Happy Valentines Day!

The art of commissioned songs.

“Dive in that rose / cause we’re emancipated honey bees”

-Drunken Valentines - the new single out today

30 hearts beat as one.

Sometimes artists are commissioned by private individuals, cities, nation states, non profit or for profit entities and in some cases even despots (like Kim Jong Un not that I would know) to create art for collective inspiration or, more importantly, just to sell stuff. Valentines Day is a strange holiday that supposedly began with the martyrdom of Valentine, the patron saint of love and romance and has since devolved into a dedicated aisle of red crap at your local CVS or Walmart. Of course there is the metal key charm known as “Saint Valentine’s Key” used in Italy to ward off epilepsy in the Middle Ages. I don’t think it ever worked but I’m sure someone sold a bunch of them to desperate people and retired early. Nobody commissioned me to write this song and I’ll admit that I’m kind of pissed about this. It is so blatantly obvious in its desire to sell the listener on how amazing the idea of Valentines Day is that someone like Hallmark should’ve definitely paid me something for it. I tried selling it to an epilepsy research lab but they did not return my call.

The reality is that I wrote these lyrics for no other reason than to have some words to sing while playing hooky guitar chords but as often happens, it turned into a story. I do believe that we should all be Valentines to each either as friends or as love partners but know that we might have a kerfuffle every now and then just like the couple at the end of the song. They recognize that both parties can be complicit in the art of breaking hearts. It’s happened to the best of us. Elton John and Kiki Dee begged each other not to do it. Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks took it next level by telling each other not to drag any more hearts around. Breaking a heart seems better than dragging one around for some reason. The latter seems like a prolonged and painful death but perhaps salvageable with some key hole surgery and the right statin whereas the former is a done dealio. The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold called Kintsugi is possibly an option but perhaps not applicable to mending hearts.

Anyway, I can’t buy my retirement island quite yet because nobody has bought this ridiculously marketable masterpiece. I did make a piece of digital art to accompany it, however, and reached out to The Cleveland Heart Clinic, the Mayo Clinic and Stanford, amongst others, hoping that one of them will buy it to hang in a surgery room preferably on the ceiling to reassure the patient that everything will be fine. These clinics have plenty of money but once again, none of them has returned my call and frankly, I’m actually relieved for I am not in the business of selling my art and certainly not my soul. That said, if Cindy or Larry at Hallmark Corporate calls with an offer, I’m picking up like my heart depends on it.

Take a listen on Spotify or BandCamp.

Ps I was hoping to make a video of Drunken Valentines with a couple of beautiful model/actors in a Chevy Camaro Z28 Bumblebee making out and doing burnouts and cookies in an abandoned parking lot with lots of aerial drone and cinematic slow motion footage. Lots of smoke too. I was going to hire Christopher Nolan to direct it.

Once again, I didn’t have the budget. Maybe next year.

Stay artful…