A hypothetical consumer of the full spectrum of my prodigious textual output could tell you for nothing that I am borderline obsessed with Kickstarter. I dig the weird fairy tales it creates, the psychological structuring of successful stretch-goal fueled campaigns, the actually pretty regular very cool things it actuates in the real world. In my innermost demon-haunted world though I'm ensorcled by the whole hypothetical merit-based lottery aspect of it, I love the fantasy of the big bucks, even if it's probably mostly an illusion, the hyper-successes being a portal for their unfortunate creators into a world of manufacturing hassles, brutal reward fulfillment schedules and razor-thin margins that can tip a projects budget so quickly into the red (see Steve Jackson's comments on the massive Ogre Kickstarter (look to the 2012-2014 Stakeholders archive links for the relevant), ferisntance, or the ongoing commentary of Double Fine's hugely goal-breaking and currently fund-strapped adventure game project).
I can personally never come up with a project though because the only thing I routinely produce is, as previously mentioned, volumes of text. My most routine output being, for want of a better term, poetry, for God's sake. I used to make a little bit of music and very occasionally make a little visual art (observe my bold and original logo design for this new little corner of the increasingly irrelevant text-o-sphere) but I've found it terribly difficult to persist in these pursuits lately.
If I had my druthers, if I were free of the specter of need, that is, I do believe this is what I would do though: my scribbles, my tunes, my doodles. I know I do not deserve these things, that I have not earned them. And the bootstrap gospel with its good news revival message of the path to pull oneself up to the next level of everything is a book I've not yet found to read.
But anyway I was joking with Thomas over dinner the other night that I couldn't deal with the hoops and restrictions of Kickstarter anyway and as such I was going to roll my own project and call it Sick Tartar and now here it is and I'm scratching my head, wondering what am I going to do with this now? If nothing else I guess I can use it to cut any and all talk of lucre, of my pessimistic musings on the utility of my dismal obsession with putting one word after another, of my ponderings on existing as a creator on the thinner than hair thing mile-long trailing edge of the long long tail from my other textual properties. Maybe it is just a joke. Maybe I'll show it to no one, ever. I chose to begin it, nevertheless.
And the title? Naturally, from a song of the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment