1,506 things worldclique likes Explore more popular stuff on Tumblr →
-
-
No Excuses in the New SystemAmanda Palmer. I’m not sure why this woman needs a backlash. She writes smart songs, and does performance art. She’s articulate in her opinions. You might like her work, or you might not—that’s a matter of taste. A backlash is different.
The System doesn’t work anymore. Musicians can’t just hope to get chosen for “jobs” that are so scarce that they almost don’t exist. And for the few that do get selected, The System extracts far more value than it provides to the artist.
So she helped create a New System, one that works in her favor. Or more accurately, she assembled and reconfigured and rewrote and stole the work of others to put the pieces together in a new way. JUST LIKE ANY OTHER ARTIST.
The Rules are different now, and I say thank goodness. You don’t need a gatekeeper anymore. You can share your ideas. Whether they are worth sharing is another matter entirely. That part’s up to you. But if you are producing good work, good art, good content—then you deserve a chance at getting heard. Waiting around to get picked by a gatekeeper is a relic of the 20th century.
So why the backlash? She’s not the first to call bullshit on The System. Maybe the fear comes from her crystal clear articulation of a known problem, and her acumen and unmannerly persistence in backing up her ideas with her actions.
As an artist, you have an excuse if The System fails you. You have an “out,” a way to make yourself feel better. You make good art, but you didn’t get picked. In the New System, you don’t have an excuse. You only have yourself to blame if you didn’t get an idea out there. A backlash isn’t going to help you with that. Seek connections with your audience instead.
In the interest of making connections, please allow me to introduce you to Amanda Palmer, if you don’t know one another already. She gave the keynote speech the “Muse and the Marketplace” literary conference for aspiring writers here in Boston a few weeks ago. I am introducing you because in my opinion, she has earned the privilege of your time with her eloquence and intellect about WHY WE WRITE.
I’ll quote from her keynote to explain why I write, too: “The heads nodded in the distance at what I wrote, and that’s all I needed.” My head is nodding too.
-
A Moment To BreatheRight now I’m going through one of the most difficult times in my life, undeniably the worst thing I’ve experienced. I know crying and wanting to lay in bed all day is a part of it and I know this is part of the process and I’m not the first to experience this but it sucks. It’s the worst feeling ever, I feel like I’m mourning something/someone yet that person is not dead and that something is still my reality. For so many months I’ve held it together, well tried to and at some point it hits you with a ton of bricks that you are not OK and you just lose it. Today I woke up feeling like life was kicking my ass and I didn’t know how to nor did I want to fight back. Sometimes you get lost in the day-to-day shuffle of things and you sweep things under the rug most likely out of fear of dealing with them. Fear is a crazy thing to me, fear evokes anger, anxiety, sadness a myriad of feelings not many people like to feel, yet it is summed up in one word. A lot of times people associate change with fear, I know right now in my life I do. I wonder do I have the strength or the courage, will I be ok, will everyone my situation affects be ok? Going through life changes especially relationship ones are already hard enough, but when you add children things get real, fast. It’s also difficult when you love someone so much, but there has been a lot of hurt and damage that just can’t be fixed which saddens me deeply, and me being a control freak, it’s hard for me to accept that I can’t fix things and it makes me feel as though I’ve failed. Was I a bad wife? A bad mother? What could I have done more to make this person happy? These are things that run through my head to make sense of it all, but doing this will just drive you crazy when you know you did everything you could to not be a bad wife or mother. I sit here writing this with tears streaming down my face because I am scared of ‘tomorrow’ and saddened by today.
I wrote that yesterday and I debated putting it on my blog to be public for the world to see, but obviously decided I should. I know I am not alone in this feeling and I hope that maybe this helps someone who might be feeling the same way even if it’s not the same situation just the theory of change and being afraid of the unknown. Yesterday I felt like a zombie and felt like I couldn’t even make it through the next 10 minutes let alone the day, but I did. Tears and struggle, I did it, which means you can as well. Today I woke up in a better place, not nearly as dark and as much pain as I was experiencing yesterday, I’m glad I went through it because it was a cathartic moment that brought me some clarity.
-
-
-
bbook reblogged lobbycards
That Thing You Do!, Spanish lobby card. Spanish theatrical release 1997
Submitted by videorecord
Shades.
-
bw-picabomb reblogged spielvogel
