Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking: A Beyond Glowing Review

This is a 1,000 candle review, but I should start by saying I am the last person who would attend an Amanda Palmer concert because I don't like loud, I don't like crowds, and especially feisty crowds, and most things explicit make my toes curl. As far as music goes, I'm more an opera-at-the-Kennedy-Center kind of person (and that would include some fairly way-out opera, by the way). I have zip to do with the music business; I write literary fiction, poetry, and essay. But Amanda Palmer, you're a hero to me because you're an artist as shaman, and that's what it's all about, and in The Art of Asking, you explain this beautifully and with bodacious heart. 

For both myself and my writing students, I maintain a list of recommended books on process. I'm a voracious reader but it has been a long Gobi Desert of a time since I've read anything to add to this list. Today, with a big fat star, I add The Art of Asking. And not because the book is about asking—  and "taking the donuts," as Palmer puts it—  indeed, something for which most writers, and especially women writers, need some coaching— but because what it's really about is the meaning and the reality of being a true artist. 

That the true artist is a kind of shaman—we forget this in the noise, shiny plastic, and conformity of industrial culture. Remembering it is a profound gift.

P.S. Watch Amada Palmer singing the "Ukelele Anthem" and giving her famous TED talk.

More anon.

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Top 10 Books Read 2014

Literary Travel Writing workshop at the Writer's Center

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book

30 Deadly Effective Ways to Free of Up Bits, Drips & 

Gimungous Swaths of Time for Writing

Cyberflanerie: Bot and Robotoid Edition

Bots are your slaves. 
Make them work for you. 
That's what they have to do. 
That's what they're made to do. 
Unless you ignore them. 
They freeze. 
Freeze, freeze, freeze. 
Bot, bot, b-b-b-bots.

Song lyrics to be chanted to slow but peppy bongo drums. OK, I'm not getting a record contract anytime soon as MADAM MAYO & THE CUBAN EXPRESS TRAIN. Though I guess I could go on Kickstarter (eh, too busy answering emails...)

Amanda Palmer in her TED Talk

Check out this video of Amanda Palmer, she of those most Berlinesque eyebrows and bodacious stage presence, on The Art of Asking. Now why, pray tell, is Amanda Palmer's TED Talk on Madam Mayo's cyberflanerie "bot edition"? Because everything Ms Palmer is so enthusiastic about doing, from tweeting to couchsurfing to Kickstarting-- and, most essentially, giving her music away for free and receiving money from fans-- is mediated by bots. Bots: our invisible software slaves.

In the book business (my home planet), everyone is talking about disintermediation, that is, authors skipping the agents and traditional publishers and going direct to their readers with self-published Kindles and POD, etc.-- but let's keep in mind, it's not so much disintermediation as it is replacing the human intermediaries with bots-- and those are, in the overwhelming number of instances, owned by a corporation, e.g., amazon.com and iTunes.

Don't get what I'm talking about? Imagine going into a traditional bricks-and-mortar bookstore. For you, the reader, to buy a book, published by, say, Random House, a whole crew of human beings had to, variously:
write, agent, edit, design, format, print, box, ship, receive, market, stock, and ring it up at the cash register.

When you order a Kindle on amazon, however, while most likely a human being wrote it (though there are already books written my computers), there is:
possibly no agent; possibly no editor; possibly no marketing other than uploading the epub to the seller's site (received by a bot of course); no printing (it's digital), ergo, no physical shipping; a bot brings up the title when you type in into the search box; a bot registers your order; a bot charges your credit card; a bot delivers your order to your device.

So is this really disintermediation? Hmm?

A screenshot from
Michael Hansmeyer's TED Talk

More bot amazingness in this talk by architect Michael Hansmeyer, also for TED.

(So how soon until the 3D printers start churning out pearly wonder huts?)

Changing subjects only somewhat, here's a robotoid sculpture, so mesmerizing to watch as it so elegantly churns its way down the beach:

Theo Jansen's Strandbeests

Check out the mini-strandbeest, printed in 3D.

Love this fun little bot (let's pat it on the head...) called the Pulp-o-Mizer which generates pulp fiction covers for whatever you want to type in and/or select.

Et voila - >

Doreen Baingana: The Role of Offensive Language in Novels

My fellow Writer's Center faculty member, novelist Doreen Baingana's recently gave this thoughtful talk for TED@Nairobi.

Why Don't We Chatter Away to the Dead, Too, While We're at It?

Ayy, less than sparkling conversationalists are these individuals who feel the need to incessantly check their email and thumb-away while at the table. (Did they not take their Xanax? Or, was their house just hit by an asteroid?) Well, like my grandpa used to say, your world is 500 people and you choose who's in it, so it looks like Yours Truly needs to do some rearranging of the guest list.

Seriously, I oftentimes feel as if people who have always been perfectly sane and civilized have been enchanted by some evil spell.

P.S. Here's a TED talk by Sherry Turkle, "Alone Together."

(Not that talking to the dead is ever and always a bad idea. Just not at the table, folks. Unless you plan on tipping. The table, I mean.)

G-Speak, the Point and Touch Interface

A 15 minute TED talk, well worth watching. The last minute is especially jaw-dropping. More anon.

Jill Bolte Taylor's Video on TED

Via the ever-whimsical Booklust (one of my favorite blogs), a video of a talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor that will, in more than a manner of speaking, blow your mind. Read more about "Dr. Jill," her amazing experience, book, her appearances, and her art, on her website.