Stochastic and I are going to be at Cielo on Friday night to catch Nick Warren’s set (get tickets here). Nick has been doing this a long time and I’m looking forward to checking out his vibe. When he’s not DJing he’s also half of Way Out West. Stochastic was playing me a remix from their new album that’s terrific:

Way Out West – Future Perfect [Henry Saiz Remix]

(I encourage you to listen while you read the rest of this blog post…)

Manon sent me an article by Robin Sloan on snarkmarket.com that really hit home. It’s about creative and professional output:

There are two kinds of quan­ti­ties in the world. Stock is a sta­tic value: money in the bank, or trees in the for­est. Flow is a rate of change: fif­teen dol­lars an hour, or three-thousand tooth­picks a day. Easy. Too easy.

But I actu­ally think stock and flow is the mas­ter metaphor for media today. Here’s what I mean:

• Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind peo­ple that you exist.
• Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the con­tent you pro­duce that’s as inter­est­ing in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what peo­ple dis­cover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, build­ing fans over time.

I keep thinking about Robin’s point, and it’s a powerful way to think about what and how we create. I’m a DJ, so it’s important for me to record and post new mixes on a regular basis. I’m producing a track, and I’ll publish that too when it’s ready. In the meantime, however, it’s important for me to tweet and keep writing blog posts in order to stay connected with my audience.

Robin continues:

You can tell that I want you to stop and think about stock here. I feel like we all got really good at flow, really fast. But flow is ephemeral. Stock sticks around. Stock is cap­i­tal. Stock is protein.

And the real magic trick in 2010 is to put them both together. To keep the ball bounc­ing with your flow—to main­tain that open chan­nel of communication—while you work on some kick-ass stock in the back­ground. Sac­ri­fice nei­ther. It’s the hybrid strategy.

I think that flow has a benefit to me as an artist as well, and Robin doesn’t mention this. My flow allows me to bring my thoughts to the surface and examine them. Once brought to light, my ideas are available to me to refine over time. And then they feed into my creative work. So I’m able to make my stock stronger, better, richer, and more full because of my flow.

I had another thought yesterday about how it’s much easier to be an artist now: you have inexpensive, powerful tools at your disposal and it’s easier than ever to connect with your audience. I’ll save that for another post, though.

- mike
elevatorclub.com

…:: step inside ::… listen…