I’m not sure quite how to say this without breaking a few hearts, but I have decided that rockstars are utterly passe.

I know, I know, intoxicating at times yes, good clothes often, and true, occasionally brilliant. Yet having spent the past three years surrounded by them, I have come to the conclusion that life is always better when, in a room full of people, there are not silent unspoken rules allowing only 1 to 5 of them to be "the creative ones".
Yes, you heard me Justin Timberlake and Paul McCartney.
And you Peaches. And you Backstreet Boys. And yes, even you Coldplay.
I worked for all of you. You know, I’m sure you have good intentions, which is nice but not very effective.

Yes, I know that you can’t get-to-know, or seemingly even appreciate, everyone in the room because your phenoma-glow of brilliiance is blinding you to the people taking care of you so that you can shine on stage when-the-time-comes. However, having been one of those people, I would like you to know what I see.

You all look incredibly lonely.
Which is not my fault.
Yes you are fashionable, but trendy clothes, $350 worth of sushi, and a killer tour bus can’t hide your typically malnourished groping souls. Who are you competing with - each other? Well apparently you aren’t trading honest notes at those awards shows that you all hate and complain about, because otherwise it seems like you would have figured a few things out by now. Things that are really obvious to those of us who see all of you, one day after the next. I’ve got some honest notes. Here:

It’s true, everyone sees you all sexy on stage, but they don’t see you toweling off afterwards and looking forlorn and exhausted and alone. The groupie sex got old after about 3 months didn’t it? Except for you G.Love. And you dirty old Bruce Hornsby who cornered me in the back hall. Not that any of you are going to let onto that, obviously sex sells, and as a currency, you are suuuper-rich with sex. But seriously, where are you going with all this? I know your secret. Rich on the outside. Perhaps.

It’s unfortunate, because I had great and high hopes for you, being as incredible as I thought you could be. I was so looking forward to feeling nourished by your souls, day in and day out with all that music and ability and creativity and personality and vim and vigor and life. I was thrilled. Until I realized that because most of you are starving inside, it’s all just an act. The lights and effects do most of it for you. It could almost be anyone singing your part most nights - sure you wrote the song, but are you feeling anything anymore? Doubtful.

And you know, that’s the thing. I’m not just talking out of my ass here. I saw you not just on stage, but day and night - without the great lights and special effects, without the harmonizers and pro-tools fooling everyone about your "real voice" and "super-human abilities". I know that you get cranky when you don’t get the right kind of peanut butter and that you love fresh lemons with your british tea and organic honey. I know that you haven’t bathed in three days and that you sit backstage for hours alone on a computer whiling away time. I know you without all the magic and mystery. FYI, you’re a person. I’m sure you know that, but maybe that’s why you don’t usually hang out with those around you because you are afraid someone else will see it and catch on that you’re human. Just a hunch.

Fortunately for you, I had been sworn to a code of silence; it was contractual. However my contract just ended - they are tearing down Avalon and that job is over. So maybe you are not so safe from what i have seen. Or maybe I just don’t care anymore.

Actually I do care, or else I wouldn’t be writing this. And you know what I care about? I care about all the people out there who still believe in you and your stupid sham, because I certainly did. I believed that it was actually possibly to be the coolest, most creative, brilliant person in the room and to have everyone love ME, and that if I got better and better and better at what I did and the audience got larger and larger, well, I would feel fucking great. I’d feel amazing. I’d be like a rockstar. I’d be invincible. And then just everything would fall into place. My life would be perfect. I would have lots of money and fame and everything else. I’d be sated. I’d be that incredible famous person who deserved being loved so much because they were so incredibly, skyrocketingly great. I’d actually deserve to be the greatest because I’d be the only rockstar in the room. Of course I wouldn’t say that, but I wouldn’t have to. That’s the deal with being a rockstar, right?
Well you know what? I’m totally calling your bluff. You are full of bitter and explosive shit that reeks of ignorance and sickness and utter obvious dysfunction in the basics of human interaction and communication and relationship. Audiences are fantastic, but they don’t know you. They know your act. Your soul is rotting and it’s nobody’s fault but your own. Because (and here’s another fyi) souls can’t live on fake-magic dirt. They thrive on thick honey air.

I’m NOT saying that I’m done with all things "rockstar". I’m still content and going for rockstar moments - those things that make reality glorious and electric and alive and thankfully memorable. But rockstars as a species are totally dumb and self-extinguishing. They forget that when the stagelights are off humanity continues to swirl around them unabated, ready to receive and share their love in basic human forms. Like carrying things and moving things around and just sitting together and being dorky. And eating. And sleeping. And humming songs together. Things that monkeys can do. Not difficult, just requires caring. And recognizing that you are more valuable in an extensive creative group than as a mere idol being propped up by invisible people all around you. Besides, monkeys like to smash things. Particularly idols.

And finally, just for the record, yes, I know that some of you try - thank you Ben Folds, Belle & Sebastian you were amazing, and really Sean Paul, I nearly giddily screamed right then and there. Liz Phair, you were awesome, and Manu Chao, I just didn’t know who you were. Colin from the Decemberists, you were sweet and I actually had a mini-crush on you, though not in a groupie way (obviously). And the guys from the Doves, and My Mourning Jacket, I think you were above all my favorites - humorous talented brilliiant attractive gentlemen. Nice work.

So that’s it. By now you are saying, "Well you can’t be against ALL rockstars because you just said a bunch of them were nice..."

Okay, your right. Dammit. You are right.

So what I’m really trying to say is that I am completely over with rockstardom.
It just doesn’t exist. There is no such thing.

All you can ever hope to be is to be really good at what you love doing and to care deeply for and about the people around you. I think everything else falls into place in a healthy way after that, including yes, even fame and fortune.

Rockstars are total illusions.
Sorry for breaking your heart on that one. But it’s true.
There is no such thing as a rockstar.
Just the appearance of one.

Good luck with that. It’s a lesson that perhaps only I and a few other people can really first-hand say is totally true.

So relax.

Even Neil Diamond needed help getting from his car onto his plane.

I just had a cool moment with our dear friend Google. So, for my whole life, there have been a hell of a lot of "Amys" around. This went from being cool in kindergarten, to frustrating in third grade, to downright depressing by the time I hit college. I admit to often grilling my parents as to why they hadn't just walked through the hospital the day I was born and seen the 7000 other baby Amys in there and switched my name to Ernest Hemingway or Blondie. They both swear that they thought they were being incredibly original. Yeah, right...my best friend in junior high was Zoe Cecilia Hollywood - THAT'S original. Yet however greatly displeased I was with my name, I learned from a certain ex-boyfriend who shall not be named (but who changed his name to Marco Apollo, I kid you not...), that I could not change my name because, well, that is just admitting defeat. If you don't have enough spit and balls to rise above all the other people with your lame letter combination tag and make yours stand out and ring memorable, well, then you take the easy way out and name yourself Sting and hope for the best. Please. Thus, by the time I hit art school, the bastion of originality, I was finally like, okay, well, if I can't have an original first name, and if I can't change my name, maybe I can make my whole name something, er, more remarkable. So I started introducing myself using my full name. Amy Carpenter. This worked for a while. There were plenty of Amys still, but in my little universe, I was the only Amy Carpenter. That is until my best friend and my brother fell madly in love. It looks like they are probably going to be married someday, at which point, she will probably, most likely take his last name. Which means that she will then have my name. Because, you see, her name is Amy too. I recognize that this seems like a ridiculous farce, but you can ask several sources and they will confirm that it is, in fact, not. This would be my life. So, while I am for the loving relationship between my brother and friend, I must admit that I felt a bit defeated by the prospect of having my whole name become mass produced within my immediate family and then forever after confused within our similar circles of friends. Call me egotistical, but I bet that Jane Eyre and Frida Kahlo didn't have to deal with this problem. "Oh, dear brother, you are dating my best friend whose name is also Frida?...hmmm...but..." Yeah, no, that didn't happen. She might have been really sick, but at least she didn't have to worry about THAT. Thus, to this day no one gets mixed about about "which" Frida Kahlo. Mmmhmmm... So there I am, feeling privately, quite secretly dejected (it's pretty damn gauche to publically admit to coveting your own name. I know this...), that is, until I got a comment on my video blog today from an old friend from high school. He had somehow tracked me down and had found my vlog, and was then able to contact me. Yes, ME. Not some other Amy Carpenter in Idaho. Not the real estate Amy Carpenter who owns www.AmyCarpenter.com (bitch!), but me. He was able to reach me. I began to wonder how he did it - you know, how he found ME out of the billions of Amys and the majillions of AmyCarpenters. Alright, 691,000, to be exact. So I started Googling myself, beginning with abstract things like, "AmyCarpentervideo", and "AmyCarpenterart". That was all good, but I was like, "he wouldn't have known to put those adjectives after my name..." And I paused. And then I did it. I typed in just plain old "Amy Carpenter". All I can say is that there is some 13 year old Speedway Rider in the U.K. who had better soak up her last glory moments being the number one Amy Carpenter in the ENTIRE GOOGLE WORLD (which IS the world by the way, in case you didn't know), because I am NOT going to stay numero dos for long.

Today I was on the train on my way home from helping a shaman edit his video. So I'm sitting there, on the train, listening to some mix of recognizable songs, I think it was Radiohead actually, (Exit Music for a Film), and I happened to look over and realize that the guy next to me was wearing a watch. My next thought was that people don't wear watches anymore. Unless they don't own a cell phone. Watches are uncomfortable, and unnecessary, and they date you as someone who is not "with it". They are quaint accessories of another era, a time period that existed, in full force up until about five years ago. Maybe three. But who's counting. Wearing a watch let's everyone know that you are not actually traveling in "this" time. The conviction of my theory swelled, until I finally took off my headphones and turned to the guy and said, quite politely, "Do you own a cellphone?" I wondered what era he was currently living in. And he said, "No, I don't." To which I responded, "That's what I thought. You are wearing a watch, and not many people wear those anymore." At which point he pointed out that it wasn't even a digital watch. It had roman numerals and a canvas strap. Nothing digital about it. He then said that it was a choice to not particpate in the illusion of control that often comes with participating in a highly digital culture. He said that he loved the beauty of chance and did not like to eliminate it by checking in every three minutes with people connected through a phone. He actively carried with him an awareness of happening. He was against, what he called "the eradication of pre-planning" - he liked the idea of making plans and sticking to them, not "calling every three seconds to see how the plans could, should, or might change." He was, also, I later found out, a musician who was opposed to digital video, but had recently been given a digital camera, with which he had fallen in love. We seem to pick our loves based on our acceptance or removal of time. We then discussed our fated placement in the sweeping current of technological change and the ignorance or active participation that each individual can make as to their relationship with an innovation's effects on general ambience and social structure. Right about then, we got to Park Street where I had to leave the green train to catch a red one. It was strange to walk through the station, scanning wrists the way some single women graze for wedding rings, wondering, as I put my walkman on (I still call it that, innappropriately, but whatever...) if perhaps, by chance, I'd happened to speak with the only man left in Boston who still wears an old, yet uttterly functional, wristwatch.

Okay, so sometimes I make these huge, colorful balloon sculptures and install them so that people have to walk through them to get to me. Today I went to visit MIT, which is definately one of my favorite places in the entire world. It is like a living shrine to intelligence, creativity, and possiblity. It dedicates itself to making the impossible normal and mundane. I love this. It makes me feel free. When I was walking back over the Mass Ave. bridge to Boston, I saw this thing in the sky, way, way far off in the distance, super far away. I couldn't tell what it was - not a bird, not a plane, not a kite. Finally I realized it must be balloons. A huge comet of baloons struggling in the sky. They were rising higher and higher when suddenly they stopped getting smaller. Then I realized that for some reason, though it wasn't windy, they were no longer rising. They weren't getting smaller. In fact, they were getting larger. I realized the balloons were coming towards me on the bridge. I started running across the bridge, wearing my high heeled boots, running to try and meet the balloons. They were getting closer and closer to the bridge, defying all reason of helium and windlessness. Right when I was almost to them and them to me, they dropped out of sight on the other side of the bridge. I figured they must have hit the water. I stopped where I was and leaned over my side of the bridge, looking to see them when they washed through underneath, waiting to see them curled in the currents, being swept to the sea against all odds - they were supposed to be going higher, not lower. Then I swear to God, this happened: I was standing there, when all of a sudden the balloons, this big colorful mass of balloons, FLOATED up in front of me, out from under the bridge, and hovered there in front of me, just out of reach. They hadn't touched the water or gotten stuck. It's a low bridge. They floated there for a few seconds and THEN they took off and started floating up, up, UP - that's right, UP into the sky, where they finally disappeared from view. Not even a speck visible to the eye anymore. Tears just popped out from my eyes, and I turned to this guy who was walking by and I was like, "Did you just see that?..." and he was like, "Yeah - I watched the whole thing - that was really weird...." I think that it was the first time in my life that I have actually cried because, well, the world just overwhelmed me in an impossibly beautiful way. Just because. Just because it could. And to any of you who know me, you know that that takes a lot. You know, I expect the world to be mysterious and beautiful. So there I am, making my way across the rest of the bridge during a perfectly still fall Saturday sunset, tears running down my face, streaking mascara for sure, and I'm grinning - it was the strangest feeling - like when your teeth hurt from eating candy - so sweet it hurts....and this passel of girls runs by, and one of them looks at me and cheers, "Heels! Heels!" and I realize that she is running in heels and is cheering me for wearing them too. Unexpected associates in fashion crime. Running in heels. I made it to Marlborough street where I had to turn into a back alley and just you know, cry I guess. Yeah, I'll say it. It was a bit much. Remeber the movie The Red Balloon? That took all kinds of people wrangling that baloon to make it follow the boy. This just, well, it just happened. Someday science is going to explain that, in spite of all the glories of gravity and all the conundrums of space and time, that we are all just breathing through our dreams. That none of the rules really exist; that the rules are just temporary guideposts to help us weave and wind our ways through what would otherwise be an overwhelming mass of color, sound, and constant coincidence. You know, someday.