If I were to reproduce the artwork below on 4 x 8 sheets of plywood do you think people would buy them for window covering during hurricane season? How about if I send this to China and have it made into coordinated towel and bathmat sets, place mats, and doormats? Could I get volume sales in WalMart? How about if I just saw the plywood apart and sell each image for — I dunno — $600? This could transformate the entire art industry.
Alan Herrell posts Clay Shirky’s recent O’Reilly Web 2.0 talk at Raving Lunacy. It’s an eye-opener for anybody who is the least bit of a cliometrician. He posits that millions of brain dead hours we’ve spent on the couch staring into the TV set have begun to be converted to something new, something shared, something constructive.
What dazzled me is that Shirky is done flogging his recent book “Here Comes Everybody,” and has moved on to share other insights. I heard him last month at Isen.com’s Freedom to Connect. Heath Row live blogged that talk with the accuracy of a court reporter.
In this election season, it’s great to hear a public speaker who isn’t simply delivering schtick.
Yesterday I listened to (and blogged) Leslie Winer’s “5″ from Witch. She’s uploaded the whole album to YouTube. Toward the end of “5″ we hear a dramatic harmonic, dramatic to my generation, the simple progression from a high E up to the B above it. At least I think those are the notes I heard. It doesn’t matter really. What mattered to me at that moment was the brief echo, repeated, of the opening of the Buffalo Springfield tune, “For What It’s Worth.” Allusive.
Today I heard “John Says.” I loved it. Cinematic. Reggaelistic.
Blair Millen wrote about this album three or four years ago.
Time and the airbrush removed
reality from the photo I carry
in my wallet, a portrait rescued
from a box of family memorabilia,
a picture to remind me of you.
