Department of Dilettante Research, Part 1

[koganbot]

I've vowed to myself to post at least three or four times a week on a dream I have that I humorously but absolutely seriously call "The Department Of Dilettante Research." Basically, these posts will be a cry for help and a call for ideas and allies. I'm at an impasse, in fact have been at an impasse for the twenty-one years since I committed myself to writing. What I want to do is:

(1) create an intellectual conversation (defining "intellectual" far more broadly than most "intellectuals" do) that

(2) doesn't close itself off from the world in the way that academia and journalism do (because in closing themselves off from the world, academia and journalism close themselves off from too much of the intellect), that

(3) discusses stuff I care about (social analysis of the life that underlies music being one thing but hardly the only thing), and that

(4) makes it possible for me to earn a living writing the things I want to write.

To do this I need colleagues, I need good formats, and I need a way for it to bring in money. Formats aren't a problem, actually, in that I invented a good format in the first incarnation of Why Music Sucks, and Tom Ewing essentially invented the same format a decade and a half later for I Love Music (only dif being mine was on paper and his was online): people ask questions, bunch of other people answer, and discussions, brawls, come-ons, and parties ensue. And there's no reason the discussion can't spill into articles, books, reviews, blogs, etc.

But so far the discussion has sputtered and misfired, doesn't know how to sustain itself, how to move intellectually. As I wrote in a Cure For Bedbugs comments box, I discovered early on that no one really wanted to fly with me. That's only a slight exaggeration. I won't go into all my complaints, just say that I'm desperate to do two things: (i) light a fire under the colleagues I've got so that they actually respond to my ideas and don't fumble away their own, and (ii) find more colleagues, probably by reaching into academia, though I have no idea how to do so.

Or how to find a way that someone will pay us. "Department of Dilettante Research" is not a joke. Maybe someone somewhere will be willing to fund a "department" - not just a message board or a magazine - that acts as a gathering place for a lot of interesting people. But also, if we think of the "department" as also free-floating from fanzines to blogs to message boards to e-zines to magazines, I need someone who's fucking willing to pay me to write the stuff I want to write. After I put out the first issue of Why Music Sucks, it was like, "I really love your zine, therefore why don't you come and write record reviews for us?" - as opposed to, "come and do the sort of thing for us that you're doing in your zine."

Next post will be: More on my vision. Why I use the word "dilettante." But for now I'm down to:

--I need colleagues.

--I need money.

Comments

...and pros

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I think my fundamental feeling is that academia is just too closed, or too prone to closing in on itself, to provide a home for the DDR (as a partner in dialogue with it is a whole different story, of course). I'm sad that academia is like this, and it's the main reason why I have a profound ambivalence about it. But I don't think it's the only part of the world which has this tendency, so I don't beat myself up too much about it -- and I think the difficulty of something like the DDR is exactly what would make it such a great thing, potentially, i.e. because almost all conversations tend to evolve their own languages and protocols over time, and so to exclude outsiders, however well-intentioned the people who started the conversation were, a quasi-institution which sought to constantly renew and challenge itself in order to maintain some degree of openness would be a valuable and rewarding entity.

I think it's a terrific idea, and I wish I could see a way to make it work. I wonder if a better model would be that of a small militant group. In effect, there would be a core of people sworn to uphold the values of the group, or whatever (which given this is something like a commitment to pluralism, and to trying to keep things open, and to challenging themselves, wouldn't be as naff as it sounds); they would be required to act as ambassadors, i.e. recruiting people into the group's projects, making connections on behalf of the group (on as many continents as possible, I guess), and promoting the group as part of whatever else they do. They would produce some kind of newsletter (I'm assuming online for practical reasons if nothing else) regularly as a focus, but with the understanding that this wasn't their primary aim, which is something more like a combination of insurgency in other people's conversations, and hosting a range of different conversations/projects of varying anticipated lengths (i.e. not necessarily open-ended). I think the idea of presenting itself as a quasi-institution, i.e. using the trappings and structures of other research organisations (specifically the think tank world) would make it recognisable enough for other people (i.e. editors, possible funders, journalists, academics) to be amenable to dealing with it. So I can imagine the DDR at work; I can imagine some of its activities...

...but, the big 'but', is that I can't see where any money would come from, short of philanthropy.

Re: ...and pros

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Recruiting a trust fund kid would be a brilliant start! Anyone know any?

Re: ...and pros

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Ha, I think you've just described the Onion...

Re: ...and pros

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(And if this were an Onionesque venture, it could work if it could attract (1) an audience and (2) advertisers. The real question is the start-up costs, which is the real problem at hand here, I think. Hey, I know, get the Onion's ad guy on board! That's what Pfork did to double/triple ad revenue.)

Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness

[koganbot]

Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness

NEW YORK - Millions of eyewitnesses watched in stunned horror Tuesday as light emptied from the sky, plunging the U.S. and neighboring countries into darkness. As the hours progressed, conditions only worsened.

At approximately 4:20 p.m. EST, the sun began to lower from its position in the sky in a westward trajectory, eventually disappearing below the horizon. Reports of this global emergency continued to file in from across the continent until 5:46 p.m. PST, when the entire North American mainland was officially declared dark.