Kelly Kintner - Blog

Finally writing about writing

I wrote a song recently about writing. It is coming on The Kintners album due out Christmas, called “The Kintners – Brand Name Believers.” I explore in song my reasons for writing and encourage folks to do it too. It’s very important in my life. It’s almost like a religion, to me. I don’t “believe” anything on purpose. Writing routinely helps me suss that out. Writing is thinking on the record. Even if you forget, it is right there where you put it.

Forgetting is huge, by the way. Every login, password, glitch, update, ad, lures me away from thinking. I also wrote a Djembe Funk song lately, coming soon, that asks; “how do you ride a train of thought to the end of the line these days?” It really is difficult. I find a blank piece of paper or an offline word processor helps get me to the end of that line. That is where I need to be. I want to share the final stop in my songs. If I never get there, my songs are empty.

How do you get deep without digging?

Much like deep conversation, songs do not get deep unless I am deep into the thought of making them. Conversations rarely, if ever, start off deep. They build, dig. This is what makes me sad about folks who reject me for deep conversations. Don’t let the icebreakers I am terrible at fool you, I am there for cerebral, emotional, challenging. I just have to work up to it. That is not the norm. Most folks size me up before a song is over, or that length of time. I do not give a crap on my end. But I feel sad for folks who walk through life that way. You just don’t get deep without digging.

Google doesn’t help. I am guilty of using them too. But if anyone remembers, it was harder to find information not so long ago. You were on a train of thought until you found it. It was a quest to find what you were looking for. Now it is a search and instant answer on google. Are you going to understand that google as well as something that took a few days or weeks to learn? No. But we are allergic to staying on the train of thought. We have been trained to seek instant gratification instead of embarking on personal journeys for something to keep with us. We keep nothing. Blow and go. It makes for shallow conversations. It makes for shallow people.

Who benefits? …….(the Lenin version, Stalin can suck it.)

Why? Why all this shallowness? I know I keep saying it, but it is true from here. So I’ll say it again; it is so software developers can make more money. You have to look at who is profiting, here. Data and software are the top companies in the world, above oil. They have been for nearly a decade. That’s plenty of time to change the world if everyone has your device that tells them anything you want.

They have the tools, the talent, the budget.

It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out how to put you on a narrow grid of brand names, beliefs, income level, food preferences, etc.. It does take a data scientist. The software industry recognizes this. Why don’t the rest of us? They have data scientists with all of our data. If I was a big company, why wouldn’t I hire them to get my product moving, besides it being highly unethical? I have known plenty of business owners who find the law as like a green light/red light system. They seem to have no right and wrong sense of their own. Just “if it’s legal, let’s do it.” This is not a quality I look for in leadership, but obviously me and tons of Americans disagree.

It’s not just harvesting, it’s refining. Refining is $$

Data scientists spend on average 80 percent of their time refining and cleaning the data, (google :) ). That’s very important. Just like oil, which powered the industrial revolution, data requires refining to be worth what businesses pay for it. Unless you are a data scientist, you don’t know what to do with all the data collected. This puts a hinge in the process that pivots squarely on the backs of data contractors and data scientists. It might be hard to understand how they’re doing it. But it isn’t tough at all to see who is doing it. It’s them.

I know why you can’t think of lyrics like you used to. If you are like me, you know why too.

If you are like me and struggled for years at creative projects, I’d put down the phone and try it out. I am nearly a month without a cell phone. I write lyrics and play acoustic a lot more without it. Like I used to. That is more valuable to me than anything on profiles or a screen. I struggled with it for years. I shouldn’t have. A one month long test was all I needed. Don’t be like me. Experiment. It helps you think better.

There’s you and there’s the world. Finding a place doesn’t mean staying connected.

I have a lot of theories as to why this is. But we’re all different. I just think being connected to everyone in your brain is a lot like a drug. You probably think better after that illusion is shattered. It’s like a commercial in our heads 24/7. It is just you in there, after all.

Kintners Playlist Alert!!!

PS: I made a 25 song playlist on Subvert.fm of The Kintners stuff I like a lot. I listen to it. Just sharing if you’d like to check it out. Thanks.

Kelly Kintner – Producer, Songwriter

The Kintners, Djembe Funk (Subvert Links)

The hour later thought: Life is like the intro and safety rundown on a plane ride. They tell you to put your own mask on before saving someone. They do not tell you to punch them out and take their mask. I think a lot of folks hear the latter.