Think Harder

I take back what I said about New York not being an art hub. If you think about it, the population density is what makes it something of an art hub. If, as I previously suggested, it is no more an art center than any other city because art and art production chiefly exists within the minds of a cities occupants, more occupants means a denser more interleaved art community (not necessarily more interconnected). If we want to value a cities artistic merits based upon production and the potential for creative growth then NYC rightfully ranks high. If we want to assign value to the degree of interleaving and interconnection that produces art like a gene pool than NYC likely won't rank nearly as high as smaller cities and that is because smaller cities possessing the critical mass of community participation that makes increasing densities only marginally more appealing or useful to the community of artists then a smaller city would easily rank higher for the simple matter that the weave will have fewer threads and more contacts between the threads that do exist.

Surely the potential exists for a person who specializes in technical writing to meet up with a fashionista and produce something God awful or God sent, but as the population density grows well beyond the critical (and indeterminate) density of creating minds the chances of that meeting shrinks and the potential for compartmentalization and xenophobic design grows. I think that's what I was trying to get at before. NYC is not what I expected because I hadn't considered the difficulties in meeting with other people across the geographic mass (if you laid out every floor of NYC in a two dimensional plane it would probably be half of the size of New York proper) or the difficulties entailed in navigating the purposeful dilution of the contacts being made by those who aren't actual producing artists, but who seek to participate for lesser motives (if personal motivations can be ranked from the pure artist to the profiteer and name plater). And that is what has been a little bit of a let down.

The upshot of this is that the individuals are statistically "out there". I just have to find them. So I'm going to start actively looking through my terrible internet connection. I doubt I will find many in Queens, not as a generalization of the population's abilities, but absolutely as a generalization of the population's visible activities.

I think there was something else. Was there something else? Well, look, I wanted to do the inception poster and I am fed up with thinking about it and knowing that I can't upload it even if I did do it so check this out:

_h

^^^There's your poster. I was going to draw an old school circa 80s architecture chair falling backward into claw foot tub with geometric water and various aging and weathering appliqués and pastel Pantones. Since I'm on a 56kbps connection you'll have to settle for the low low loooow fi version. Bam, done. Well at least now you have the recipe so you can go do it. Stick with reds and grays for the text and a faded yellow tub with seawater colors in the tub or some combination of those colors with a two or three color palette for that really nice low budget mass distribution feel. At least that's what I think about the matter.

Lastly I hate middlemen. I spent some time today trying to think of a fun way to describe them. The hand shakers. The go betweeners. The thing is, middlemen are essential to civilization, but even in "uncivilized" society they serve fairly critical roles. I tried to find an axiom that painted them honestly without coloring the words with my own misgivings and hatred of where I fall in the relationship of middlemen to the greater contingent. I came up with: "Middlemen: Making Life Easier and More Expensive for Everyone Since the Dawn of Time". I think that about sums it up. They let us all be lazier. They give us opportunities to pay for opportunities to pay for things and it's so difficult to be on the paying side of their equation. If you're on the production side, you love middlemen. Middlemen find you purchasers. Middlemen create your demand where none may otherwise exist. They help you find customers and they help customers find products, but for absolutely everyone involved costs go up. American is the land of the middleman and if you produce anything or buy anything your dollar costs just went through the God damned roof of what they ought to be. Your time and energy costs may have gone down, but that's an artificial deflation. A trick of conversion and magical math and the incomprehensibly tangled relationship of the greenback promise note to what it cost you to get that slip of paper. There's a special hell for the middlemen. And wouldn't it be hilarious if it was managed by middle managers who answered to no one.

No, I suppose it wouldn't be hilarious. It would be Six Flags America.

You know how I know we're not in hell yet? Scratch that. I don't know. Added a story to Bits. Suck on that. Or just read it. Is it bad if you go to a job interview and they don't tell you what the job actually entails, but ask you to come back for an all day interview? I hope it's a boiler room orientation and not the beginning of a real life Battle Royale. Both were good movies, but the main reason why I would prefer Boiler Room to Battle Royale is that I still have writing to do and can't really afford to risk death on an Island. Well, no I take even that back. Lots of take backs today. The thing is, if I die, something is bound to be published. And that's all a body can really ask for. That and a spectacular death.

///Pink Floyd - "Shine on you Crazy Diamond VI" It takes a lot of musicianship to hold a listener for 12 solid minutes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers almost nailed something close in their song Californication, but they fell several hooks short and ended up with something you can nod off to after the first minute and wake up to in the last minute. Floyd nailed it. Experience enhancers optional.