Music merchant

While many students are probably used to being asked for money while walking down Forbes… While many students are probably used to being asked for money while walking down Forbes Avenue, some might be surprised to run into someone who’s actually selling something. Along with the spring weather, Dan Lynch, a 22-year-old Pittsburgh native has taken to the city with a compilation of his writing and music, The Dan Lynch Super-Brilliant Extravaganza Project. If you’re wondering what you can expect from the $3 purchase, Lynch says, “It’s the most phenomenal album in the new millennium – I think my novel’s great. That’s terrible. It’s certainly the most phenomenal album people in Oakland will buy.”

The 11-track album contains rap songs (under Lynch’s alias Lenny da Crumb), spoken-word poetry (under the alias Precious Roy) and excerpts from his autobiography. Upon learning that the average “hipster” reads only five books a year, Lynch realized that “these people are too lazy to read.” By sampling jazz music from Medeski Martin ‘ Wood and Wynton Marsalis behind his poetry, he hopes to get his work heard “Trojan Horse style.”

“I think indie-rock people have to get off their high horse,” Lynch said during a recent interview. “Some idiot comes in with some saccharine lyrics … I’m sick of guitar tyranny! It’s like no one’s heard a clarinet!”

Among Lynch’s musical influences are jazz musicians Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk, along with hip-hop artists Ghostface Killah, Pharoahe Monch and Kool Keith. His literary influences include Henry Miller, Marcel Proust, Ralph Ellison, Andre Burton, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Kurt Vonnegut, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jack Kerouac.

Having grown up in Bellevue, Pa., Lynch developed a level of confidence in his writing that actually makes his arrogance charming. He spent part of a year at the University of Pittsburgh before deciding to take time off and pursue just living and writing.

“I was disappointed,” he said. “I had this dream that I would go to a nice school – I thought I’d meet intelligent people,” but with loans, the decadent attitude and maturity level of other students he encountered, “I felt stifled.”

He says students today tend to forget that many of the great writers weren’t writing majors in college, writing just for assignments. That is “a crutch that’ll kill you.” One of his ultimate goals is to be an English teacher, but he’s in no rush to go back to school, citing that Raymond Carver put off schooling for a few years.

“I’m going to try to be more of a machine in the next year … it’s hard for me to make serious plans,” Lynch said. “I’d rather float around for now. One of my favorite things is to walk aimlessly around cities.”

Lynch has returned to Pittsburgh to catch up with friends he hasn’t seen in years, but plans to return to New York City after selling 200 more of his CDs. He recalls the days where his pockets were full of quarters from selling his poems for 50 cents a piece in New York, which he considers to have a “more ready buying public.”

He enjoys the merchant lifestyle of being his own boss and being able to stop for coffee – his drink of choice despite his already high energy level – whenever he wants, though there are downsides.

“I wanna hit a lot of people, but I don’t,” he said, laughing. “Quit telling me you don’t have any money! ‘No, thank you’ is much better.”

While he acknowledges that he is trying to make money, he says the most satisfying thing about the experience is to be selling his own art, which makes it more fulfilling than peddling umbrellas for a buck.

Over the past year, he’s been working on his novel (“Like Anyone Else You Will Die But the Dying Comes After Completely Everything Else”), a book of essays (“Rich People Don’t Wanna Read About Poor People and Poor People Don’t Want to Read”) and the rest of his rap and poetry (“Lenny’s World” and “Good Will Stuntin”), some of which can be found on his album.

“I read and write all day,” he said, emphasizing that we live in a “hyper-capitalist media culture” that teaches people that “it’s cool to be morally, economically and spiritually irresponsible. It’s silly to me.”

“When I was 17, 20, I was nuts – crazy,” Lynch admitted. “I was surrounded by caricature-people. I can’t believe they’re real! Now, I’m compelled to write. I think writing matters. Visual images are stupefying,” he said, shaking his head.

On the track “Videogames and Television,” he criticizes this attitude saying, “What you mean I got to read books? I’ve got ‘The Apprentice’ … books, you’re fired!” and “Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole were just illiterate idiots with ridiculous roles.”

He views reading as a benevolent process, but feels that television is just the opposite.

“The metaphor is one of the only things unique to the human kingdom,” Lynch pointed out.

To him, not reading “marks the end of civilization.”

The solution?

“Buy my album, buy my novel. Everything else you see is garbage.” Editor’s note: To obtain a copy of Dan Lynch’s album, The Dan Lynch Super-Brilliant Extravaganza Project, either catch him selling copies around campus, or visit his Myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/thedanlynchsuperbrilliantextravaganzaproject.