SHOPPING IS GENIUS from Ryan Adams on Vimeo.

Ryan Adams is prolific. Usually that means he’ll release a few albums in the space of a few months, but now – in the age of personal expression – it means that he can produce any manner of artistic communication he and his psychosis can dream up. For Ryan Adams fans (like myself) that is most definitely a good thing.

It is rare to be so close to pure, uncut, undiluted, unfiltered, uninterpreted, art. Most artists of his stature are too afraid to be so open… afraid they’ll hurt album sales… afraid they’ll damage their reputation. They labor over every note, every photo, every piece of video with their name on it. They polish it, shine it, sequence and master and mix the life out of it.

After getting it approved by A&R they release a trickle of this labored material through verified channels. The end result is so remote, so impersonal, so unfeeling, so apart from the world in which the original seed of art was planted that any traces of genius and creativity that might have survived are barely visible under thick layers of product.

Yes, it is a decidedly good thing that Adams is, at least for the time being, keeping a tumblr blog at dradamsfilms.com. It is inspiring that he has broken free of the traditional creative process and has embraced a transparent and open one. It is inspiring to see how creativity lives… to see it strolling the same city streets I walk every day. It is inspiring to see a man, an artist, confront things about himself and his world in real time.