Something borrowed, something used

The sheer glut of used media (books, CDs, DVDs) has been threatening to overwhelm our society for a few years now. In fact, selling used is apparently not a sound business model (all those CD Warehouses went out of business even before the heyday of digital). Even the thrift stores don't have the room for all the VHS cassettes and Readers Digest condensed volumes dumped into their bins; they still make their bucks turning over clothes and handmade holiday macrame. Is there a better model?

There are still some independent retailers in my area who are sticking to the "mostly-used, some new" model, but many were forced out of business by a public obsessed with purely digital entertainment.  One former community favorite - Vinyl Fever - ended up splitting their new and used music sections 50/50, but I don't think it could sustain itself on meager 99 cent used CD sales. Up by USF, Mojo Books and Music is rocking a cavernous, well-stocked used book selection (and selling coffee and being a community hangout), while in Pinellas Park, SoundExchange is so overrun with used DVDs, they are pushing most off at 3/$5 (but being smart by organizing them by lead actor rather than alphabetically for easier binge watching). The venerable local institution that is Bananas will invite you to their voluminous warehouse, but their retail presence serves up a rather generic catalog of used CDs, sure to please the passer-by looking for a bargain.

So, juggling new and used media in brick & mortar is probably not a good business model at all. (I can't see Barnes and Noble doing it, no matter how quickly I am contributing to their demise.) Books and CDs are, unfortunately, destined to clog up the landfills; DVDs probably even faster due to the realization that you don't have to own a movie in order to have access to it whenever you want thanks to streaming subscription services and several robust rental schemes like Amazon and iTunes.

But folks don't stream CDs, they still rely on glorified radio stations like Pandora (and the upcoming iTunes Radio) to curate for them. As for books, is there really a more sustainable idea than the public library? Thanks to places like Better Worlds Books, it's gotten easier. I can buy a used book for a penny from Better Worlds Books via Amazon, read it, and then deposit it in one of the many green Better Worlds drop boxes in my community. It seems like borrowing to me, verging on recycling  (the tree's already been felled, the presses already run). Unlike the public library, it isn't exactly free - but most of the price goes to keeping the U.S. Postal Service alive - so that's almost being patriotic, right?

I have attempted to set up the same sort of cycle for CDs, but it's a bit more complicated. Sure, I get 99.9% of my music digitally (not just iTunes, elitists, I actually make the trip to bandcamp.com to pay my favorite artists directly), but you know how iTunes and Amazon will make the best song on a soundtrack "album only" just to piss you off? I'll by the CD used and within minutes of it showing up in my p.o. box, I've digitized the track and re-listed it to sell on Amazon. The circle of life to be surel I may even make a profit.

Speaking of supporting artists directly, one fantastic arena rocking my online world is original art t-shirts. Instead of rolling down to Hot Topic (at my age, please!), I find amazing art to wear on websites such as Zazzle and Threadless and – since I have a New Orleans bent – Dirty Coast. The original t-shirt world is bright, shiny and booming while allowing me to spread my bucks around big business directly to the folks who deserve it.

Imagination, with Retina Display

I was in that last refuge of civilization, Barnes and Noble, over the weekend when I overheard 2 teenage girls grousing at a boy in their group that he was a loser if all he wanted to do was hang out and read comics. Mind you I am the only person actually standing in front of the graphic novel section when this happened. I suppose this wouldn't have happened to me if I had squeezed myself into one of the few remaining actual comic book stores in my area, but I always get claustrophobic amid those tiny aisles and overflowing racks. There's always too much product and never enough room to organize properly.

As an artist, my brain is fine-tuned to the visual. Gorgeous art and a compelling storyline are as looked down in the literary world as movie tie-in books. It should be enough to enjoy the written word and let your imagination fill in the blanks, say Those Who Know. Illustrated stories are for immature minds who can't make that leap. Frack 'n frell on that, I say to Those Who Know.

If I had one of those Edwardian-era libraries in my house, mahogany bookcases lining each wall, I would most likely have a side solely dedicated to graphic novels. Please make the distinction between graphic novels and comic books. One is not a highbrow synonym for more sensitive souls. Graphic novels are comic books, just longer. Known in my circles as TPB (or trade paperbacks) - a graphic novel will usually collect a story that has been broken down into bite-sized chapters. They are collected after all the comic books have been released and look much better on a bookshelf. My collection of Angel: After the Fall series by IDW is even hardbound with one of those silk bookmarks.

I grew up a DC boy - entranced with the Justice League of America and Teen Titans. Individual stories never enthused me; I had to be involved with a team, with all the interaction and headbutting as personalities clashed (This was years before Dynasty would fulfill that need). Later in life, I was comic book reborn when DC released their Vertigo series and I discovered Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Death, as well as seriously mindbending dark stories like Shade the Changing Man and Grant Morrison's The Invisibles. Separate comic book issues became collected TPB Graphic Novels, and if very popular, something called an "omnibus", which is a big hulking collection of all of the graphic novels in a series, lovingly bound and accordingly priced.

During the late-90s resurgence of genre TV like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, graphic novels appeared that filled in the blanks: stories not told during the series run, showing events and creatures a low-budget CGI-starved television show could never. (Thanks, Dark Horse!) Later, after those shows had run their course, along with Firefly, Dollhouse and Farscape - the graphic novels took over the story, taking it to amazing places (and using actors' likenesses to boot).

So how does this all fit in with my 2013 simplification act? While I am hesitant to jump on the Kindle wagon, I may demur when it comes to digital graphic novels on, say, an iPad. With retina display, I can see a whole new world for my favorite tales. In fact, I may have no choice. Farscape creator Rockne S. O'Bannon apparently lost his way with the publishing company keeping his franchise going and had to pull it mid-series. The story continues as digital download only. And with my imagination (to fill in the blanks).

       

Archiving, in hardcover

Part of the 2013 downsize and reorganization is being able to say farewell old art projects, both physically and emotionally. Back in the 80's I wrote plays and novels, now interred in a drawer somewhere. They have a digital life, but no digital after-life. (someday I may try to self-publish, who knows.) My artwork and photography, however, has a much richer life. They were born digital and live, in many incarnations, in many versions, on various compact discs, flash drives, and on my portfolio website(s). I also use Shutterfly for archiving purposes, not just for creating photobooks and making posters. But sometimes having a "hard" version of artwork can - besides weathering a post-apoco scenario involving the power grid - provide another avenue for presentation. Sometimes whipping out an iPad and linking to my Behance or Coroflot portfolio doesn't have the same panache as ink on paper.

Of equal importance for this year's downsizing is saying goodbye to old projects. Not just because I've moved on, gotten better, switched my style. Older artwork no longer best represents my talent and experience, so it needs to be curated, much like I change the artwork on the walls of my house. I am by no means giving this art an interment, merely a retirement from the limelight. Current portfolio website wisdom claims that having too much "product" can overwhelm those sensitive viewers, much like shoppers who cannot wrap their minds around too many choices. So, much as I switch out old for new on Refrakted's website, I can give an older era of creation the eulogy and memorial it deserves.

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Dead tree media, eulogized

Part of my 2013 reconstruction is to thin out the herd of space and mind-controlling media. Not just to supplement my pea-sized income, but to curb my enthusiasm for acquisition for acquisition's sake. I just listed my entire collection of Disney's commemorative D23 magazines on amazon.com. If you haven't seen them, they're these ultra-ultra-glossy 11-something by 12-something delicacies with "Life"-sized photos all Laura-Palmered in cellophane (the super-strong print ink smell that makes me swoon is hopefully disney-fied non-toxic). The mag is a treasure for collectors: one part history, one part sell-the-parks, one part sell-the-new-movies. Compared to trolling for news on the internet, the magazine experience, for me, was always more intoxicating.

I didn't start subscribing to magazines until I returned to Tampa Bay back in '98. Before that, magazines were the little stacks of love that I scooped up during my weekly excursions to book and record stores. Barnes & Noble remains the last vestige of the awe-inspiring wall of magazines - but  I accept they are but a dim reflection of what they used to be. Back in the day, even Borders could sometimes be counted on, in some cities, to provide a cornucopia, a cavalcade of glossy goodness from all over the world, for every stereotype and inclination. Quasi-counterculture digs like Tower Records always had such interesting and controversial rags in their stacks, some looking like they'd been mimeographed in the backroom earlier in the day. 

As a grand aside: one of the perks of being in New York City in the '80s was the ever-present newsstands that sat like sentinels on many major thoroughfares. Just like in the movies, the newsstand guy never claimed to be a library and gave you the stinkeye if you perused for too long. Melody Maker, NME and all those cool Brit music rags were hysterically expensive, but mine for the peeking.

Ultimately, sadly, with the advent of digitized media, the allure of magazines has certainly diminished. It has helped, of course, that 99% of them have folded up or reinvented themselves online, where - arguably - it is function over form and the eye candy has been sorely neglected due to concerns about downloading speeds and how much of one's dataplan is being sucked up. Stupid internet.

The last two journals I subscribed to filled a specific niche, allowing me to lull myself to sleep over their instructive but beautiful photos: Coral Magazine, for the days when I intensely cultivated a saltwater reef tank and a late lamented curated enclave called Backyard Living with great recipes for tropical container gardens and pond fountains with koi. When it blew out of existence in the middle of my subscription, the publisher gamely tried to soften the blow by replacing the magazine with their apparently more successful birds-and-birdbath mag. I declined just as softly.

So here's the cortege of dead tree media, my elegy to days at the racks:

Like most hip youths, I quickly figured out how Rolling Stone was pandering to a wide range top40 audience, and although I admired their political reportage, I spent most of the '90s hunkered down with Spin, reading Dennis Cooper interviews and believing I was alternative...but not as alternative as dumping Spin for being too mainstream and hooking up with Alternative Press, until they, too, covered too many "radio" acts and I ended the '90s devoted to Outburn (when they were goth/synth friendly, not death metal as they eventually evolved). Ravaged as I was to get the latest new music releases, I admit I did sometimes empty my pockets for issues of Billboard and Ice.

Honorable memoriam: CMJ New Music Magazine - with a sampler cd! I was loyal for at least a decade and wish there was a way to discover cool to music like that again. (Yes, I have diddled with Pitchfork, whose attempt at pushing mainly independent singer/songwriters with guitars got way too predictable. Where's the electronica!? Where's the industrial?!)

As a film-o-philiac, I was less interested in celebrity gob than interviews with directors and FX guys. Premiere and Movieline satisfied those needs for a good long while, along with the occasional free Entertainment Weekly year subscription. The real artistry came when I was able to dive deeply into genre with jewels like Cinemascape and the great experiment that was the encyclopedic Star Trek magazine.

Finally, there were a few design magazines worth mentioning because I enjoy step-by-step tutorials much more than annoying how-to youtubes: Photoshop User, Layers, maybe Print (never How or Comm. Arts, unless it was an office subscription).

I currently subscribe to only one magazine, both for the utter joy of discovering it rolled into my p.o. box a few times a year and its distinction of being "the Southern magazine of Good Writing": The Oxford American. I can't praise it highly enough.

Color me an adult with a tiny, defiantly analog, streak.

 

Realism, post-produced

"Everywhere tiny hands of terrorists Begin the beguine. In the year 2013 it has been estimated that world population will be doubled. And then? We do not wish to destroy. We are powerless to prevent."

-Tennessee Williams, 1978

Artists, certainly more sensitive, perhaps more perceptive, have often been the canaries in the coalmine for the human condition. They are compelled to re-enforce their perceptions of the wrongs of their civilization. It needn't be a radical surreal vista like Dali's, or a film of dire warning a la Kubrick, or any dystopian sci fi purged from the minds of Gibson or P.K. Dick. What the artistic soul sees, the rest of world can either ignore or let gradually seep into their consciousness. 

I know the planet is filling up, resources are dwindling; that there are barely enough jobs for everyone, enough food and water. In my mind the chances of the earth self-course correcting (thank you, Lost, for lodging that term in my head) with a more harsh environment, or a corporation-controlled government unleashing a plague that only the 1% has the antidote for (but who will be around to do their dry cleaning?) - they are both equally plausible.

In my own tiny corner of the globe, I toil in a basically unsustainable, vehicle-hungry suburb, where most businesses still can't wrap their heads around allowing their employees to work at home. Sure, everyone brandishes colorful, branded, reusable shopping bags, but the mall parking lots are full - so, that famous recession seems not to have made much visible impact.

I vacillate between relocating to a big city in order to live small and vehicle free, or move to a smalltown to do the same. Each comes with its own price; but, with a broadband connection, I'm good with either. My parents' generation moved into "gated" communities in droves, to stave off the crime and the poor, to recreate their bucolic post-war paradises (although my folks grew up in East Harlem, so I have no clue what the hell they think they're recreating). I get it; I sometimes dream about some sort of clean, safe Disney World-meets-Amsterdam scenario. I grew up watching Fantasy Island - I know these places can be made-to-order.

"This is not escapism; it is super realism, so gritty and detailed and authentic and goddam convincing that…I found my normal present-day 'reality' pallid by comparison."

Philip K. Dick on the impact of Blade Runner, 1981

  

Music outlook, cloudy

This week, amazon.com emailed me to let me know that they uploaded music I'd purchased from 3 years of cd purchases onto my cloud player. For the 3 people in the world who don't use iTunes, this is probably a good thing.

I've bought a handful of mp3s from amazon over the past few years - mostly as lagniappe after spreading my cashflow around their hallways with large payloads like my Criterion Collection fetish. There once was a myth that amazon sold mp3s unavailable on itunes, but I haven't had any luck tracking down anything rare and beautiful; if it's not with one music service, it probably isn't on any other.

Since mp3s have become widely available, my cd purchasing has lived a rare and fragile existence, left to the odd deluxe repackaging (REM has been releasing 25th anniversary editions, as if I weren't old enough) so I only have about 925 songs in my cloud player.

Will amazon give me digital kindle versions of all the books I've purchased from them? Not in time for any of this year's apocalypses, apparently. Ditto for all those Criterion Collections that line my crypt, so I will remain cautiously grateful of having another way to hear my music in case the cd players fail, my ipods (all 3) crap out and Pandora gets dangerously dull and repetitious (and not very intuitive, but that's another post).

I won't advocate my fogey whine. I can look forward to a day (as some have already realized) where I will not be crowding my space with books, cds or dvds. Some modern folk don't seem to need anything more than a tablet because all their files and their software are in the cloud. As long as the solar flare/electromagnetic bomb doesn't ruin things and we'll be wishing we'd kept that ragged old paperback of On the Road to wile away the hours by candlelight, we'll all be fine and sublime.

Ginsberg, gone again

Something had to give. 2013 is the year for voluntarily scaling down and simplification. Whether this is because a major relocation is in my future (spoilers?), or just the sweet release of getting out from under the weight of all those books, I have to make it so. Only 5 major bookcases exist in my house, which means a lot of crates under the bed and in various closets. Am I getting all pro-Kindle? That's for another discussion…

I've had a rather sizable tumescence for what is nicely termed "The Beat Literary Experience". Pride or deride the proto-hippies if you must, I find mid-20th century American literature as interesting as the lives of those who participated in it. Art is usually always a reaction to the world the artist lives in; these post-WWII cats were just as broadsided by their civilization as we are with ours. But life was aesthetically simpler for the Beats and their groupies since the underground had not been commoditized: there was no Hot Topic or Junkman's Daughter to get the left-of-center to part with their money. Whether it was sex, drugs or revolutionary ideas that banded them together, they got their decade or so in the spotlight.

The three with the most literary merit (or output, if you're being kind. A prolific artist has his/her own brand of merit, I am certain) were close friends - at least in their early lives. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs occupied a lot of space on my bookshelves. Not so much their work (although I seem to have an old, almost original Grove Press edition of Naked Lunch gathering dust), but bios, autobios, letters, mantras, sutras and interviews. There are sidetrips to Tangiers, one-offs by lesser known colleagues and the ever present muse/sex object (usually both).

But I am afraid, in the great literary diaspora of 2013, someone had to go and I'm afraid it's Allen's turn.

It's not that he wasn't likable. Gawky kid with a crazy parent, hallucinogenic visions complete with famous poet cameo, Columbia, San Francisco, India, Beat Hotel in Paris, then the long-haired hippie godfather and underground elder statesman. I heard him speak once before he died, I think. It was the early '90s and I had pilgrimaged to Manhattan with a companion to pray at our forefathers at CBGB and the Chelsea Hotel. Ginsberg was speaking at St. John the Divine on the upper westside and we wound up sitting so far in the back that your mom could've been giving the presentation and we'd scarcely had known. No, that's not right, of course. Ginsberg's voice did nothing less than carry like a clarion call - cathedral or no cathedral.

So, why does he get the boot and not Bill or Jack? I admit Jack was a hot, sloppy mess - most of his biographers went out of their way to highlight just how much he could bring down a party with all of his pitiful, liquored-up grousing. His literary output, for the most part, tread the same streets, just another decade older and less sober (one of the reasons I stopped writing; I didn't want to fall into the Kerouac Syndrome, telling the same story ad nauseum). When I read about artists' lives (and I do read a lot of them), Kerouac's song of great-heights-to-crashing-lows is the one I hear over and over. Allen had his moments, sure, but for the most part, he rose above them - and what's exciting there?

And Bill - well, if you don't know about Bill, I can't help you here.

So, farewell, Allen. I certainly understood when you pined for both Jack and Neal; I can genuflect at your equal rights example by having such a long term relationship with Peter. I admire the ground breaking against censorship, the group 'om's and willingness to be an example, for leaving your middle class American comfort zone to go to India and dig the poverty, the maddening crowds, the burning ghats. Yours was a life we all need to know more about and hopefully Spielberg will give you the Lincoln treatment someday soon.

  

Music, Now Rentable

The solution for any avid music collector like me (old enough to be referred to as a record collector, but, still) is to no longer purchase music at all - simply rent it. No storage, no risk of loss, no loss of quality. It goes against every fiber in my being - and I eat a lot of fiber.

This isn't a vinyl diatribe; I'm not that old. I did, briefly, purchase 45's for that jukebox I always swore I'd buy. Considering how many times I have moved, it's a good thing I didn't. I do miss combing the bins, make no mistake, as well as some of the best radio stations (WLIR/DRE on Long Island in the '80s, along with Rhode Island's WBRU; Atlanta's 99X and WRAS in the '90s, amazing shows like Tampa's Dark Horizons on WMNF (now podcasting) and WOXY online in the 2000s). And I have suffered the indignities of re-purchasing my music from cassette to cd to digital. Sometimes there are different bonus tracks hiding on the vinyl, the cassette or the cd and you'd have to shell out bucks for all of it if you wanted to be a completist (I'm looking at you, Robert Smith: I paid your mortgage through most of 1989 and 2004).

Pre-recorded music takes up a hell of a lot of room. I scrounged successfully throughout the '80s for strange pieces of furniture to house my cassettes: a wooden three-tiered wine display (slightly tilted forward) was my favorite score. CDs quickly required their own bedroom at the peak of my collector years, to the chagrin of many a roommate/relationship. And my bitterness was always the same, my loathing for the record companies never abated, because they made me purchase entire albums of crap for one good song. 

Towards the end of the '80s, mixtapes became my main vehicle of introduction, identity, affection and art (as well as an effective backup system) well into my compact disc days. Fancying myself a clever deejay, I had endless themes and moods. I also taped off of radio shows (the BBC top 20 countdown on Sunday night were a treasure of tracks I'd never be able to find right away in the U.S.) and bought every "sampler" known to man in the '90s, famished for that one obscure track that would transport my soul to nirvana.

The pops and hisses of vinyl don't send me back as much as the horrible crackling of my walkman eating a cassette tape, or a scratched compact disc skipping into infinity. Seriously, this is what passes for nostalgia.

But that's all dust in my wind here in the 21st century. For the sake of simplicity, space and peace of mind, I have digitized 90% of my music collection, sold what I could get something for, and chucked the rest. The 81.65gb (or, more happily, 43.3 days) of music on my Mac mini (backed up to an external hard drive because the iTunes "cloud" only accepts tracks bought from them, not anything imported) is a testament to both my mania and eclecticism as well as most of my salary for the past 25 years. Will I ever get to the point that I can trust an online jukebox like Spotify to have exactly the tracks I want, when I want? Doubtful.

I am the deejay of my own story and I must maintain some illusion of control. It is an outdated concept, of course, but I believe everyone should own, never rent, their life's story.