2024 03 23

Stylish woman hands me my new iPhone before I ask if I can make a photo of her. Chicago, Illinois. October, 2023. © Clayton Hauck

Imagine: you’re a dopey teenager in a band and luck into making an album that becomes a global phenomenon. Then, five decades later, you’re still a musician but nobody wants to hear anything you have to say if it’s not a song off that one album that went global when you were sixteen years old and didn’t know shit about nothin’ (also: that’s possibly how you were able to make music everyone wanted to hear but more on this idea another day). It’s like being caught in a moment of time with no escape. Sure, you can do your best to ignore the chanting from the masses to “play something we know!” as Bob Dylan constantly has to do, but even someone as monumental as Bob Dylan can’t escape the chanting and is forced to hear it for the rest of his life.

Anyway. 311 did a Tiny Desk concert which got me thinking about time, music, art, and how sometimes when you make something that becomes big, it evolves and is no longer really yours, regardless of what US copyright law may have to say about it.

“Stay positive! Love your life!” -311, avid readers of Pointing at Stuff dot com.

-Clayton