FULL BLEED: THE GREAT AND SHIMMERING MOTORIK

Weird one this week. There’s still a couple posts I should do in support of Fake Believe. Not sure this one will count. Not sure if any of them actually move the needle. Feels like if you want attention, you need to say attention-seeking stuff like genre categories are stupid and useless. In particular if you’re building more genre categories to make it seem as if you are a brave discoverer of new material instead of understanding that this is just a filing system that you’re definitely centering yourself and not the work. Or by saying that [this thing] is done and [this other thing] is the new hotness. When the thing is [this other thing] is something that’s been happening for years, oftentimes written by outsiders and woah, hey! Now that it’s written by an in-cohort, it’s okay to talk about.

This stuff is exhausting. And for writers it’s distracting (though for calculating climbers, it’s necessary, but only if you can tack to that wind fast enough.) Trouble is the times of tacking to the wind in terms of production and publishing are over. By the time you jump on someone else’s train, it’s going to a different destination than the one you thought. Sure, you can publish faster now, but you still have to generate the material that you’re publishing to catch the wave (one that may not actually be happening, but for a couple people suddenly talking it up.) Maybe it's just easier to worry about what you do well then how it fits into the landscape. Particularly in a landscape like today’s which is weird and shattered and only half-pieced together.

Or maybe this advice is only for me. Maybe it makes sense to chase. Sure. Go ahead. I can’t stop you. I don’t want to stop you. I’ve got other things to do. All this discourse stuff is very very real and changes the world. It’s not just what people are reading to procrastinate. It’s not just time wave zero infinite novelty being expressed into a universe that’s constantly expanding and needs to be filled. Just like the work that’s only being read by a handful of readers.

Like I said. Do as thou wilt. Erect the pleasuredome. Make it comfy. Rule whatever genre you want. That way you’re king of something at least. I’ll stick with being a king of nothing just like I always was. Pretty good at it. Lots of practice.

Back to the kickstarter. Things are still slowed down compared to those first few days. But we’re over $1900. Still want a few more backers to show growth over the last one. Perhaps that’s simply asking too much. Maybe growth is for suckers. Or maybe the audience I’ve been able to reach is tapped out. Perhaps. Which means I should probably spend more time expanding the audience, but I’ve no particular idea as to how to go about that without simply paying a publicist/promotions person (and my experience with those as been pretty dire, truthfully.) Maybe I just need to write more instead.

And I just put this in an update to the project, but I’ll let folks know here. There is an extended portion of the campaign, where you can still contribute to the kickstarter. I’ve never done this before and I guess it’s a new thing for the company as well. The prices are higher, which leads me to believe that it’ll offer very little traction for me. But I’ve been wrong before. Figure there’ll be a chance to buy into the campaign until the end of April, but probably not past that.

Other stuff, let’s see. Went to San Francisco last night to see Michael Rother of the bands Neu! and Harmonia (those names mean something to you or they don’t, no big deal.) Was great to get out and see friends in person and get my brain blasted by shimmering waves of inexorable motorik beats and deluges of guitar. I’m a bit wiped out today, but getting home late does that to me now. I’m old.

Something that came up, though. The friend who I drove in with (some nearly two hours each way) was a guy I’ve known since middle school. And since then, music has been a huge part of his life. He went from fan to concert goer to DJ to hosting house shows for touring bands at his own place. He funds these out of pocket (donations from the audience help, but don’t cover everything much less his own effort.) He does this because the communal experience is important. Because the social aspect of music is important. Because so much of this has been taken away or repackaged into text-based cliquebait.

And that’s worth considering. Community is what keeps this going when nobody is making any fucking money. And community is about sharing this work. Not about building walls or saying this person or that person doesn’t belong (unless they’re a Nazi or eliminationist in which case they can fuck right off.) Community isn’t about picking the winners or saying this is in or out. Or even worrying if work belongs in it or not.

But you can’t score points that way. I know.

I should have something else up tomorrow. Thursday I’m driving to LA for Wonder-Con on Friday. Try and hunt me down on the show floor. It’ll be a fun game!