Yup.īut he said this to me in a quiet room, and I was the only one who heard him. “The music business is a toilet,” my drummer said to me this summer. The soup we all swim in sucks, we’re all frustrated, and we try to keep that to ourselves, if only to preserve our dignity. No one else bitches out loud if they can help it. I am sometimes the whiniest one in the room about that failure, since I’ve seen the generational toll it takes. I am third-generation art Boho, and kind of used to seeing artists struggle. I am email-friendly with people who have been picked like that, they return my calls sometimes.īut as far as mass culture is concerned, me, down here, below the radar, spending over a decade making work that few people see, I’m failing. I am part of a community of artists who work under the radar of a culture that may, once in a while, pick one of us out of the pack and move us higher up the ladder.
LUCID SOUL KICKSTARTER HOW TO
It had suddenly become clear to me that I had no idea how to tell family, friends and strangers that they should back my music or my writing when, by every cultural measure we use (grants, sales, press coverage, earnings) I have been a spectacular failure.Īway from Kickstarter I am proud of what I make, I remember that I have shared stages and bandmates and radio airwaves with some celebrated musicians, a few legit places have published my writing. I had just realized that the pitches I was making every day were pointing out a horrible truth: when it comes to justifying myself as an artist, I am incoherent. I was trying to finish funding my new record, managing a Kickstarter campaign with a $4,000 goal, when the freakout kicked in and I started calling people until I found someone who would let me lose it on the phone.
I have no idea how to talk about why I make art.” “You know,” I told my friend when I called her, “Kickstarter is kicking my ass. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightīlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Īnd you, my father, there on the sad height,Ĭurse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.The Way of the Backer: Kickstarter and the Power of Artistic Failure
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,Īnd learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Though wise men at their end know dark is right,īecause their words had forked no lightning they Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Old age should burn and rave at close of day He flew alongside men who died in combat at 22. Least of all those of us who care for him. He’s right to want to keep it, as fiercely and for as long as possible. Then I remembered my namesake’s most famous poem, about his father’s decline (I’m certain I’ve posted it before), and my anger dropped away. Part of me has been deeply frustrated with him – how can he keep forcing my parents through the pain of telling him, again and again, that he won’t be leaving this place? At his age and state of health, as a lifelong Catholic, can’t he make peace with the fact? In his most lucid moments, he still doesn’t want to believe he’s dying. He can do little more than lie in bed and drift in and out of consciousness, in and out of dementia. Pulling all the sky over him with one smile There’s never been quite such a fool who could fail Whatever they sing is better than to knowĪnd if men should not hear them men are oldįor whenever men are right they are not young May my heart always be open to little birds It takes me where I need to go – into a palce where errors and failures have their own beauty, and aren’t to be feared. So I still love this poem, and I still need it. You can waste a lot of time waiting for it to turn up. The refined and sublime – that’s a bus that comes once a year. Nearly ten years later, I know more thoroughly than ever that too much striving for sophistication can deaden the soul it can provide an excuse for not living. Perfect for a seventeen year-old girl to read aloud on the verge of a whole new stage of life. It is not subtle or intellectual like a lot of Cummings’ poetry (even the poems about death) it is bright and clean and exuberant. I read this poem at my high school graduation. Hence: here’s a poem, because it turns out I wanted to post one. Logical revisitation of this situation turned up the fact that this is actually my blog, so I get to do what I want with it, and bugger anybody else’s feelings on the matter. It’s been awhile since I posted a Monday poem the lag is probably related to a general Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul I’ve been stuck in, wherein it becomes easy to believe that everything I specially value is probably an unwanted annoyance to the rest of the world.
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