Media & Artistic Consultant and the inspiration that my Grasshopperisms inspire.  If you’re reading, you are my audience.  And that also makes you one of my peeps in a way.  We are connecting right now because I have written these words and you are reading them.

I try to connect all the time.  I’m constantly looking for new people, for their stories, for where they came from and why they came from there and where they’re going and why.  In a plane, at a gas station, in line at the grocery store.   Some people think I’m flirting – and trust me, I might be sometimes – but really I am just trying to connect in a world that seems disconnected from itself at times.  The more places I go, they easier it is to start up a conversation with random people.

How does this relate to Finding My Audience and Finding My Peeps?  Because by learning about other people, their worlds, their cultures, their history and politics, why they vote the way they do, what their human experience is, it gives me more perspective and reference to relate to them.  To be able write a better song, find another passion project to help produce, write a better story.

Sometimes, I think it shocks people that I even have some of the friends I do or have dated some of the people I’ve dated.  I fell in love with a Cop in 2014.  That was really weird for people.  I have not been a cop-friendly person, and the cops have not always been friendly to me.  But, I recognized, this was my own bigotry against a certain group of people and I wanted to develop empathy for people I knew nothing about.  The relationship didn’t work out.  We’re not getting married.  We’re not riding off into the sunset.  But I did learn.  A lot.  I grew to have empathy for a group of people I originally didn’t like.  I still have issues with the U.S. police and I feel that they need to examine their levels of violence and fatal shootings and racism, but I did learn.  And, my empathy grew.  My peeps grew.

Learning is what I think so much of this life is about.  Learning is how I became and become a songwriter, a musician, a storyteller.  A traveler.  A survivor.  A meditator.  Shit, a Surfer.  There definitely weren’t any waves nearby in rural Minnesota where I grew up.  You couldn’t surf down the roof of the giant tin barn in my front yard.  I learned.  I wanted to learn.

Do you think that life is about learning?  About you becoming better?  About becoming a larger person?  About doing things greater than yourself?  Maybe you do.  Maybe you don’t.  If you believe and say “Yes” to these questions, then you’re on the road to being one of my Peeps.  If you say “No” to some of those questions, it doesn’t mean that we aren’t on a similar path, we just might be riding a different trail to get there.

The road trip is a very American idea.  Jack Kerouac​ writing “On The Road” is an American classic that generated an American ideal.  Taking the Oregon Trail.  Lewis & Clark.  Big Sky Country.  To me, that is how I think in many ways.  There is always another road to travel, another stage to perform upon, another word to write, another thought to think and another place to sit and meditate and travel to in your mind.  Going to the depths of the ocean of your mind.  This road trip is very symbolically life to me.  The search to find your People, your audience, connecting effortlessness along the way, and then the lonely road in between each person that is so meaningful.  Those long or short stretches of isolation mean more when we find the next Peep along the highway.  Pick up the next Hitchhiker or get picked up when you throw out your thumb on the roadside.

10 days with one person can mean more than 10 years with someone.  Performing to one person in an audience can mean more that reaching out to thousands.  The artist, the inventor, the leader, the creator, the human being, we want to connect.  We want to show off.  We want applause.  We want sales of our product.  We want to be legitimized by our success.  But that want, that part of us, is it real?  Is it necessary?  Can we connect in other ways?  Find our community?  Sex?  Union between two people.  Union on the football pitch?  Union in a sales force?  Teams and partnerships and businesses and crowds and throngs of people pushing and touching.  And then, we stop.  And are we totally isolated now in our over-connectedness?

That’s why I’m writing this.  To remind You, the Reader, that we are connecting right now.  And, I’m fully aware of that.  I’m fully aware of you, the Reader, and I am madly and fiercely typing on this laptop.  It began while seated on a plane to Mexico, and it’s being edited while I sit listening to the January breeze blow through the guano leaves carrying small droplets of sub-tropical moisture.  Maybe not for legitimacy.  Maybe not for appreciation.  But for simple metaphysically, artistically created connection.  And to remind you to do the same.  To reach out.  And then, beyond that, to want to be valued for the creations we make.  In this case, this connection with You is the value I want.  Then, beyond that, I want to be valued through all the ways possible: Karma, Positivity, Love, Promotion, Travel, Money, Gratitude, Inspiration and Inspiring others and the realization that those lonely moments are an essential part of wanting to reach out.  

Driving us forward to create.  To paint on cave walls, to start revolutions, to roll down the faces of epic waves, to make the fucking best greeting card ever, to bow the deepest bow ever in front of an audience of millions, or just one, You, reading.  A person.  One of my people.  The audience.  You.  One.  Interconnected with me.  Like we just breathlessness had wild sex, went on a 3-week road trip, meditated together, shared a party wave, played on stage to no one or everyone, the most beautiful and ugly audience in the world, You and me.  Let’s take a bow.

Please share.