a light dusting of thoughts while reading about NFTs
“You can’t reclaim a thing that changes as you touch it.”
― Jonathan Lethem, Amnesia Moon
it’s the urge to touch, to hold, to own
the laughing and crying, an active process
which makes it impossible—who’d be worthy
of owning a volcano? Who’d be worthy…I preach
piling up doctrine which could be read, but so what?
maybe it’ll just be more damage to undo
in my quest to be different from myself ceaseless
(GPL 9/21/23)
“are you still performing?”
“not currently”
*
the computer is a gateway drug back to the land, to the old way of doing things, to move on from computer-based ‘ego status climbing invisible ladders’ games to real life, real service with our hands, real credibility earned from praiseworthy others, since “praise from the praiseworthy” is really what we crave and the only way to peace of mind, self-satisfaction and what might be named success
growing up means taking responsibility for the world, for all fathers and mothers, all families…
*
i think they’re selling they-ification and protection through membership, when really they’ll throw you out when you cease to generate money for them; it’s like a corporation but for kids
*
trying to be bigger than the world
in the arena of flames and desires
i warm myself as bodies thrust themselves, plunge into the flames of digitization, becoming JPGs and pixels to sling and swap, to count and counter
hungry for the juiciest fight, the harshest judgment; we don’t want pleasure (we maybe being millennials, those trained for perfection but needing a leader, a luminary, somebody or an ethos worth following; laws and their enforcement; being addicted to the United States Department of Defense is fine, the goblin swallowing two-thirds of our budget, if we actually defend against and fear the right things
(GPL 1/2/23)
fear of being left out, fear of not being included in the list that spells Good and Yes, fear of lack of livelihood may be a fear of boredom, a fear of lack of fame, a fear of being the mundane, of not having a story, of being a loser compared to your peers
so it’s endless shadow battle onscreen, trying to be good enough, to weave yourself into belovedness and being chosen by the high-ranking officials, the real ones, the governors of real life, material, on the grid, real reputation, real brand and stake, The New York Times bestseller list, for freaks of the industry, those so hungry they’ve oriented their production function around the vast swath of the maniacal depths of the ancient wound; the real pleasure is playing at the edge with the best contemporaries in the game, then getting to gather with them, knowing we suffered together in silence in what is now the past; ah, working alone all day in anticipation of interesting company ~ that’s worth suffering for; passion means to suffer for—what is worth your suffering? What would have to earn it?
*
unique combination of Web 2 and Web3 — expertise, particularly around loyalty
https://www.fastcompany.com/90825421/nfts-are-dead-long-live-digital-collectibles
identity is about loyalty
(GPL 12/19/22)
how to code presence; inner voice so loud——how to admit and make this public, disrupt the old order; a language of making sense that works for me must be made interoperable with the world’s…related, the notion of coding that which compiles: the great shame is you must fit yourself to meet the world and also chop the world down to meet yourself…one can’t just follow or simply lead; one dances, a paradox, the dark turmoil of fangs and refusal——poetry, beauty, romance, love, distance, sadness…all of it like Taylor Swift——see, you must become infinite, beyond the business babble, beyond those who need to log on and ask “What are we doing today?” —— hearts just know, for artists only maybe
(GPL 9/6/22)
be the author and integrity of your own blockchain, and have no doubt you can shoehorn it into the whole
living free from judgment for ~5 creative (abstract, cosmic, concrete, solo, visionary) hours per day, then landing the plane into the whole — this is “build and sell”: make your thing that’s completely you, then immerse yourself in others’ creations and ideas …
*
the boys want the way out, the cure, the antidote, to solve the open hole—insecurity; close it up, fill what’s empty: a house, cars, food, exercise, inbox zero—chasing God, lusting for closure amid resonance and distance ~ they want freedom and security
Q: In which direction is the pendulum that you describe between freedom and security swinging at the moment?
A: These are two values that are tremendously difficult to reconcile. If you want more security, you’re going to have to give up a certain amount of freedom; if you want more freedom, you’re going to have to give up security. This dilemma is going to continue forever.
so eventually one becomes a watcher, making fewer decisions (adding them to the grid of the decided, to “what’s done”, “what’s real”, the real place; I’m more interested in the lusting for the real, the story of reaching out, the mathematics of why *not* doing it is a condition to overturn; why we can’t just stay here now, why we have to move, build, grow, increase—not decrease, not listen, not just live and be ~ why right now is not enough…and art (the supposed art being forged in the smithy of the extremely online ragers under 30) should turn our eyes to God and inward, to absorb the pattern, to accept it’s us, and we live in peace beyond competition, competition is for fun (8/4/22)
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the promise that you will be OK if you’re honest; but money does not easily come to those who make art from their open hearts and souls; nobody seems to care because everybody’s doing it / the only solution is enduring, losing expectations, living in and for the work
*
maybe this becomes a list of men to save
maybe the metaphor of ownership will have to be debunked person by person, every boy trying to be as safe as his father made him and his siblings feel, a distant man in suit and tie fighting the war, keeping accounts clean and balanced
every man must face why ownership would make him safe, and why he can’t give it up and let it be everyone’s; why must he stand supreme?
*
i am making a blockchain, you could prove it—it’s here, undeniable
the fetish of ownership as a way out, to cure the incurable, fill the unfillable, make life not hurt or ache or throb so much, whereas all wisdom and certainly creative inspiration (and meaning in life) comes from feeling, and feeling so much
fear of not owning is interesting; fear of being in trouble, being at risk…is real life, is being alive itself
“the best you can do is to have experiences and adventures that mean so much to you”
infected with this idea you can make money from storytelling, from opening up, from letting your freak flag fly—if you dare to discipline passion, and you can dedicate your whole life to it, wring out all expectations of earning anything beyond another free day to create, share, love and improve things for others—which now involves listening, witnessing, being a place where someone else can see they are real
“To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
“So, if you’re trying to leave your mark, if you’re all about accumulation, you’re missing out. The truth is we’re all just grist for the mill and the best you can do is to have experiences and adventures that mean so much to you. Because ultimately you’re the only one who cares, the rest of us keep on keepin’ on, focused on our own little lives.”
no one cares
speaking to the void teaches one how deep and lonesome it is to be awakened, to see things for what they are: the cosmos are there, we are small and fleeting, will shortly join the ranks of history, speaking of which, shoutout to those who’ve gone down in utter silence, those not named in the written world:
it is very difficult how to save yourself; i keep believing and having faith in the fact that the intensity of the longing to be OK does all the work that can be done, and luck intercedes somewhere, or memory ~ I remember an older man telling me about the Parakletos, the motherly defender, a Greek term…all I can say articulately now is: we are saved by something, somehow we persist; I wonder if life is one long struggle in the dark like Lucretius said it was; can only reverence save me? Only wonder? The day is so long, the hunger for security so loud; what could really cure me except lasting ’til tonight learning firsthand again that things work out all right if one just keeps going; is that truth enough to make life worth living? Do we want to live alone? Is being loved by way of others collecting my output (and automatic accretion of my ongoing output) enough? I give this away for free, it doesn’t cost me anything, I’m indebted and grateful and amazed that I was chosen and tolerated while I disobeyed, bucked and brayed for my time apart, alone in a room to bring this forth from within me. Is this a victory lap now? It’s all just copy tomorrow, and the loud world whirrs up again, failing Democrats, depressed older people watching the world disappear, the young anxious and suicidal about jobs and owning a house, safety receding, planet heating, news worsening, no educated actors seem able to move the needle, no leaders anywhere
(7/17/22)
so we make art about being afraid and try to become/transform into the one who isn’t afraid of what we ourselves articulate; we are constantly walking through the fire
*
integrity is the
love won’t lead you astray
it may be true that Love is all you need
clinging to coins is just a fear of what you think you won’t get by believing only in love, and letting the other games lag behind and accrete around you, which they always do—love is a lost puppy looking for home, depending on someone to feed it, someone who wouldn’t analyze the relationship too much to try and engineer and design a superior way to …use their freedom and leverage and optionality; all the running away the computer programmers try to do to assure their own freedom…they just meet the need to be loved, the puling and humiliating need to be loved, and the inessentialness (superfluity?) of all the so-called “work” they do that isn’t about loving and being loved, welcoming in the natural world that need not be regulated or counted out of fear of there not being enough…
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“If someone is trying to convince you it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a pyramid scheme.”
wisdom is silent, wisdom is free, wisdom survives hours of silence and is persistent like reality itself—it comes back after you’ve forgotten about it
yes, clinging to coins is what one does when one is cold because they fear they don’t really have talent and won’t be kept on the team unless they cling to their power—it is letting go and letting yourself feel hurt, abandoned, cold, scared — and then BREATHE! just BREATHE! like Wim Hof the Iceman says
talent is everything, coinage will follow because ultimately those that cling to bags don’t believe in themselves—they only believe in their money, they let their money speak for them
*
it’s all about shoring up our fear and suspicion of not belonging, of our not being guaranteed protection, of our doubt that it’ll be OK
i am remiss to post this link here because the image featuring one chris dixon is not my intent, because really, menlo park being my hometown, these guys are so lame — false idols and gods; i prefer artists, writers, comedians, painters, poets, singers, musicians, ones who go into the truth, who abandon business (and find it on the other side, as talent and courageous individuals who are worth sculpting and putting in town squares as equally as they’re worth attending and listening to when they are giving their gift — ultimately the internet is a mirror and a way to gather strength, but the next and ultimate move is always to reach down into yourself, take a drink from the ocean washing up on the shores of your innermost being, and begin again as if heaven and hell depended on only you ~ the heroic aloneness, deepening it until being yourself is reborn as play, and there is nothing to fear — no being left out or being misunderstood or unheard that could possibly stop you from unlocking your own soul ~ nothing could destroy or impede your faith that bringing out the voice in your head is the only way to go
i am happy with my aloof disbelief, and i found my own family apart from the noise and slush of wailing toddlers longing for a mommy to cling onto
being right is lonely, being free is lonely, but it’s better than being dependent on some tit, some number in a database; freedom need not promote itself, it is happy without anything it doesn’t have—the truth is, it has everything, even the haters and the addicts to portfolios and scenes, dependence on gatekeepers and heroes — artists are the real deal; being an artist is everyone’s fate, it just takes stripping off all armor
now, the real move for me would be to edit down the Medium posts to only the ones that fork lightning for me now; reduce the number of posts, make each one a site of soul-thrash and turning myself upside down and shaking out the rust
and i have no fear it will happen, all i needed was the infrastructure of the web, sorry to curse the a16z daddies but i like being disobedient, a renegade, a heretic and outlaw; i like proving i can live outside the law and with few possessions and obligations, a hero committed to his own adventure and a stylish death, and a generative life before death, becoming legend because it was an interesting thing to do
*
It’s all about who will keep me in the game! Raw wanting to stay is always the good stuff: raw staying power. In my twenties it was about showing up at the office, being stylish and smart enough; we are museums of fear, and being right about ‘us’ or ‘you’ or ‘me’ does nothing! Being right does nothing! Enduring is everything—getting older, getting out of bed. Being real, knowing yourself. Computers and arguing over ownership and proving who owns what…it’s a mug’s game—a stupid and gullible person; a violent criminal or troublemaker.
wrestling with being abandoned—this is the creator’s journey: being OK being alone, being OK being your own viewer; faith that the others are you
so of course ~
I really have so much rage around this—wanting to be sponsored, owned, celebrated, paid for; it’s all a negotiation for your own freedom, and who you’re performing for ~ ultimately the money is just in the background; you pay rent, you get older, life is long and the years are short—the mind is bigger than the world; it’s also not
virginia woolf, no emily dickinson
andre gide
now why not leave my notes for remembering? isn’t this post the ultimate NFT? and i keep it free; no one actually likes negotiating about the price of their soul ~ music says it better (Arcade Fire, “Flashbulb Eyes” coming to mind)
Edit story
the truth is everything’s liquid and each day the Maker has something new to say, …ownership rankles everybody: we want to win, we want (it’s disgusting, the enormity of desire)
tressie cottom lecture about writing and images, the internet, accountants and lawyers, owning your own work first, companies wanting to own the intellectual energy of creative individuals
who would I be stringing it together for?
the ultimate question is who is it for: it is for love; it’s why Francis Bacon painted, it’s why anyone creative does anything—an attempt to get back to some state of being loved; to crawl back into the womb, but it cannot be entered, it is gone, we are stranded here in interregnum ~ all there is to do is love one another and die gracefully, live so hard that death will shed a tear to take you, and there in the underworld you live forever, your bits circulating in whispers here above the ground, the living walking on hell gazing at flowers
the creator is alone, but in that aloneness, equal with everybody else living—the challenge then becomes living, both enjoying and enduring the self (the apparently necessary self-absorption of monetizing your very existence enough to keep financing and affording the roof over your head; ultimately it’s a game of you making meaning of minutes; and maybe ultimately (see this lust for the end? sorrow’s twin—now that’s a title for something)
i forgot where i was going; i was going to say, these thoughts are sculptural, and really the reward and compensation for enduring capitalism is the chance to cultivate an awareness and a listening/paying attention practice; it is not what you get in life, but it is what you give to others to make their lives less difficult; there is nothing to hold onto (no tokens, no coins) but each other; coins are for those afraid of being touched—it’s like a warm mother made of metal; she isn’t real but it feels warm…metal has that conductive power to warm you back using your own warmth.
*
“when i am making a film, i am the audience”
divine whispering becomes fragments on the page, and the work can always be more; finishing only satisfies a hunger for finished products (a tweet comes to mind ~ from flowerville, about a finished work only being finished out of some necessity—really, the questions are open, and our sitting with them has always only just begun; it is new every time, each encounter is fresh, the memory is wiped or tossed together in a new way; there may be no continuity
is today any different than what’s below? The present has no end; eventually the individual comes to the end of the argument, the trying to prove and hide, the needing to assure; all of a sudden, you’re free: free from striving, from fear of not having done enough. The watch is wound up; the spring starts to go
*
might just pile up things that i think are worth tracking (isn’t this my creative process everywhere else?)
reminds me of:
“Why has Bitcoin failed? It has failed because the community has failed.”
humans are wired for small tribes, for trust ~ as soon as the community gets too big we default to abstractions…
don’t you love how someone/you can always just change the contents of a post? I wonder if we’re ready for a world where anyone can view, anyone can comment and anyone can edit
anyway, keep scrolling even though you could be anywhere else in the world
ok well this is learning
more to learn!
> “an artist should always be compensated when their work’s value rises, and with NFTs, this is now the gold standard”
This I can believe. I am reminded of the film The Price of Everything (2018)
thanks to the scintillating conversation here
“the digital art world” is just social media but with the vigor of having a bank account and being able to pay others money to keep doing what they’re doing; the artist doesn’t make the work for others…the online world is a vast canvas, burial ground, worship center, echo chamber, cave wall for anyone and everyone to work out their trauma, belonging, identity, future, psychology…the digital art world was already here, you just had to curate the internet that way ~ it is less about “the digital art world” and more about who you are as a listener, collector and organizer of symbols and conversations; it is about you stepping up as a designer of your own architecture: you taking responsibility for building the house of language, sound and color (and names) in which you will spend your day thinking and talking to yourself
> “Digital art is having its moment”
I would say this has been happening forever; what’s new is one person’s particular enthusiasm and conviction that something important and ground-shifting is happening. This is as much youthful vigor that always insists on its originality and being unprecedented as much as it is an objective report about an actual market and industry reality, and a legitimate claim about a trend over a period of linear time.
> “ the artist earns a 10% cut of every secondary sale (i.e. any time a collector re-sells their work to someone else for a higher price)”
this I like.
i wonder if this investigation isn’t just about how lonely I am. When we start talking about who owns and cares about the output of my incessant desire to be free from my own memory, personality and imagined/believed boundaries, we are talking about the metaphysics of redemption and how it is talked about in a culture in a country with a military on a planet being run amok by ignorant, powerful egomaniacs and sociopaths. But that conversation isn’t fun or cute.
I am skeptical that someone else will give me the platform on which to build my Collection. Of course I have already let Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Smule, Patreon, Substack, LinkedIn and Facebook host me for me; SoundCloud, Spotify — corporations whose products I am addicted to using and may die using; I don’t know if I have the strength to wrench myself away and make new habits, find new gods and practices; I may be out of reinventions at the ancient age of 34 (how old is that in dog years, fellow internet dogs? Is there a fair measure for how tired I am? What kind of thermometer or scale should we use to measure such a depth? An accelerometer? How do they measure earthquakes?)
so long as collectors pay, great! It’s fascinating market of people trying not to be lonely
> “owning digital art becomes playful”
all you really own (and it’s conditional) is the favor of the artist; the “play” in this example is little more than asking other people if they’ve seen your friends and all the nice things other people say about their friendship. They are signifiers of something one should not be so insecure about as to need to carry a token. The thing about friendship is it’s inexplicit. Same with gratitude: as soon as it’s public beyond the person it’s about — as soon as gratitude for someone becomes a social fact visible to others — it is manipulative
interactive trading cards ~ that’s what’s being sold. I don’t need representation for how I’m interacting; I can message and make meaning of the messages all by myself; this authority that supposedly brokers ownership and legitimacy/authentication is an already unnecessary third party whose symbols are meaningful and necessary only to those who can’t make meaning on their own
the records of ownership that matters are the ones connected to militaries; the records at/in City Hall matters because that’s who owns the property; that’s who can call the cops and enlist the staff of violence practitioners whose livelihoods depend upon fulfillment of the obligations of their jobs.
it’s all about who’s selling the tokens, and how legitimate and important that organization’s “ownership record” is to those who are talking
“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
so they’re not really collectors, they’re supporters ~ what they can ‘collect’ are accolades directly from the artist for the support to do the work — but again, the work is done before the art is finished and able to be perceived as a done thing
> “There’s a real appetite among collectors for digital art, and NFTs are finally making it possible to easily buy and trade unique pieces.”
but even if you buy it, you don’t own it, you just own the certificate ~ certification and creativity have nothing to do with each other, even though they appear to exist in parallel. Depends what game you want to be playing with your days, your computers, your identity, unknowability and death.
> “the original collector can choose to resell it to another collector for a higher price”
it’s like you’re trading light from dead stars
> “The secondary trading of digital art using NFTs makes things even more exciting.”
but then it’s just a copy of a copy
thinking of that reminded me of this:
but the thing does not exactly convey the feeling of what I think the thing is
“Anything processed by memory is fiction.”
― David Shields
the thing about owning and talking about a created thing is…you’re not creating (this isn’t true: you’re creating meaning and culture around objects; myth is being recast in your hands, as every new generation inherits the world)
upon returning to the actual thing,
> “While we believe that digital art accrues value the more it’s seen and appreciated”
a thing’s value is what someone will pay for it right now; it has nothing to do with belief or believing or with a “we”
> “digital art can be sold to a collector, while still remaining accessible to everyone else”
this credit is false. The real credit goes to the person who was supporting the artist while they were making it, which necessarily means it is a period before “they have made it” and raw belief in the artist is required
an artwork is already able “to freely circulate in the digital realm.” What if you don’t care who owns it? Isn’t that a childhood game of trading cards? Isn’t scarcity a myth? I don’t really think ownership is as important as stewardship and worship. The architecture that really matters is how we choose to live mentally: how we choose to structure our lives (mostly digital) about our 10,000 brain cycles per day, our daily addition to “the blockchain” of days we can’t get back but don’t/won’t need to ~ see, this is all a reminder that we are infinite
this leads to thinking about what is free
if I don’t care who owns it
who’s minting NFTs?
“one-of-a-kind tokens that represent a unique good or asset” given by who to whom?
buying and selling, as if access is not the thing
the architecture of where we swim: our trophy room or Twitter? What we own or what’s just been said?
I don’t know if I believe in scarcity
“collectors can have fun buying and trading them”
I’m interested in who facilitates the marketplace, who owns the stadium in which all this remembering-as-transacting is being conducted
all depends where you look to “keep track of provenance and ownership”, if your heart knows more than whatever the facts appear to be onscreen; all depends which conversation is stronger: you and the ultimate/infinite, or you and what’s in the database
cash in on that virality
