The “Dirty White Coats” Video

Some time ago, when I was putting out the first Lipstik record, Everything Is Good, I ran an early-listening campaign through Richard Young’s company, First Listen.  First Listen has a pretty cool service whereby you get copies of a record to a bunch of presumed taste-makers and they give you feedback on the album and what they thought of it.

Now, on the one hand, the album got skewered by most of the people that are part of First Listen and it was a mildly brutal and extremely humbling experience.  But, on the other hand, there was a guy that really dug the record and his name was Monte Krause.

Monte has a long history in the music industry, including having managed Edie Brickell & New Bohemians.  And Monte is also an artist.  And Monte is a man of opinions and tastes.

Over the course of the last few years, Monte and I became friendly over email.  We’ve traded ideas about music and life.  And while Monte initially did not like the tune “If You See Something” and was worried it was representative of the broader record, he did end up taking to the album as a whole.  And as we traded emails about the record and about the recording, he started showing me some screen shots and images that he’d treated with some animation techniques.  I think originally he was going to do a video for another band but after we’d been talking and emailing I convinced him to work together on some videos for The Flying Change.

At first, as you may recall, we were focused on doing short films.  I had the hypothesis, and still maintain, that as attention spans got shorter on the Internet, a full-length music video made less and less sense.  If people are surfing the web, sitting in front of their computers, I have difficulty imagining they can sit still long enough to watch a film for 4 minutes.

So we spent some time making these short films for “Hold My Heartache” and “Broken Bow” and we tinkered with them as we went and I personally loved them.  And by the way, I saw “we” in the loosest sense.  These are Monte’s creations and much of his vision.  We collaborate in that I give him some thoughts and some thematic ideas but mainly this is him doing the work.

And we talked to some people about promoting them.  But a lot of editors and whatnot saw them as nothing more than commercials for the record and didn’t get the short film part of them – didn’t see them as distinct works of art unto themselves.

Meanwhile, as we were thinking about doing more of these and moving on to different songs, life intervened.  Monte went to the doctor after complaining of a limp.  And it turned out that the news was bad and he had cancer.  The limp had been caused by a golf ball sized tumor lodged in his hip socket.

I suppose in some good ways, it doesn’t appear to be the kind of cancer that will knock you out instantly.  But it was the real kind.  And Monte is a young guy.  And so rather than doing the things he wanted to do like make art and tend to his family and go swimming he was forced to take a bunch of trips to the hospital.  Back and forth all the time.  And he was forced to get two surgeries.  And thirteen rounds of radiation.  And had to take an experimental drug called Revlimid (Ed note: provided free by the manufacturer because his health insurance wouldn’t cover the $6,000/mo. for it.)  And he was forced to deal with these health insurance issues and all of these other terrible things that happen when something goes awry.

Meanwhile, of course, he maintained his usual cheery self.  He told me weird stories about bars and he would write me about his philosophies on all sorts of things and how truth and goodness are never more than one good decision away.  Monte writes good emails.  He has this strange habit of changing the subject line in an email thread every time and it’s always something pithy and sort of strange and entertaining.   One email will say “Empowerment Is Not Weird It Is The Norm” or “Today’s Big Think” or “Tender Is The Night”.  He’s a quirky guy.  And that’s why he’s so damn charming.

Time passed.  I’d check in with Monte and see how he was doing and things seemed like they were going okay and that was a relief.  But you never know.  And he was tired from these treatments.  And I was worried for him and for his son and for his wife and for all the people that cared about him in this world.  You never know how these things are going to go.  You just hope and, yes, you pray.

Recently, I forget when exactly, he told me that he’d begun working on the full-length video for “Dirty White Coats”.  And he said it was going to be special.  And I got excited but didn’t want to push him.  And it was fine with me if we never did another video together or more precisely if I didn’t encourage him to do another video.

But he seemed okay.  And one day he sent me the video.  It was un-animated at the time.  We were just getting the thematic components together.

But it really struck me and moved me.  Maybe because I know what he’s been through.  And maybe because the song is about doctors and hospitals and tests and things like that.  And I started to think about what it would be like to drive back and forth to the hospital all the time and then at one point you notice a tree and you sort of slow down the car and watch the leaves flutter in the breeze and think about the same damn things.  About wind like water and, of course, and yes, cliche, but like time.  Running.  Slipping.  Liquid.

About the imminence and the impermanence and then how all of those thoughts can scatter like clouds and you’re left with the soft empty peace of the sun against your face and the call of a bird and maybe the cicadas or the other critters in the grass that have been there before and may yet be again.

And beauty.  Small subtle glimpses of beauty and small little moments of joy and going home and pulling into the driveway and maybe your kids are waiting inside or maybe you’re just next to your wife or husband or something like that.  And it’s respite and relief and reprieve, if only for an instant or a moment.

So that’s what I think of when I watch Monte’s video.  And I think about how this song intersected with him and his life and how all of these various strands are intertwined like arteries flowing through the bigger something of everything.

So, if you want to see this video, sign up for the email list, and you’ll get an email around 4pm, and then you can watch it.

Also, Monte and I are going to take a road trip to the Painted Desert maybe in the winter and you can’t come.

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