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In this episode, Carl King analyzes his Creative Busyness in 2022. Will he be ALLOWED to CREATE in 2023? Only the World Bureau For The Measurement of Creative Busyness (And Also Random Length Lumber) knows.
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OPENING CREDITS
I’m Carl King, and this is The Carl King Podcast, where EVERY WEEK, we learn about music, filmmaking, and the other creative arts. To support this podcast, head over to Patreon.com/carlking, and join for just $1 or $5 per month. Or send a tip through PayPal or Venmo to username CarlKingdom. Special thank you to my Illusionist $51 level patrons, both Hank Howard III and Chewbode. Kay-bo-wech.
Quick shout-out to my music endorsements: Vienna Symphonic Library, Fractal Audio, Ernie Ball Strings, Toontrack, and Millennia Media.
Now let’s get this episode Beginned!
SHOW NOTES / LINKS
Traveler Insurance Companies / Triumph of Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeSS3SILD9Q
Get Pearl on BluRay
https://geni.us/avLUKbn
Get Barbarian on BluRay
https://geni.us/GxaNrM
Get Crimes of the Future on BluRay
https://geni.us/FkxHF
Get X on BluRay
https://geni.us/Gr0Ca
Get Big Trouble In Little China on BluRay
https://geni.us/vl7scf
Conlon Nancarrow Study #37
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0gNoELvpPo
Best Of Five / Tetris Documentary Series
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/best-of-five-the-classic-tetris-champions
Sir Millard Mulch / 50 Intellectually Stimulating Themes
https://carlking.bandcamp.com/album/50-intellectually-stimulating-themes-from-a-cheap-amusement-park-for-robots-aliens-vol-1
Sir Millard Mulch / Nice, Nice, Very Nice…
https://carlking.bandcamp.com/album/nice-nice-very-nice
Carl King / Friday (Rebecca Black Cover)
https://carlking.bandcamp.com/track/friday-rebecca-black-cover
Carl King Question and Answer on Cal Newport’s Deep Questions
https://youtu.be/5j411q6I_WM?t=297
3 Hour Twitch Interview by Mike Stone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtFO9XaW5Z0
Mark Borchardt’s Advice For ALL Creative People
https://youtu.be/6Whhg-OCnU0
The Wisdom of Mark Borchardt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI5Uis4D-58
Help Ukraine / Dan Foster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7uXIxra9DQ
CARL KING THE HUMAN UPDATE
Very Good Friends of Carl King. Today’s episode is a very special episode about my Creative Busyness in 2022. But before that, to make sure everyone is feeling their best, let’s start with some thoughts on seasonal depression.
BEATING SEASONAL DEPRESSION
Some of you may know I have battled depression throughout my life. It comes and goes in cycles. Sometimes it’s related to a creative project not succeeding, or feeling that no one likes me, and sometimes it seems to be SEASONALLY-related. It can get really bad and give me a super negative outlook on life. I started to feel it setting in a couple of months ago, as winter began, and THIS TIME, I fought it off. The two most important things have been:
1 – Staying physically active. Depression has a low energy effect. That low energy and low activity is like an exponential spiral. It makes me want to stay on the couch and sleep random hours, take long naps. Which lowers my energy even more. The remedy has been forcing myself to wake up early — aiming for 6am but sometimes later. I fight that depressive resistance by simply moving my body.
It’s an exercise of willpower (even though I don’t believe in freewill.) I try to go on a couple of walks every day, about a mile or a mile and a half each, at sunrise and sunset. As a last resort, if my schedule gets messed up, I’ll even go after dark. Doesn’t even matter WHERE I walk. I’ll even just go back and forth on my street for 30 minutes if that’s what it takes.
2 – Intermittent fasting. I do believe I have an eating addiction, for real. Food IS the one thing in my life I will use as a drug to TRY to fight anxiety. If I have a ton of video production work and don’t want to do it, I’ll feast on a ton of carbs. Burritos, cookies, pretzels. To the point of feeling sick.
It becomes FAR worse as winter sets in, which I’m guessing is some sort of evolutionary thing. So I’ve recently taken on this whole Intermittent Fasting practice, and for me that means eating only one normal meal a day at lunch time. Around 1pm.
And then I try not to eat anything again until the next day at 1pm. The one exception is a very small nutritional mixture of Athletic Greens, hemp protein, and wheat grass powder which is only a total of 150 calories. It’s very light, and it seems to get me through those 23 hours.
Intermittent fasting has done two things: 1 – it’s kept me from getting into that cycle of severely spiking my blood sugar which causes food fog and sleepiness after eating a massive amount of carbs. And then getting even more hungry as my blood sugar crashes, continuing the roller coaster of overeating. I had previously been eating BIG MEALS 4 or 5 times a day.
And 2 – Simply being hungry and having to deal with or accept it is ANOTHER workout for my willpower. If you can overcome hunger, you can overcome a lot of other things.
If I were to give into those urges, lie around on the couch and eat burritos all day, that’s exactly what sends me into the depression. Beating that this year has been a major accomplishment.
And as a bonus, in the past 2 months of this, I have lost 10 pounds of non-desirable fat from random parts of my body.
PODCAST
So let’s dig into today’s VERY IMPORTANT episode.
As I’m sure all of you know, each year, independent musicians, filmmaker, writers, and so on, are required to meet certain standards of output. Now these standards are established by an entity known as the World Bureau For The Measurement of Creative Busyness (and also Random Length Lumber).
According to Wikipedia, the current bureau took over in 1977, after an international incident forced the Bavarian Illuminati to relinquish control of the markets for both creativity… and Random Length Lumber.
According to The Rules, I need to earn enough annual Creative Busyness Units (CBUs) for my account to remain in Good Standing. I definitely don’t want to be in Bad Standing. Because if my membership were to become into Bad Standing, I would not be allowed to be creative anymore. It’s sort of like a FICO score for creative people.
Now each project an artist completes and releases receives a certain number of those Creative Busyness Units. And for the year 2022, I need to reach 661 points, minimum, to remain in Good Standing. Highest possible is 941, which would be a perfect score.
The only entity to have ever reached a perfect score was the Travelers Insurance Companies of Hartford Connecticut, who issued a red 7-inch record for the 1964 World’s Fair called The Triumph of Man.
Traveler Insurance Companies / Triumph of Man
ANYWAY today, I’m going to go through all my projects from 2022, add up all my Creative Busyness Units, and see if I will be allowed to be creative in 2023.
So let’s start with the progress of this podcast. According to the rules, the Audio AND the YouTube versions count as a single project. But before we calculate the number of Creative Busyness Units, let’s go over all the details about The Carl King Podcast.
To go back June or July, I re-started this podcast for two reasons.
1 – It was a way to directly keep in touch with my audience. Like, hey, everybody, I’m still here and making things. Otherwise, it feels quite isolated, and I enjoy some level of interactivity.
2 – To generate financial support for my creative projects.
3 – But there is a third benefit, and this wasn’t intentional: doing this show every week keeps me on a pretty strict schedule of thinking and writing. As Monday approaches, I’m forced to come up with content. And while sometimes it’s stressful, it’s been a positive challenge.
So here’s an overview of what I did. Every week, since July 7, I’ve put out a new episode. They get published every Tuesday at 4am pacific. Unless something bad happens, then they’re a few days late, like today’s. Anyway, this is my 26th episode since July 7.
And since my two main art forms are filmmaking and music, often combined, it was an easy choice to do film and music reviews. With the occasional motivational essay.
If you listen to some of the older episodes like maybe episode 18 or 19, you’ll hear how freeform they were. That’s because I was improvising based on a rough outline. Which meant lots of starting and stopping, thinking of what I was going to say next. But there was something that bugged me about that.
To stand out from most podcasts out there, I would rather share fully-formed thoughts. If I review a movie, I want to take the time to process it. What did I learn from it, and what can I SHARE with filmmakers? Not just that typical “It was good because I liked it because it was good because I liked it because it was good.” Way too many podcasts are opinion-based. So If I give my opinion, I want it to be clearly marked — and separate from objective measurements.
In those earlier episodes, you’ll hear statements like: “This movie was CRAZY” And not knowing what else to say. To me, that sort of commentary is worthless. WHY was it crazy? Dig deeper. Get technical. Was it the writing, was it the camera motion, was it the editing? Tell us why this detail or character or dialogue or plot deserves attention.
So, I reviewed somewhere around, I’m guessing 35 movies in that style. Sometimes 2 or 3 a week. Some of my favorites films this year were X and Pearl, from Mia Goth and Ti West. And also Barbarian, by Zach Cregger. Those 3 films excited me and it seems to me that style of horror is where powerful craftsmanship is happening.
Extreme twists, hard contrasts in structure, and plain old surreal fun. There was also Crimes of the Future from Cronenberg, which I loved. And my rewatch of Big Trouble In Little China gets an honorable mention as a colorful, silly movie. So if I had to name my top 5 films I saw this year, they would be, possibly in this order:
Pearl
Barbarian
Crimes of the Future
X
Big Trouble In Little China
I also wanted to depart from and de-emphasize the typical podcast Interview format. And this is because, honestly, I’m worn out on giving everyone else the spotlight. That might sound selfish, or self-centered, but I’ll explain.
I’ve spent a major portion of my creative energy supporting other people’s projects. Helping other people make movies. Promoting everyone else’s ideas. Being the technical guy in the background. Maybe Part of that was fear of taking responsibility, or fear of my own ideas being unworthy.
And I decided, you know what, I’m going to put Carl King up front as much as I can from now on. And it’s not because I’m, at the core, seeking praise or fame. It’s because I believe it’s a good long-term investment.
If creative work is like farming, then I have been an excellent farmer — but working on farms that are not owned by me. So whatever I produce, the owners put their names on it and sell it. And I’ve been paid well for my work.
But after a lot of years farming, you realize it’s maybe not the best deal, because the owners can decide to sell the farm, or shut it down at any moment, and you stop getting paid. Because hey, you don’t own it.
So this podcast is an investment in building my OWN farm in the meantime. And putting some of the spotlight on me, Farmer Carl.
At first, I felt like, maybe it’s egotistical. Why should *I* be in the spotlight? Why me? Well, why NOT me? So here I am.
But I DID want to make room for the occasional interview episode. So I did release FOUR this year. Two of them were lost episodes from years ago: Virtuoso pianist Lalle Larsson and 7-string guitarist Pete Peterson. And two NEW episodes: Tim Smolens of Estradasphere and Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle.
And I also cleaned up and re-released the very FIRST episode of the Carl King Podcast with my favorite musician in the world, Steve Vai. Which got posted on the home page of Guitar World’s website.
As far as segments of the show, I did some Musical Album or Song of the Week type reviews, and I alternated between film scores and complicated rock music. Some of my favorite artists like Steve Vai, Victims Family, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and some of my favorite film scores like Star Trek by Fred Steiner.
Thanks to my interview with Lalle Larsson, the most exciting music I was turned on to in 2022 was an American-Mexican composer named Conlon Nancarrow.
You know those self-playing pianos you see in airports or malls? Well, they used to be in bars, controlled by a big roll of paper with holes punched in it. Conlon Nancarrow thought, oooooo. What if? And he hacked player pianos to perform impossible mathematical ratios based on frequencies and overtones.
Anyway, his music is something all composer types should be AT LEAST aware of. And if you’re a fan of wild, noisy, mechanical, polyrhythmic piano shredding, definitely look into it. I’ll put a link in the show notes.
Conlon Nancarrow Study #37
By the way, I added up all of the content of the Carl King Podcast this year, and it’s approximately 20 hours. So if you want to listen to me talk for almost a whole day straight, here’s your chance.
Now I want to talk about the growth of the show, in terms of listeners. It has been a SLOW — PAINFULLY SLOW process. I have definitely had my moments of “why the F am I even doing this if no one is listening to it?” But in all honesty, it IS growing. Little by little.
On Apple Podcasts, I gained 43 followers in these 6 months.
On Spotify, that number is bigger: I gained 64.
As far as other audio-only platforms, I don’t know how many followers I have. But I have passed 4,000 total all-time IAB downloads.
The most popular episodes have been:
Episode 14: Trey Spruance with 477 plays
Episode 34: Trevor Dunn with 300 plays
Episode 24: Tim Smolens with 209 plays
The least listened to episode this year was Episode 8 with Gregg Bissonette. With 15 plays. Folks. Fooolks. I have found it VERY hard to predict AT ALL which episodes will get attention.
So what do stats really tell us? We don’t know yet.
YOUTUBE
Now, let’s talk about the YOUTUBE portion of the Carl King Podcast. In comparison to the 43 followers I gained on Apple, and the 64 I gained on Spotify… I gained 208 on YouTube. For math nerds, that’s 5 TIMES what I gained on Apple Podcasts.
My 5 most popular videos this year, in ascending order are:
Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle – 1461 views
Mark Borchardt Creative Advice – 1778 views
Steve Vai – 1859 views
And Urgent Message From Mark Borchardt – 2276 views
And here’s the biggest:
How Did Mr, Bungle Write Their Music? 5,000+ views
Now this is far from the millions of views some people get, but it is DEFINITE progress, and I’m pleased with it. Especially with most of these videos being audio only. At this rate, my YouTube channel should be qualifying for monetization sometime in the next 2-3 months.
OK, so let’s go ahead and calculate how many Creative Busyness units I get here… (PUSH BUTTON). ONE? Says here “Podcasts are always worth one total point, no matter how many episodes or how popular it is. Podcasts are stupid.” Well… had I known that… We’re not off to a good start, are we?
PATREON
Well, let’s talk about Patreon Growth! If you aren’t aware, Patreon is an easy way for you to support artists, musicians, and podcasters with monthly subscriptions. It is the main source of my creative income.
Went from $46 in January to $186 in December.
Members went from 13 in January to 27 in December. So membership has DOUBLED in a year. And I THINK most of that is due to the podcast.
Everything combined, from all of my own Carl Kingdom Creative Projects, I’m bringing in around $200 a month. Of course, I am still SPENDING more than that. On things like music software and web hosting, and whatever gear upgrades I need. So I’m hoping that this next year, that income will continue to increase and maybe even cover my costs.
Let’s go ahead and enter the numbers… BEEP! Hey! 200 Creative Busyness Units awarded for that. Nice! Says here it’s based on Patreon membership percentage growth. 200%. I’m not sure the math is correct on that, but I’m not going to argue. OK, so I’m at 201 Creative Busyness Units so far. Pretty good!
BEST OF FIVE – TETRIS DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Moving on to Best of Five: The Classic Tetris Champions. Some of you may know I am involved in a 5-episode documentary series, about the classic Nintendo game called Tetris.
Director Chris Higgins hired me to help him co-write, edit, and score the music. And so far I have rough-scored around 20 scenes. I think it was something like 80 minutes of material? I’ve posted a lot of rough demos inside my Patreon.
We are NEARING the completion of Episode 1. I have a rough score in place and Higgins is making more adjustments before locking the timing so I can do the final score. I don’t know exactly when these will be released, but sometime this next year.
So let’s see. BEEP. Hey, another 274 Creative Busyness Units, now up to… 475! Explanation says: 1 Creative Busyness Unit awarded per cup of coffee you consume… that is full of cockroaches. 🙁
ANIMATED SHOWS
OK, moving on to my animated shows. This year I wrote, recorded, and rough-scored my new animated pilot, Dragontooth Inn. It’s a half-hour show that’s a cross between Game of Thrones and Cheers. It’s a small ensemble of characters set in a single medieval location, and stars Dan Foster and Stephanie Southerland.
And that project is JUST ABOUT to enter the phase of animatics, while I work on the rest of the orchestration. I look forward to releasing it publicly in the coming months. And you can read the full script and hear the demos inside my Patreon.
While I was on a roll with the screenwriting, I also knocked out a sort of REBOOT / PREQUEL to That Monster Show. Explaining how the monsters came to be in Florida. And of course, the rough draft is available as a PDF in my Patreon.
And in other That Monster Show news, I signed a deal with a producer in May this year to try to sell it to networks. Have not heard any news, but the deal expires again in May. So if any producers, managers, or agents out there are interested in any of my animated projects, let me know.
OK, so writing TWO half-hour pilots is an extreme amount of Creative Busyness, so let’s see what… BOOP. SEVENTEEN? Seventeen points? Yep, says here that any amount of screenwriting, minimum of one word, is worth 17 points total.
Now I’m at 492.
WRITING COMPETITIONS
Well, I’m not too worried. Because this next one has to be worth a lot. Related to all that animation writing…I entered a bunch of writing competitions, I can’t remember how many total… but:
Dragontooth Inn was a Quarterfinalist in 3 different competitions:
Quarterfinalist, The Script Lab – TSL Free Screenplay Contest 2022
Quarterfinalist, Stage 32 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Screenwriting Contest 2022
Quarterfinalist, ScreenCraft Animation Competition 2022
And a Second Rounder in:
Second Rounder, Launch Pad Pilot Competition 9th Annual
That Monster Show Reboot was also a Quarterfinalist, Stage 32 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Screenwriting Contest 2022.So that’s 5 total “accolades” as they are called.
Let’s see what we get for this. BEEP. 102? Who makes up these numbers? Writing the scripts gets me only 17 but entering writing competitions gets me 102? That gets me up to 594 Creative Busyness Units. Eh, I’m most of the way there anyway.
BOOKS
I also wrote a new BOOK this year, called Robots & Aliens: Deep Liner Notes 1996-1999. It’s about 125 pages and it tells the story of recording my first Sir Millard Mulch CD in Florida. It’s got tons of original transcriptions, photos, and commentary on every song. Edited by my friend Chris Higgins. And that book is available ONLY to my Patreon members.
Let’s see the total… BEEP. 125 Creative Busyness Units. 1 Unit awarded for each page. Huh! That puts me over the number I need! I’m now at 719 Creative Busyness Units. Folks, FOOOLKS, I might just be on my way to a perfect score of 941, if this keeps up. Look out, Travelers Insurance Companies of Hartford, Connecticut.
MUSIC RE-RELEASES
Moving on to some of my music RE-releases this year: I remastered the first Sir Millard Mulch CD, 50 Intellectually Stimulating Themes From A Cheap Amusement Park For Robots & Aliens, Vol. 1. That one goes back to 1998.
As well as the first Sir Millard Mulch cassette from 1995 called Nice, Nice, Very Nice. Both of those are on Bandcamp and available to Patreon members.
AND while I was at it, I posted an audiobook called “How To Sell A F#@!ing Audiobook” which I recorded in 2004. It’s a collection of excerpts from the How To Sell The Whole F#@!ing Universe To Everybody BOOK. And that one is another Patreon exclusive.
Let’s run the numbers for the 50 Intellectually re-release. BEEP. Only 49. Huh. It says here approximately one point per song written in the key of C major. PS you should have listened to your music theory professor. Okay, whatever. These are all bonus points anyway.
OK, I’m at 768. Let’s enter the the Nice Nice Very Nice Re-Release. BOOP. FOUR? Let’s see… One Creative Busyness Unit determined by the width of the original physical medium, rounded down to the nearest inch. Ah, Cassette J-cards are 4 inches wide. I should have done a vinyl.
Now we’re at 772. And the How To Sell Audiobook. BOOP. Zero Points. No explanation here, it’s just giving me zero Creative Busyness Units. That’s OK. No one listened to it anyway.
MUSIC RECORDING
Now as far as recording music: I DID record 3 news Songs in 2022. There was: I Hate This Song, BigHand Bastard, and Friday (which is a cover of the Rebecca Black song).
You can hear the Friday cover on all streaming platforms, but I Hate This Song and Bighand Bastard are Patreon Only.
So let’s enter these in, Total Songs Recorded: 3. BAD BOOP!
WHAT! I lost 708 Creative Busyness Units? Oh no. It says here that 236 will either be rewarded or subtracted depending on whether the singer makes non-lyrical genre-appropriate mouth sounds, which may include whoops or heys. I’m down to… 64? (Put head down.)
STEVE VAI AUCTION
But you know what? I can recover from this. Just last month, in November, Steve Vai held a gigantic auction of his possessions. Guitars, amps, personal relics going back to his childhood. Well, I am now the owner of hundreds of pages of original, handwritten personal documents created by Steve Vai himself.
It is unbelievable to me, what I was able to get. I plan to spend some time organizing and scanning it. It’s my intention to make a mini-documentary or video podcast episode about it in the coming months.
Alright, this one is going to be BIG. I know I didn’t officially COMPLETE the project yet, but it’s got to count for something. BEEP. 12. 12 Creative Busyness Units. Says here 1 will be awarded for each time you find a way to mention Steve Vai in casual conversation per day. I would think that number would be a lot higher.
OTHER PODCAST APPEARANCES
Oh well. Leaves me with a score of 76. Let’s move on to OTHER APPEARANCES. Here’s something kind cool. My favorite podcast is called Deep Questions with Cal Newport. And Cal actually answered one of my questions about social media and algorithms. You can find it 5 minutes into episode 195.
Carl King Question and Answer on Cal Newport’s Deep Questions
Well that’s a pretty big podcast, so it should be worth a lot… BEEP. 4. FOUR? Just four? Getting mentioned on your favorite podcast is only FOUR Creative Busyness Units? Cal Newport is the guru of Creative Busyness. That’s what his whole show is about. Oh well, it’s more than I got for 6 months of work on my own podcast.
At this point I’m only at 80 Creative Busyness Units. Which means I might not be allowed to be creative next year. I guess I might just take a year off and, I don’t know, learn more about Random Length Lumber. I was also the guest on the Twitch channel of drummer Mike Stone, where we talked creativity, music, and filmmaking for 3 hours.
3 Hour Twitch Interview by Mike Stone
Let’s see how many Creative Busyness Units I get for that… 209? Wow. That’s like 50 times what I got from The Cal Newport podcast. Says here, based on the percentage of color correction and aspect ratio stretching required during post production. Which seems fair? So where are we… 289. Working my way back up.
OTHER VIDEOS PRODUCED
So let’s look at some OTHER VIDEOS I PRODUCED this year.
Back in 2014, I shot an interview with Mark Borchardt. I dug it up and was blown away by how good it was. I released two versions: a short version called “Mark Borchardt’s Advice For ALL Creative People” and the full-length, nearly hour-long “The Wisdom of Mark Boarchardt.” And I will put a link to both of those in the show notes.
Mark Borchardt’s Advice For ALL Creative People
The Wisdom of Mark Borchardt
And another was a short video trailer for my animated projects, also featuring Mark Borchardt. Called “An Urgent Message From Mark Borchardt.”
So let’s enter those in… BOOP. 73. Why only 73? Am I the only one who thinks this whole Creative Busyness Measurement thing is unfair? This is one of my most popular videos all year. Bizarre.
Okay, that gets me back up to 362.
UKRAINE DAN FOSTER
Last thing I’ve got. I produced and scored “3 Ways To Help Ukraine” — a collaborative project with Dan Foster and Chris Higgins. We filmed it in my studio with Dan and I will put a link in the show notes.
Help Ukraine / Dan Foster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7uXIxra9DQ
So let’s see, this one unfortunately only got 57 views… I doubt this is going to… BEEP, Whoa! 300?!
Let’s see the explanation here: any project involving Dan Foster automatically awarded 300 Creative Busyness Units. So wait… why did all that work on Dragontooth Inn only get me 17?
Doesn’t matter, because that puts me at 662 total. Just one more than the minimum required! As usual, I barely passed. Folks. FOOOLKS. I think this means I get to remain in Good Standing? And do more Creative Busyness for another year? No Random Length Lumber for me!
2023 – LOOKING AHEAD
NOW. Looking ahead. We are finally here.
What do I want to be doing with my own Carl King Creative time, in 2023? What do I want to accomplish?
I can think of at least 5 projects.
1 – First of all, I want to wrap up and release the Dragontooth Inn Animatic. That should get me another 2 or 3 Creative Busyness Units.
2 – And then. I think it’s time to record and release a new Carl King full-length “Song” Album. Now what does that mean? I’m talking about catchy, lyric-driven music. Maybe there will be a couple of cover songs, but we don’t know yet.
It would be material along the lines of I’m An Artist and I Shouldn’t Have To Work For A Living. Showing more of my They Might Be Giants influence. Humorous subject matter with some well-written songs and plenty of real good musicianship bits. And I’ll be sure to punch in a lot of non-lyrical genre-specific vocal sounds.
3 – Third, I’d like to compose and record a 20th century classical music piece of some sort. And perhaps have it performed by some real musicians. It would have to be a small ensemble of 4 or 5 people.
For sure, a real piano-ist and violinist and hopefully a couple of vocalists. Maybe I would play some orchestral percussion and overdub various things. But I think I’d want it to be entirely acoustic. And by that, I mean no sequencing, and no electronic instruments, if possible.
All real, mic’d instruments played by humans. But it’s such a vague idea at this point, I really don’t know what it could turn into. All I know is, that genre of music is exciting to me. And that’s where I am headed, musically. I’ll expect to lose most of my Creative Busyness Units on that one.
4 – Fourth, I’d like to publish the So, You’re A Creative Genius, Now What? Second Edition. I’ve already had a brief meeting with my editor Chris Higgins about my intentions for it, and it seems like something I could knock out pretty quickly, once I can set aside a chunk of time.
The purpose of that is simply to make minor updates and make the book officially available again. Not sure how many Creative Busyness Units a second edition book is worth, but we’ll find out.
5 – And fifth, Morgan Agren’s Conundrum — the 10th Anniversary release in 4K. Can you believe it’s already been ten years? I want to go back and clean up some of the coloring and exposure, because I didn’t really know what I was doing.
I need to convert the frame rate correctly to 23.976, and then get it onto streaming platforms like the Apple iTunes Movie Store, or whatever it’s now called. So be on the lookout for THAT. I have a feeling that one will be a HIT with the World Bureau For The Measurement of Creative Busyness (and also Random Length Lumber).
And finally — there is also a complicated METAL album I’ve been wanting to make for a long time. At the very least, an EP. And we’ll see if there’s time for it.
But that’s all I’ve got to report. So I want to thank everyone who has followed my work and encouraged me in my Creative Busyness… especially my Very Good Friends of Carl King on Patreon… and I wish everyone a happy new year.
END CREDITS
OK, that’s the end of this Episode of the Carl King Podcast. Remember to subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or anywhere else you listen to these dang podcasts. And support the creation of more episodes by joining my Patreon for $1 or $5 a month. That’s Patreon Dot Com Slash Carl King. Or send a tip through PayPal or Venmo to username CarlKingdom.
And as always, special thanks to my $51 a month Patrons, at the special Illusionist level, Chewbode and Hank Howard III. And thank you to ALL of the Very Good Friends of Carl King for listening, and as I always say: Okay Than. I will let everyone know.