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

Thinking Aloud About Funding

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the funding qn boils down to "Who is going to pay me/us to think?". And then a sensible follow on question is "How do other people get paid to think?" - or more directly "Who pays other people to think?"

Academia is one obvious answer, but it isn't the only one.

Consumers and advertisers are another answer, in terms of the 'literary magazine' model (the "LRB of music" that keeps getting mooted on ILX and on UK music press threads) but also magazines like The Believer and McKinsey's, I guess. The problem is that launching that kind of publication isn't a way to make a living - it's funding to keep the project going, rather than to put shoes on the feet of the people doing it.

Political/economic think tanks - who funds them? We used to put "Pop Culture Think Tank" as the strapline of Freaky Trigger - it wasn't (or I didn't manage make it such) but I liked the phrase and the concept: that's another model. I guess philanthropists fund some of them, interested parties another. Who would be the DDR's interested parties? Who benefits from the work you/we/it would do?

Finally, business also pays people to think - consultants, futurologists, trend spotters, analysts. They pay people really quite a lot of money, though they tend to be proprietary about the ideas that result. Could the DDR pitch itself in any of those terms - could it produce saleable ideas that would be in dialogue with its more public or freeform output? It's possible that commercial pressure, somewhat like a good editor, would actually encourage the completion and development of ideas.

Re: Thinking Aloud About Funding

[koganbot]

One description I've given of a potential magazine I would like to read (as of right now there are no magazines I like to read) is "a cross between the New York Review Of Books and Smash Hits, but with a message board attached." I doubt that there's a market, though. Smash Hits is defunct, and Luc Sante tells me that he and Geoffrey O'Brien - both in their 50s - constitute the New York Review's youth movement.

Hmmm. My brother works for a political think tank. I've never thought to ask him where the money comes from.

Re: Thinking Aloud About Funding

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

'who is going to pay me to think?' is often abandoned in favor of the more practical 'who is going to pay me to do something else while tolerating the fact that i will also think, and possibly throw a little extra my way for it?', since the latter better expresses the conditions under which anyone will pay.