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

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

What's funny is that in my (limited) experience with interdisciplinary-friendly (and, in theory, interplanetary-friendly...y'know, the kind of people who coin phrases like POST-CONCEPTUAL <--!!!!!!!) academics, they're all for these kinds of ideas but they can't or won't do anything about it -- so you'll have media classes with post-structuralist theory and new media and batshit crazy documentarians in Iraq dropping by in their van etc. etc. etc., like intellectual party time...but when you get to the nuts and bolts of THIS IS COOL HAHAHA BUT HOW DO WE DO THIS AND CONTINUE TO EAT you (er, I) get responses like "well if you want [i]money[/i], try copyright law." Or, obv., remain in academia and hope you win the lottery and/or get tenured (about the same odds). (And the bureaucracy supporting said interplanetarians absolutely won't budge as far as funding any of this stuff.)

So fuck it, if I make a movie and it sells and I get rich, or if some academic institution continues to be fooled by my "brilliance" and throws some cash my way, I'll open the department myself and pay for it out of pocket. AND I'll make it seem like I pulled miself up from my bootstraps, too. (And hey, maybe I can find a crazy rich old bat somewheres, too.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

grrr, MONEY damn you nuILX. MONEY MONEY WOO.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(Should note w/ irony that new adjunct prof pals at the very school I'm about to attend myself are in a worse position financially and benefitwise than I am working at a boring-ass flunky job where I post to the teenpop thread, goof around, etc. about 3 out of 8 hrs in my day.)