Thursday, December 25, 2008

How will YOUR 2009 be? smiley?




Merry Christmas!






A word about the new year to come:

If each of us starts to look at the others with understanding and compassion, not with criticism and jealousy, then the course of life might be altered in a good way on earth.

That's the butterfly effect (you know, when a gentle flap from a butterfly can generate some time later a storm on the other side of the earth).

The bad side of the butterfly effect can be illustrated by the current crisis. It may have started by a few people whom some other prople have made them believe that they could buy a house even though they did not have the means, and then a whole world system collapsed. Do you realise that whatever the governments and central agencies do, nothing seems to slow down this downward spiral? Why? because it is completely out of control. And in fact, somewhere, I'm quite happy that these governments and central agencies control power is not that strong, as it means that we still have some degree of liberty.

When there is a bad side, there is a good side. If many of us show our colorful wings and soothing melodies to the rest of the world, then the year 2009 will be a bit better than the year 2008.

And yes, we do have the power to change things, as even a very tiny positive change somewhere can have endless positive repercussions somewhere else.

A bit about me. One of the reasons I am living in Malaysia and not in France, my native country, is that people in Malaysia do smile. When I take the underground in Paris (we call it the "métro"), people seem so sad, serious or angry... They are more naturally smiling here is South-East Asia (beware, it has a tendancy to disappear too!).


So I have a dream. A dream where one day everyone would smile in the parisian métro (and elsewhere). Utopic? Childish dream? well, children do smile naturally, so why not adults?

Imagine the contagious power of that:
- the husband would arrive at home with a smile, and stop talking about all the miseries he endured in his office,
- the teenager would arrive at his pals place with a smile, and not rant one more time that the world is only good for destruction,
- the politician will smile and try to find a new way to really help the people instead of thinking of his next strategy to grab more power,
- the baby will feel calm and go to sleep instead of screaming,
- you would...

I'm probably dreaming, but if everybody was smiling one day, this day would be a bit magic, would it not? So, I have an idea: why not create a world SMILE DAY ?

If this day everybody smiles, this might be a beautiful day. Forget the crisis, forget the problems, start to see things in a positive way, I think that if YOU smile, you can make YOUR year 2009 better. And by butterfly effect, the whole world a bit easier to live in.

Now I appeal to you:
- what do you think of this idea of a SMILE DAY?
- which day of the year would you suggest this smile day to be (and why that particular day)?
- how could we celebrate this day?



Yeah, I really wish you a fantastic year 2009!

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Introducing my new blog

Just starting my blog. That's sort of new to me. It's a bit different to my site www.djaypee.com in the way that I intend to share more personal stuff here in this blog than on my web site.

But this blog is still intended to navigate around what drives me: music.

I've been creating music for many years, but my life really took a turn in 2006 when I decided to make it my main activity. It brought me many joys, but not much money so far!! really much less than in my previous job in fact.

Despite what some people say, I do believe that there has never been so much good music creation in the world, and that there has never been so many opportunities for any musician to directly reach his public than now.

But there are some drawbacks.

The main one is that a whole generation of young people, born with the internet, are considering that music is a free and disposable product. I'm afraid that it might take another generation to make people understand that there are values behind music, including some kind of respect towards the people who create music, and including a kind of retribution or reward when using others' music (it is my belief that any kind of work has to be paid).

Another one is that in the current world, to grab the attention of someone with one's music is a challenge, as a normal person is confronted to several thousand of messages each and every single day, be it on the radio, in the newspapers or magazines, on the walls in the streets, on the internet, in the shopping centers, on TV, etc. So it is quite difficult to get heard with such a high level of surrounding "noise".

Of course, internet is here to help, and I am always astonished and thrilled when I receive messages of people who appreciate my music from Chile, Tunisia, Japan, Denmark or elsewhere. In fact, it usually encourages me to keep doing music. But between reaching a few hundreds of people (today) to a few hundred thousands (tomorrow?), there is a journey that I still have to continue, full of its successes, doubts, failures, encouragements...

Here is a free song that you can download : Destination Enjoy

(The track "Destination Enjoy" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License, meaning that you can forward it to anyone - and please do so! - , provided you credit me, you don't modify it and you don't make money out of it)


Talk to you soon!

DjayPee (Jean-Pierre)
http://www.djaypee.com/