Dmitri, a bass player noticed the band he played in was always critical. Either they were insulting other groups or else envying how much better other groups were than them. Then he noticed inside his own head the same thing was going on. Always insulting himself for not being good enough, smart enough, handsome enough, musically accomplished enough or else wishing he was as good as others. By surprise one day he reached a radical conclusion – it was just in his head, none of it actually existed.
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The bass was real, the amplifier too but wishes or complaints were only clouds moving in the sky apparently real for a few minutes, then no more. Dmitri wrote a song about it called Nobody’s Home but the band didn’t like it, rejected performing it. Two of them told him he wasn’t a good writer, should stick to the bass. Next year they broke up. Life went on, they got straight jobs, started families, music came to a halt. 20 years later his son Smyrdnakov, made a band and covered Nobody’s Home. His friends liked the lyrics to the chorus:
There are bees in my head making honeycomb, buzzing with thoughts but nobody’s home.
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They made a video and dressed up like hornets. It went viral. After 23 million views, Amy Carnegie who formerly answered telephones at Bruce Allen’s office approached Smyrdnakov and Dmitri and offered to do even more for them through merchandising Nobody’s Home into t-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs and a line of honey shaped in little houses that included randomly empty containers (literally nobody’s home). This proved a successful marketing gag with the kids, lot of money flowed in. His old bandmates called him up, said he should spit the ownership of the song with them especially insistent were the two guys who said he couldn’t write.
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He thought to himself after all these years nothing changes, people live and die complaining the entire time. He came to a new radical conclusion which was that the state of complaining which seemed outside and simultaneously inside himself wasn’t something to struggle against because it wasn’t possible to stop it. He became excited about simply noticing his own complaints and those of everyone else. Started to think all conversations were just excerpts of someone complaining about their job, their lover, the weather, the band etc. He became more experimental with his music and his mind, trying to see if it was possible to move through life without complaints. No such luck except he had another realization which was that the disappointment to not complain was another complaint.
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His music became more experimental, now he played blindfolded and with a chopstick between the strings. Smyrdnakov videotaped him, threw it online and Universal offered to sign him. His Youtube channel now known as Blindchop, developed a large following. (pt. 1)