Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Guns, Predictions, Promotion, RKBA
Just a quick note: So far, the response to the ballistics project mentioned in my last post has been very positive. It is already propagating beyond the first couple of contact points, as people cross-post the information. We had almost 500 unique visitors to the site yesterday, some 3,000 page views. So that’s exciting!
More (not firearms related) later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Guns, Predictions, Press, Privacy, Promotion, RKBA, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
I’ve mentioned several times recently the ballistics project I’ve been involved with over the last year or so. Well, last night we migrated the temporary site over to its own domain, and except for a few tweaks it is pretty much done. Sometime probably this weekend I will post a comment promoting the site to a couple of the forums devoted to discussing firearms, and then all bets are off as to what happens next. (I’d ask anyone reading this to not spread the word to such forums just yet – please let me do that when we’re ready.)
For those who are not interested or knowledgeable about firearms, this whole thing may seem a bit silly. Actually, it is a huge project which will significantly add to the information base available to shooting enthusiasts, and as such will likely gain a great deal of attention both online and in the print media devoted to firearms. I’ve cautioned my two cohorts in the project to be prepared for a bit of a whirlwind of interest. I doubt that it will penetrate into the general media the way that my Paint the Moon art project did, but in the gun world it could very well be just as well known.
And the anticipation of that is kinda fun. As private a person as I am by nature, I enjoy doing things which are interesting or innovative enough to gain some level of attention, to povoke people to think about something in a different way or to expand their awareness of what is possible. I think that is a big part of the reason why I blog, and why I wrote Communion of Dreams – to help shape the world. This new project will do that in a very tangible way.
So, we’ll see what happens. Wish us luck with it.
Jim Downey
While I am on vacation, I’m having some old posts from my archives queued up for your enjoyment. If you’re interested in following the progress of the tour, a friend of mine has set up a blog and the Choir will be posting pix and text as things go.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Published in “Legacy Online” October, 2003
The Hunger Artist
the man in the box There was a man hanging in a plexiglass box over the Thames in London when I was there last month. A man who was starving himself.
David Blaine‘s recent spectacle didn’t get a lot of attention here in the States, so you may not have heard about it, though the completion of his 44 day fast was covered by NPR yesterday morning. But it captured the imagination of just about everyone in the UK, and was one of the most common topics of conversation I had with people during our two week vacation. The fact that Blaine is an American probably had something to do with this, but even so, the progress of his fast was covered regularly and extensively by all the news outlets. Reports of the analysis of his urine (done by independent labs, with the strictest security), and what it meant about his medical condition was standard fare in the papers, discussion with leading doctors about the dangers he faced the longer he fasted was a the subject of morning programs on the television. Everyone speculated about whether he was somehow cheating, how long he could last, what it meant.
I don’t know where Blaine got the idea for his fast. But Franz Kafka wrote a short-story titled “A Hunger Artist” which seems to be a template for what Blaine did. In it, the Hunger Artist would perform for 40 days to the increasing interest and agitation of the crowds, his manager selling tickets to those who wished to view the performance. If Blaine didn’t know about this story, he should have.
So, the question is, is it art? It was a performance, certainly, and I suppose that in one sense this means it was art. It was an interesting conceptual piece, a mechanism for grabbing the attention and imagination of an entire nation, so that is a kind of art. (Remember, I considered my “Paint the Moon” project of two years ago to be a piece of conceptual/performance art with the same critieria.) But in one way I don’t want it to be art. Blaine lost almost one-third of his body mass during his fast, and may well have caused permanent damage to his heart and kidneys. Would that then mean that any kind of public mutilation could be considered art? Certainly some people would pay to come and see it. People already have, actually, since this sort of ‘performance’ has already been done in some venues. So, how far do we take this? Blaine (intentionally or not) staged a real version of a Kafka short story. Could someone else stage a real version of that scene in a recent Hannibal Lecter movie where one character dines on the brain of another, while that other person is still alive? How about staging a real version of Salvador Dali’s 1936 painting “Autumnal Cannibalism” in which two figures are eating one another? Would that be art?
Filed under: Feedback, Marketing, N. Am. Welsh Choir, Patagonia, Promotion, Publishing, Travel, Writing stuff
Well, this is post #500. Figuring that posts average about 500 words (that’s a guess, but I bet that it is pretty close), this blog has generated about 250,000 words – about twice the number of words in Communion of Dreams. Of course, even at that it has still been a whole lot less work overall than it was to write and revise the novel. And it has been a good venue for me to promote the book, as well as to explore a number of things happening in my life.
A bit about that first point: CoD has now had just shy of 12,000 downloads, and I would once again like to thank all those who have helped to spread the word. Given that this has been done entirely word-of-mouth, that’s very gratifying. In the coming weeks (once we’re back from vacation and things settle down) my wife will be taking over the job of promoting the book – I just haven’t had the emotional energy for the long slog it takes to try and go through round after round of submissions and follow-up. She’ll be a bit more removed from the thing, but still has a great desire to see it succeed. And she may decide to explore some non-conventional options for publishing and may do some guest posts here to solicit ideas and support.
In a week we’ll be going on vacation – I’ll set up the blog to automatically post some items, so those who like to stop by will find fresh content on a regular basis – but I will not be posting from Patagonia. Look forward to getting some travelogues from our trip later, though! Things might also be a bit light in terms of posting here over the next week, because I still have a lot to wrap up before we leave.
And speaking of such, I need to get busy . . .
Jim Downey
Just some quick numbers.
We’re now over 11,600 downloads of Communion of Dreams. Since the beginning of the year that’s over 5,000 downloads, almost 500 downloads of the audio version of the book. This blog has had over 26,000 views (and my filters have caught over 15,000 spam comments – sheesh!). This is post 480 – I’ll have to think of something special for 500, I suppose.
Thanks to one and all who have helped to make these numbers a reality, who have shared my writings with others, who appreciate my sometimes offbeat sense of humor and odd take on the world.
Jim Downey
Shawna Johnson was my manager, my assistant, my friend during a large portion of the time I owned and operated Legacy Art here in Columbia. A very talented artist in her own right, I also found her an invaluable resource at the gallery. We’ve maintained a close connection over the last several years, since she moved to New York to fight the good fight there.
Last night she sent me this meditation. After reading it, I asked if she’d allow me to post it here, since she talks about things I have referenced several times, and echoes many of my own thoughts. With her permission, here it is.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Legacy became a legacy on May 31, 2004. The doors were closed and locked. Nothing was left but the dregs of a half-keg of stout from Flatbranch Pub and some empty plastic cups scattered around. The gallery space of 4000 square feet looked bigger than it ever had before. Each nail hole in the wall seemed to stare out at me, silently accusing. The ceiling fans clicked and their flat sound just reverberated in the dead space. Every inch of that space seemed to be waiting for something.
The only artwork that remained was the floor sculpture of Jim Kasper. It was a jester head. It stared out into the vast emptiness with a similarly blank expression, and said nothing. Just like the jester, everyone was putting on masks that day. Not out of deceitful urges, but because they just did not know what to feel. There really were just too many options. Memories crowded around, butting into conversations, demanding to be recognized. Maybe they were afraid of becoming legacies too.
Most artists came in rather subdued. For some, it appeared to be similar to going to a funeral. They spoke softly, as if out of respect for the dead or mourning. Or maybe they just didn’t like the way the mammoth space amplified their voices. One voice stood out over all. Jim Downey’s forced boisterousness comforted many and gave them the direction they needed. His laugh was heard booming overhead quite often, as if to retaliate against the despair, or to say something noble and profound about the unconquerable art spirit. Many left that day inspired by him to keep fighting the good fight. Few of us knew the fight that was going on inside of Jim. Even fewer knew that the laugh and the effort behind it were both forced. I was grateful for his effort, for it gave me the courage to do the same. As his assistant, it was crucial that I stay in synch with the tone he set. He projected the spirit of undaunted hope and continually repeated the list of victories, insisting that everyone focus on what had been accomplished in eight years of trying. I found myself saying the same things, as if we had rehearsed beforehand. We hadn’t. I just trusted his leadership and followed the tone he set. It may just be the only thing that got me through that day. Or through the next two years. That litany of good deeds running through my mind helped me to ignore the sounds of defeat.
Now, four years later, I am finally listening to some other sounds from the past. Each day a remembered voice penetrates my mental filter, or the image of an artist’s face. Scrolling through my phone’s list of stored numbers, a name jogs a memory. Often I have hurried on, refusing to accommodate the memory. But they keep coming back. Lately I have begun to allow myself to linger for a moment, here and there. Was Jim’s method the best for dealing with the loss we all experienced? I don’t know about right, wrong, or best, but it certainly enabled us all to survive and to put that day behind us. Now I have begun to bring it back, piece by piece, in manageable portions, to process and evaluate. To cleanse myself and let the wound heal.
My position at Legacy enabled me to see a lot of things. I saw how, for many people, art is simply decoration, a background for what they see as real life. It is not a necessary commodity, but a luxury of sorts. Most considered their art purchases as some kind of treat, and bought only on special occasions. People constantly needed to be reassured of the validity of their purchase. Very few felt confident as consumers to decide for themselves which paintings were better, and seemed to think there was some hidden magic code that they were not privy to.
I, on the other hand, felt quite confidant in my role. I knew what I believed about art. I knew what was good or successful art based on formal qualities and my own definition of art. I easily shared these things with patrons, offered them guidance, and encouraged their own confidence. People often left the gallery feeling bolstered by my input, whether they chose to buy that day or not. I felt that because of this, we were making progress. I believed it was possible for one little gallery to change the face of consumerism in that college town. I was convinced that if people were simply educated, they would come to see what I saw and value art as I did. Once that happened, the money would follow.
We had a wide range of price brackets. Anyone could afford something in our shop. In fact, when Jim ran the numbers that spring, he determined that if all of the members of our mailing list had spent ten dollars a month, we would have more than doubled our net income. (Ten bucks seems like nothing to me, living here in New York.) There were five hospitals in our town of 100,000 residents. We were home to the state university and two other private colleges. It seemed logical to deduce that there were plenty of intelligent, cultured people who could afford $100 annual investment in the arts. If only we could educate them and provide a safe, secure environment for them to ask questions and grow confident in their ability to choose which painting to buy. That was my theory.
So, what went wrong?
The subject perplexes me. It has to be a combination of factors…I’m just not sure which ones were most prevalent. Every time I examine the question, I come away with a different answer. How do you keep from repeating the past when you can’t understand it? At one time I thought it possible to change the way Americans view art. Now I am quite shaky on what I think. I see increasing evidence that the ones responsible for America’s view of art compose quite a stockpile list. All arts professionals have an influence: curators, gallery directors, teachers, grant-writers, critics, the media, and even artists themselves. Perhaps artists are the most responsible.
I would like to know why we failed and if there is any chance of redirecting this avalanche that is swallowing up my hope. Is it possible to change the system? I don’t want to grow old wondering, “What if…?” And I also don’t want to end up an old, bitter, jaded person who tried to change it but eventually accepted that resistance was futile. Can I live with myself if I don’t try? Can I live with the world if it doesn’t turn out to be what I want it to be? These two questions present an essential crossroad in life which I am trying not to view as a roadblock. In my efforts, I constantly fall back on Jim’s method of remembering old victories. I also think it’s O.K. if I let the engine idle here a while as I let myself refuel.
Shawna Johnson
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Book Conservation, Feedback, Guns, Health, Migraine, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction, Sleep, Society, Writing stuff
As I have noted, I have been fairly busy of late. And in looking back over the last couple of months, I can see a real change in both my energy level and my ability to focus – it’s no longer the case that I want to nap most of the time. Yeah, I am still going through a detox process, still finding my way back to something akin to normalcy – but there has been a decided improvement. Fewer migraines. More energy. A willingness to take on some additional obligations.
So I had to debate a long time when I was recently contacted by a site wanting to expand their scope and impact. These folks. They were wanting me to do a column every two weeks, more-or-less related to Science Fiction (giving me a lot of latitude to define the scope of the column as I saw fit). They have a lot of good ideas, and seem to have a pretty good handle on where they want to go in the future. And the invitation was a real compliment to me – not only did they say nice things about my writing, but they have a good energy and attitude which is appealing.
But I declined the invitation. Why? Well, to a certain extent it’s like Bradbury says: “You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”
I may come to regret this decision. It could possibly have helped my writing career, at least in terms of landing a conventional publishing contract. And I know from writing my newspaper column that the discipline can do good things for me – forcing me to address a specific topic rather than the more general musings I post here and at UTI. But I really do have a lot on my plate right now, and they are all things I want to do well, rather than just get done. Blogging here (which is really quite important to me). Participating at UTI. Crafting this book about being a care provider. Getting the ballistics project website up and running. All the book conservation work waiting for me. Eventually getting to work on St. Cybi’s Well again. And enjoying life. There’s been precious little of that these last few years.
So, I declined. But if you perhaps would be interested in the gig, they have contact info on their homepage.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Book Conservation, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Sleep, University of Missouri, Writing stuff, YouTube
I took some books back to Special Collections yesterday afternoon. As I was unpacking items, one of the staff members asked how I was doing.
“Pretty well. Been busy.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “You look – rested.”
* * * * * * *
On Wednesday, in response to a friend who asked what I had going on, I sent this email reply:
Need to do some blogging this morning, then get settled into the next batch of books for a client. Print out some invoices. Also need to track down some camera software and get it loaded onto this machine, and finish tweaking things here so I can shift over the last of the data from the old system and send it on its way. Need to work on learning some video editing, and start uploading clips from our ballistics testing project to YouTube. Then I can get going on creating the rest of the content for *that* website. Play with the dog. Should touch base with my collaborator on the Alz book, see where he is on some transcriptions he is working on. And then prep dinner. In other words, mostly routine. Yeah, I lead an odd life.
An odd life, indeed.
But here’s a taste of some of the documentation about the ballistics project that I have been working on:
That’s me wearing the blue flannel overshirt. Man, I’m heavy. I hope video of me now would look better.
* * * * * * *
The chaos continues. Yeah, we’re still in the process of completely re-arranging the house, and of seeing to the distribution of Martha Sr’s things. Looks like there’ll be an estate auction in our future sometime next month. But that’s good – it means that things are moving forward, heading towards some kind of resolution.
As mentioned in passing in the email cited above, I’ve been shifting over to a new computer system I got last week. My old system was starting to lose components, and was becoming increasingly incapable of doing things I need to be able to do. Well, hell, it was 7 years old, and was at least one iteration behind the cutting edge at the time I bought it. Thanks to the help of my good lady wife, this has been a relatively painless transition – though one which has still taken a lot of work and time to see through.
And one more complication, just to keep things interesting: My wife is moving her business practice home. This had been the tentative plan all along, once Martha Sr was gone, and for a variety of reasons it made sense to take this step now. She’ll be able to devote more of her energy to seeing to her mom’s estate, hastening that process. And she’s going to take on the task of shopping my book around agencies and publishers. Now that there have been over 10,000 downloads (actually, over 11,000 and moving towards 12,000), it would seem to be a good time to make a devoted push to getting the thing conventionally published, in spite of the problems in the industry. We’re hoping that she’ll be better able to weather the multiple rejections that it will take, and I’ll have more time and energy for working on the next book (and blogging, and the ballistics project, and – oh, yeah – earning money for a change).
* * * * * * *
She looked at me for a long moment. “You look – rested.”
“Thanks!”
It says something that with all I’ve been doing (as described above has been fairly typical, recently), I look more rested now than I have in years.
Actually, it says a lot.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Humor, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction
Last Friday we crossed 10,000 downloads of Communion of Dreams. By Monday we had another 500 downloads. By this morning it was another 435. That’s 935 downloads in a week. Or, put it another way, that’s a 9.35% increase. Sorta like a return on investment. Let’s see . . . a simple interest calculation . . . 10,000 (base) x 0.0935 (% increase) x 52 (weeks per year) . . . in one year, another 48,620 people will have downloaded Communion at this rate. Of course, if we *compound* the increase (saying that we’ll not have 935 downloads each week, but rather a 9.35% increase each week) then that results in over a million downloads (check it yourself).
Woo-hoo! Time to get a publisher – who wouldn’t want a million-seller book?
Big-time, here I come!
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 