The personal expression platform wants to do sound and it wants to do pictures and it’s going to want to do motion capture eventually but right now it just wants to be able to sing, recontextualize, and join the great chorus of call and response.
So, to sound. Cecil writes music, sings, plays guitar, and plays piano. Bob and Jeff from the Uncalled Four are both hugely talented musicians. Their group was my own personal Nirvana a year before grunge made the ’70s play clothes of my childhood (think corduroy and plaid flannel) into a fashion statement. We were kids then, though, still mostly in our 20s, and when a Nirvana came along, the dominant impulse was to give up, instead of thinking “look what can happen when things are going right.” Of course I need a better example than one that ends with brains on the wall. Too bad Nick Hornby already wrote the Nirvana novel. Oh wait, I’m doing it again.
And plus, nobody’s done the Camper van Beethoven novel yet.
Also, GarageBand is here. As soon as I get some scratch I’ll want Panther and an iPod and a decent mic for my inimitable cover-song stylings.
Really what I need to do is talk to Michael o’Zoka, who’s a decade ahead of me in understanding how to digitally grease the wheels of music.
Hey, my band needs a sound guy and a midi clarinet player and a graceful system admin. We need a drummer too.
And that’s just the music. I’m rounding up the writers and artists and book designers and coders and crowd from Nightjar and Too Many Cooks and Enterzone and Arts Beyond Borders and Watchword and To-Do List and (the good, old school) Bust and Coffee House.
I’ve got ideas for Open Publishing. I have some intellectual property sitting on the shelf. I’ve got some not-ready-for-prime-time plans brewing down at the meme house and the metaphor barn.
I need help. I can’t do all this stuff alone. But I wanna be your lover baby I don’t want to be your boss. Don’t ask me to hire you and handle your insurance in this fucked up dying-off system. Work with me. Do the stuff you want to do and get help with the things you need help with. We’ll barter services and we won’t even keep track. I’ll pay too if that’s the only way to get things to happen. (I’d happily pay MichaelZ his hourly rate just to come in and consult on my media tools and make some hardware, software, network, and config information.)
If any of this is making sense, I apologize.