Late this afternoon, we'll head to an art film at the newish Angelika Theater in Plano. We'll try the new seafood restaurant located nearby.
Last night, I consumed a book in record time, and then posted an Amazon review about it. I like the little notice "You are the first person to review this book!".
Then I went to Hypnos.com, where the bulletin board features the best ambient music interaction. Unfortunately, the fellow on the bulletin board with flame boundary issues was engaged in another exchange of words with an ambient artist, after he gratuitously launched an assault upon her, questioning how well known she has become and the extent of her sales. In fact, the attacker was in the wrong, because the artist in question has quite a European following. Even had he been right about her sales, what does it matter? I get so bored of this notion that unless you are popular with everybody, you are nothing. I see this malignant cancer spread even within friends of mine who are very gifted artists, who imagine that because people do not buy their work, or put them in galleries, or publish their novels, they are lesser beings. I am not sure that type of thinking ever had a place. If it did, technology has removed any reason for looking at life that way.
I love, as most of us do, a little recognition. But my poetry, published, as with most poets, rarely and in obscure little journals nobody reads, does not become legitimate because a magazine with a circulation of 8,000 prints it, or if a chapbook competition chooses it. It does not become legitimate if a professor at Oberlin writes about it, or if NPR does a piece about it, replete with a Magnetic Fields backing soundtrack. The only advantage to such things is finding a few readers, making a few sales. But it's all dross. The ideas, the works themselves, and the ability to connect is all that matters. That's not to say that getting published "legit" is wrong--of course not. But in ambient music, when all the best music is done by people with almost no audience, it's amazing to hear an aficionado worry that a particular artist has low sales.
I hope I find fish tanks today.