Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0908301524480.4626@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: (the bitter pill of) A way of making things breathe, making things
die.
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:26:14 -0400 (EDT)
A way of making things breathe, making things die. http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo.mp4 http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo5.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo6.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo7.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/ooooo8.jpg I give away my art all the time. I assume no one will buy it, that at this point it's more of a nuisance to people than anything else. Profits for publish-on-demand go to lulu or whomever, not to the publishers, not to me. Scam-spam we buy into, free intellectual property. My music is up for grabs, why sell it when I can give it away. And who would pay for it anyway? The same for my video; everything I have on YouTube or Ning or my website is free. "And who would pay for it anyway?" It takes money to do this stuff, money to stay in relative (not great) health, money to just stay alive. What I put in is free for you. Of course if you hit delete/kill/abort, then you're getting rid of spam, no matter how much spam costs on my end. I've thought of asking for donations, but for what? Everyone should ask for donations, everything falls apart. Better some of us just give up and pass out of the scene. No worries, stress will kill us. With at least 60,000 videos a day on YouTube, who needs mine? With lulu publishing, who needs my particular works, and why pay for them when you can download them for free from my site, lulu, whatever. Never mind the literal thousands of hours that go into writing/scripting/editing these texts. Give away culture for free, it's my choice, isn't it? After all if I were any good, I'd have lots of books out, you'd find them at the bookstore. Giving away our culture, giving away our lives. Even free jazz guys got paid. A little. Almost none at all. In the Albert Ayler box there's a recording of a phone call. Jazz brings imminent pleasure, you pay ten bucks at the door. Maybe. Writing brings nothing, YouTube, lulu, whatever else I do, yes there's an installation of images at Millennium here in NY, it's all free. Whatever I generate, free, whatever I think of, free. It's all about me, and it's not about me at all. And sooner a later a stroke or whatever, and these texts will stop, the website will go down for lack of payment, someone will have a few files somewhere, they won't play -
