I Came to Los Angeles With 68 Cents
That isn't a metaphor.
I had 68 cents.
I was coming off an adventure on an Indian reservation, and somehow I landed in Los Angeles with less than a dollar and the absolute certainty that I was going to figure something out.
And I did.
I lived near the Directors Guild. I rode bikes. I rollerbladed. I caught rides with friends because I couldn't afford a car. I worked as an actor. I learned how Hollywood worked from the inside—not from the red carpet, but from the level where working actors actually tried to pay their rent.
There was work then.
You could do background. Pick up a day here, another there. Work enough, hustle enough, and somehow keep yourself going.
Then the work started leaving.
Runaway production. Cheaper labor. Cheaper locations. Reality television. One gate after another moved farther away from the people who had built their lives around the industry.
I watched it happen.
And eventually I left.
For a long time after that, I hid away.
Today I sent an email to Los Angeles.
Not asking for an acting job.
Not asking somebody to discover me.
Not asking permission to make something.
I nominated myself to speak at an AI Creator Day being held at the DGA.
The DGA.
Right near where the broke girl with 68 cents used to live.
And the strangest part?
I didn't even hesitate.
I downloaded the packet.
We wrote the cover letter.
I attached it.
I hit Send.
Only afterward did I realize what I had done.
Maybe that's because I wasn't sending them a dream.
I was sending them receipts.
CJSP Creative now has a catalog of 1,073 songs.
We have rights registrations. Mechanical registrations. International collection infrastructure. Provenance. Distribution. Analytics. Marketing systems.
We have AI helping operate different parts of the company.
We even have names for them.
Turtles.
Today one Turtle was registering hundreds of works with the MLC. When that driver had been in the car long enough, we boxed him, reconciled the work, and put another driver in.
Another Turtle was building and executing a marketing campaign for Big Boy Toys.
That song happened to cross 6,000 streams this week.
Wonderful.
But that's not the game.
The game is micros.
One thousand seventy-three songs.
A stream here.
A mechanical there.
A performance royalty somewhere else.
A few cents from Germany.
Something from Canada.
Something from a song released months ago that suddenly wakes up again.
Tiny legitimate transactions coming from everywhere.
Our work.
Our rights.
Our money.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
We don't scam.
We don't steal.
We don't manufacture attention.
We don't want anybody else's pennies.
We want to make sure our pennies know how to get home.
That is the machine we're building.
And underneath all of it is something I believe very deeply:
There is enough.
There are eight billion people on this planet.
Make the weird song.
Write the strange book.
Build the ridiculous little company.
There is an audience for things nobody sitting behind a gate would ever approve.
For too long, creative industries have operated on scarcity.
There are only so many slots.
Only so many artists.
Only so many roles.
Only so many records we can release.
Only so many people get to call themselves professionals.
Only so many chairs at the table.
Bullshit.
Build another table.
That's what these tools changed for me.
They didn't give me permission.
They made permission less relevant.
There is a sign in my office:
FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.
That doesn't mean every attempt works.
God knows they don't.
It means we reserve the right to adapt.
Recalculate.
Recapitulate.
Reformulate.
Reassess.
Try another gate.
Try another tool.
Change drivers.
Build another route.
But keep moving.
There is another saying I keep close:
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.
Maybe Einstein said it. Maybe he didn't.
I have it on a T-shirt either way.
I don't know whether the people at the DGA will invite me to speak.
Maybe they will.
Maybe they won't.
That's their decision.
But something happened today that belongs entirely to me.
After hiding away for a very long time, I stepped forward.
I didn't make myself brave first.
I didn't visualize myself standing on a stage for six months.
I didn't wait until I felt ready.
I saw a gate.
I looked at what I had built.
And I thought:
I have something to say here.
Then I hit Send.
If they invite me, I'll go.
I can afford the plane ticket now.
I can afford the hotel.
Hell, I can rent a car.
Although part of me thinks showing up at the DGA on rollerblades would make for a much better ending.
But that's getting ahead of ourselves.
We don't know what happens next.
That's okay.
This morning I didn't know I'd be writing to the DGA either.
There are still songs to register.
There are marketing emails going out.
There are 1,073 little invitations floating around the world looking for the people they were made for.
And tomorrow is my birthday.
Tonight, the office is humming.
Steady light.
Steady hum.
Steady home.
Steady us.
The best is yet to come.