new BOOK question! and this one’s deep and long. (insert your mom joke).
hello from fucking book world.
i have turned into a slightly crazy person. i am proud!!
can i pat myself on the back for a second? i’d like to.
i have consumed over 60 strong flat whites – that’s 120 shots of espresso – and written over 150,000 words in just 5 weeks.
i have been compiling a book-thank-you list of the cafes that i have been haunting which have been playing the best music and leaving me alone.
the winners have seriously been winning. one cafe last week played NOTHING BUT THE SMITHS AND BOWIE for two solid hours.
i was dancing in my chair. i got great writing done that day. the rage against the machine day, not so much.
why i cannot do this my home, you ask? just, like, throw on a bowie and smiths CD, press repeat, and CRANK?
i do not know, i answer.
that is topic for book #2: “why amanda must constantly be surrounded by noise and strangers at all times or she will die.”
okay, now back to the work:
TODAY’S BOOK-HELP QUESTION.
tell me the stories you know about support and all forms of “patronage.” or if you want…”help.”
i want STRANGE SUPPORT and FUNDING STORIES: how STUFF in your life has been paid for?
how YOUR art/music/whatever has been patronized – inside or outside of the internet??
hit me. if you paint, make music, or create ANYTHING…and you have or have EVER had a strange patron…even a landlord who gave you cheap rent, or a church who let you use the basement for band practice, ANYTHING, this is the place to spill the story.
even if it seems mundane, boring. your parents giving or loaning you money for a guitar. whatever. all the things.
when the dresden dolls were just starting, we borrowed the money to make our first album and video from no less than 6 different people. we had no money. i literally called the richest people i knew, even if they weren’t very rich, and asked if they could all loan us a few grand so that we could make a really decent first recording.
i was just writing in The Book about the time someone i knew randomly met, in the restaurant, the super-wealthy woman who funded john cage and a ton of other experimental musicians in the 60s, betty freeman. i didn’t even know she EXISTED…but i worshipped the music of those guys, and studied them in universities.
it never occurred to me back then to wonder how they got PAID, how they lived, who forked over the dough for them to do the wild, crazy sonic explorations that had ABSOLUTELY NO COMMERCIAL potential…(somehow i can’t see anyone at capitol records screaming “4’33 is gonna sell like HOTCAKES MAN!!! get that cage guy on the roster! he’ll blow up the charts!!!”)
and if you know ANY other good stories about weird arts patronage, music patronage, science patronage. hit me.
aim WIDE! is your friend’s wife supporting her while she goes to grad school? are your parents letting someone you know live in their basement while they run a start-up to make a killer app that will drone-deliver custom vibrators straight to your home in an unmarked box?
and stories of LONG AGO…i know you a lot of you guys are academics and have studied your shit.
talk to me about the old days…the medici, the church, the cave days…ALL OF IT.
DISCUSS!!!!
no story is too irrelevant or weird. go go go. i’ll be checking back regularly and reading all the comments.
x
a
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