Important but Quite out of Character

Warning - this is something I do not normally do on this blog but it's important. Possibly for me it's the most important thing on the Internet. 

I am going to write about someone else's blogpost instead of fiction or theory or hidden reality. 

This is a public service message to those who mistake the Dreamtime for the Meatworld.

Ready. OK. 

George RR Martin is NOT your Bitch. 

Neil Gaiman said so, and in saying so highlighted the interchange that has bothered me so very much on every internet comments board I have ever read. 

Please note that I didn't do the "Highlight link" common to blogs on either the quote or Mr. Gaiman's name. I will give you the link but I'd like to make my comment linearly first, and then we can get all non-linear afterwards.

The Summary

Some poor gentleman by the screen name of Gareth asked Mr. Gaiman his opinion of a circumstance where Mr. Martin blogs about his work but won't cough up a release date to his readers for his next book. Gareth is in reality both polite and introspective about it, but he is frustrated. He was looking for a reality check to his frustration. 

Rather than reinforce his discomfort in the echo chamber of Mr Martin's comments section, he reached out to what he thought of as an accessible and open peer of Mr. Martin's for his opinion of whether or not his own frustration was reasonable. While it set him up to really be ripped a new one by the ravening hordes of the internet and indeed illustrates the ease of access we have to creators in the incredibly democratized internet world, it does in fact, show that he realizes his needs might not be the only needs involved. I know you're itching to see what he wrote. I'll link to it. I promise.

He asked Mr. Gaiman if the audience actually has too much input into an author's actions because of all the blogging and tweets. And if Mr. Gaiman's readers would think he was "slack" if he announced a book and didn't say anything about it for two years.

However he also asked quite reasonably but still, with a sense of entitlement, if all the blogging and the exposure to his fans meant that Mr. Martin had more of a responsibility to finish the story than someone who didn't engage the public.

Neil Gaiman responded quite accurately - No. George RR Martin is not your bitch.

Ok - that was important to me because I wanted to make sure that Gareth's very real attempt to get a reality check on his sense of entitlement was not dissed out of hand, because it's important ( although weird that he had open access to another famous writer to do it).

Because if you like Mr. Gaiman then you will be all in Gareth's face, and if you think artists are automatons you will be all in Mr. Gaiman's. And honestly, they both deserve more thought than that.

Now I'll post the link

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html

My Personal Bit

Here in the House, the residents know that I have been waiting to send an e-mail to Mr Gaiman to ask his permission to use something of his in the Poppetropolis Project. They also know I feel odd about it, because I am intensely aware of the fact that I do not know Mr. Gaiman personally and that I have been more exposed to his work because of Lisa's than the other way around. I have not sent the email yet, at least partially because I know that he is swamped due to his blog and I have no wish to add to it. I will eventually, because I really wish to use that thing and since the internet is open and the Poppoetropolis Project will be there I would like clear permission to use it. But it almost feels like an invasion of Mr. Gaiman's space. I also have to send a similar e-mail to Cat Mihos, who I do know, but it's an odd request and it feels a bit "look at me" and I'm not comfortable with it, although probably in the end not only will both parties not mind, they will most likely forget it within 2 minutes of seeing and/or answering it. 

So it boggles me that everyone is so absolutely sure that the author or artist SHOULD do what they want or listen to them or work on their schedule. Things go the way they go. Gone With The Wind took 10 years to write and has a devoted following and fan fic. JK Rowling's whole life morphed in the decade that she started writing Harry Potter to the end when it was done. Things change in a decade. Susan Boyle started getting flak for dying her hair when she saw herself on TV and realized she looked old. 

Why do people think they own you because they see your image and care? Obama's donors who donate 10$ think they have the right to demand fealty to their ideas because their 10$ got him there. In some sense they are right, every 10$ counts but he needs to listen to the other guy who gave him 10$ that doesn't agree with you and the guy who gave McCain 10$ because that guy is still a citizen. There is a difference between "support" and "ownership".

There is a difference between "I love your work" and "Here we are now - Entertain Us"

And there is a difference between "You entertain me." and "Because you entertain me I can judge you, because you entertain others I hate you"

And of course there is the eternal problem of "He/She/It's a public figure so they asked for it." 

No. They didn't. 

Because IT changed and They are all swimming in the current of that change trying to navigate IT and still do what they are driven to do. 

They are still human and private. Their public lives were never meant to crawl inside their windows and strangle their private lives in the cradle so that their personal ups and downs could be judged by people who want more than what they already offer. 

Politicians should be judged on voting records, artists on art, your lover on fidelity, you favorite actor not so much. 

Artists don't exist to comfort, they confront. Someday Poppets may not speak the language Lisa does anymore, that will mean that she should make something else. I do not need Lisa to make Poppets just because they speak to me. I will wonder and wait for what she makes next. 

The exchange of cash only rents a prostitute for so many hours. Then that prostitute does whatever she/he/it will do without you. The book in your hand is a whore. If you demand that your artist do what you want, you are not a fan, you are a wannabe pimp, attempting to force the artist behave the same way as the whore in your hand simply because that whore pleased you for a few hours. 

I miss some of the sense of being humbled by people who work hard and have talent. I've met some very famous writers and am lucky that I can separate the work from the artist. But the internet causes such a sense of intimacy without knowledge of other people's craft, that it blurs things a bit and people might feel like they know. 

It's a short step from there to having them feel like they know enough to make judgments. I understand. I disapprove. 

I remember when artists were allowed to stumble and fail. It was how they grew.

You do not own the one you like, it is not your duty to destroy the ones you don't. 

Really.

Fahrenheit 451

I had not read Fahrenheit 451 until this afternoon. My son has been reading it with enthusiasm, which is not the way he generally reads. It's certainly not the way we greeted him reading A Clockwork Orange. This led to the uncomfortable occurrence of us watching the Kubrick movie together.  That will be a completely separate post. 

I do like Ray Bradbury, and I've had the novel in my house and have for as long as I can remember, left behind by some roommate, or boyfriend long gone. But I have not read it. So my son asks me about it over  and again. Then last night he brings me his laptop and says there might be Poppets inspired by Fahrenheit 451! So Lisa Snellings Clark has actually written about her concern because she is close to having a wall of TVs and she's fairly sure Bradbury would not approve.

To be honest she makes me wonder how she can accomplish all she does with so many TVs - We have 1.5 here. It forces us to share. I cannot abide TVs in the living room and I won't let one into bedrooms unless you can cover them up. This is my own preference - I did not grow up this way, and my parents have more TVs than people.  

But the TMC ( too many coincidences) factor was too high, and so today I've read the book - which means now I'm thinking about the book, about belief and fire and the nature of dystopia. And if we're living in one now. 

First thing - around page 9 poor unsettled Montag is walking with Clarisse and sees her family on the porch and asks her  what they were doing ."Oh, just my mother and father and Uncle sitting around, talking. It's like being a pedestrian only rarer."

And I laughed aloud and my immediate thought was "Poor Ray Bradbury" because he already saw things going that way in 1953. Because it's true, for both halves of the statement.

When my daughter's friends come over they are surprised by the fact that we converse at the table. We hang out in our living room and talk to each other. We eat most meals together in the dining room. (not in the helicoptery "because the magazine said so way", but because the food is ready, and if you want to eat, it's placed on the set table.) So we converse with each other. About stuff.  About  books and webcomics, and people and art, and the nature of God,  and why book reports matter, and politics and respect, and manners and poppets, and work and school and how we are spending the next 24 hours. This week we spent alot of time talking about why Kubrick made A Clockwork Orange about Kubrick's views of sex instead of Burgess's view of sociopathy and redemption. We agree that maybe Kubrick should have seen a therapist. 

We'll be the first against the wall when the fireproofing comes.