be the miracle

Last summer when I was subletting in San Francisco (seeing if I could see myself thriving there), I saw a sticker pasted upon a newspaper dispenser on a street corner in The Mission district. It read:

"Give me an art grant."

Nice try, yet I'm not sure that's the way it works in any multiverse. No mystery that a week or so later, I read a most excellent article about artist/waiter Josh Greene, "Tipping Point", in the San Francisco Weekly, July 4, 2007: "One night a month, Greene sacrifices his tips — between $200 and $300 — as a grant to another artist in a project called Service-Works. Around 25 hopefuls a month submit pitches to the program through Greene's Web site. He chooses one lucky proposal each round to underwrite and displays the idea online."

Rather, than wait around for the art grant fairy, why not fund an artist yourself (especially when you feel you don't enough resources to nurture your own creativity)? Why not be the miracle, rather than waiting around for miracles to flow your way?

And don't diss your miracles, or your miracle-ness. They all count. For instance, ever since I realized that quite a few of the baristas at the beloved coffeeshop Coffea were musicians in The Herringbone Orchestra (pictured above), I've tipped better. I may leave anonymous thoughts scribbled in the margins of the dollar bills like: "grace hangs on a note...don't forget you are music." It may not seem like much, but hey, I still haven't paid all my January bills.

I'm really taking to heart Lewis Hyde's The Gift, and devoting my year to gift. There is much that is of priceless value in the world that is beyond the periphery of the world of commerce, and thus won't be fueled by it. Not everyone understands art that comes through inspiration, as is evidenced in an awkward scene in the film Great Expectations when a wealthy gentleman at the club asks the boy-gardener now grown up to be a young-artist: "Do you charge by the hour, or by the inch?" He is speaking in the language of commodities, not imagination. C.S. Lewis in his essay, On Three Ways of Writing for Children, rejects the question, "What do modern children like?" though he acknowledges there were writers of his day who "conceived of writing for children as a special department of "giving the public what it wants". You won't find those market-driven writers among the Tolkiens or the other classic Inklings.

Like poet Ezra Pound, I do not wish to live a segregated life, thus like Pound whom wrote to Louis Zukofsky: "My poetry and my econ are NOT separate or opposed. Essential unity." So, as I kept reading the Ezra Pound chapter, I delighted that it was those who breathed in inspiration like Pound and Hemingway, with limited monetary means themselves, who essentially catalyzed yet more creators of the likes of T.S. Eliot and James Joyce. Here's one excerpt from The Gift:

"T.S. Eliot took a boat to London shortly before the First World War. He was working on a doctoral thesis. He had written some poems, most of which had been lying in a drawer for several years. Pound read them. "It is such a comfort," he wrote to Harriet Monroe, "to meet a man and not have to tell him to wash his face, wipe his feet, and remember the date (1914) on the calendar." He sent "Prufrock" to Poetry magazine and midwifed it into print, refusing to let Monroe change it, refusing even to give her Eliot's address so she might, as he put it, "insult" him through the mails with suggested alterations.

In 1921 Eliot left the manuscript of The Waste Land with Pound, and Pound went through it with his red pencil. He thought it was a masterpiece. [Tis that.] And why should its author not go on writing such masterpieces? Well, he was working as a clerk in Lloyd's Bank in London and didn't have the time. Pound decided to free him. He organized a subscription plan called "Bel Esprit." The idea was to find thirty people who could chip in fifty dollars each to help support Eliot. Pound chipped in, as did Hemingway, Richard Aldington, and others. Pound threw himself into it, hammering the typewriter, printing up a circular, sending out a stream of letters."

And: "As Hemingway wrote in a little "Homage to Ezra":

We have Pound...devoting, say, one fifth of his time to poetry. With the rest of his time he tries to advance the fortunes, both material and artistic, of his friends. He defends them when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. He loans them money. He sells their pictures. He arranges concerts for them. He writes articles for them. He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying and he witnesses their wills. He advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide."

p.s. One of the things I'll be working on this year is a way to get some sort of microgrant social network up and running - sort of a cross between Josh Greene's fund (but anyone can join in, on either side - giving, receiving) and Kiva.org. I'll be discussing this and The Gift at this weekend's BarCampNOLA.

Art credits The Herringbone Orchestra's Flickr page.

Comments

[Marilyn]

Can't wait to see how this idea unfolds for you...

[Rita Patel]

lovely, can't wait to be a part of it!

[arkieology]

Pound spent a good deal of his time in the teens, 1914 to 1921, being the chief co-writer of a magazine called the New Age with A. R. Orage. In addition to publishing poets and literary criticism, they championed the ideas of Social Credit founder C. H. Douglas, German-Argentinian anarcho-economist Sylvio Gesell, American monetary theorist Alexander Del Mar, and Physicist turned economist Frederick Soddy. Douglas's chief solution to the economic problem was the citizen's dividend, an unconditional payment to all citizens, and Gesell's invention of Stamp Scrip, money that deteriorates over time. The Cantos are a trip into the hell of the modern world of money, but he left a road map for the way out, the chief vehicle being the universal citizen's dividend. In this way, not just his friends like Eliot, who dedicated The Wasteland to Pound, but the entire human race would be free to follow their muse.

[Christina (@doublespiral)]

As a very happy Kiva financier, I am very interested in this project! It sounds like a really great idea. Please keep me posted and let me know how and when I can get involved. I'd really like to help in any way I can!

[Christina (@doublespiral)]

One more thought: This reminds me of a part of my philosophy on how to make the world work better for everyone. For too long, society has spent it's time and energy trying to legislate against everything we don't want, so the focus is predominantly on the negative. Always focusing on the negative only begets more negative. We will truly make the world a better place by creating opportunity, encouraging goodness and beauty and supporting the things we want to see more of in the world. It's about living in line with what we mean to encourage, rather that what we want to eradicate.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks, Christina,
I loved this: "It's about living in line with what we mean to encourage, rather that what we want to eradicate."

BTW, @MarilynM sent me this quote: "You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller

Ark, I could write pages (and I did in my hipster laptop, aka journal) in response, but quickly, I'm more about changing coming from us individually holographically, rather than reforming what's "out there." So I spend time on the Hawaiian shamanic method of H'oponopono or Byron Katie's The Work, and Jung's shadow and projection work. Funny, as I hadn't even read the entire Ezra Pound chapter when I wrote this post, as I finished it recently I see that the author dug into the Jungian shadow side of Pound in a very intriguing way. I'd love to send you a copy of 25th anniversary edition of The Gift if you send me your address.

We can all follow the muse, and it doesn't have anything at all to do with money, as I write on the dollar bills, "don't forget YOU are music." Hip-hop and graffiti and break-dancing had its start in the grimmest time of South Bronx history. I wrote my "40 days of rapture" effortlessly in my journal at the brink of facing my fear of starvation; I decided to reframe it as a fast, I modeled after Jesus' 40 day fast in the desert.

In fact, now that I've pitched this idea to a few other people and put it out there, I'm less inclined to make it about raising MONEY, and more about how to collectively chip in with resources, time, and connections to move projects forward in a community-minded manner.

[arkieology]

I hope we are agreeing, because I take such great inspiration from your writings and your quest. What I am attempting to do is follow Bucky's dictum of model making and not to change what's out there, but to create something new that can promote and sustain community and life and love on our planet. Bucky's last book, the Grunch of Giants, (Gross Universal Cash Heist) was about the great beasts that have been loosed on the planet that devour the resources that would sustain communities. I have attempted to make a new model of money, salmoney, that does just that. Pound and Buckminster Fuller were key sources in the making of that model, as you were a key inspiration at times that kept me on the quest for the grail. I just believe that there are people on the earth who are kept from doing what they are inspired to do by the way money is now used. Pound and Fuller believed the same, but they did not leave it at criticism of what was, they searched hard for new and at times old ways that would create a new ground of being for human interaction. I am not waiting for monetary permission to pursue my quest, but I also know that whatever poverty and economic hardship I have is by choice, not necessity.

I have created a new kind of money, not because I need it to pursue my destiny, but because my destiny was to pursue a new kind of money. I believe its source to be VALIS, vast active living intelligent system, and I also believe that it does exactly the kind of things that you seek in your models. So thanks E, for all you do, and I'm so glad you're still doing it. And I will keep doing what I am doing. My book "Redeeming Money" is available for free download on lulu.com. Pound and Fuller and you all figure prominently in it.

Namaste. And I will send you my address via e-mail and would love to read The Gift.

My favorite system of old times was the Potlatch, which was an economic system based on large celebrations in which the host worked years to prepare a feast and gifts for all attendees, and then gave everything away. The Indigenous People lived a quite beautiful life on the Puget Sound until the "Christian" missionaries outlawed their feasts.

[shooting flash games]

I hope we are agreeing, because I take such great inspiration from your writings and your quest. What I am attempting to do is follow Buckys dictum of model making and not to change whats out there, but to create something new that can promote and sustain community and life and love on our planet. Buckys last book, the Grunch of Giants, (Gross Universal Cash Heist) was about the great beasts that have been loosed on the planet that devour the resources that would sustain communities. I have attempted to make a new model of money, salmoney, that does just that. Pound and Buckminster Fuller were key sources in the making of that model, as you were a key inspiration at times that kept me on the quest for the grail. I just believe that there are people on the earth who are kept from doing what they are inspired to do by the way money is now used. Pound and Fuller believed the same, but they did not leave it at criticism of what was, they searched hard for new and at times old ways that would create a new ground of being for human interaction. I am not waiting for monetary permission to pursue my quest, but I also know that whatever poverty and economic hardship I have is by choice, not necessity.

I have created a new kind of money, not because I need it to pursue my destiny, but because my destiny was to pursue a new kind of money. I believe its source to be VALIS, vast active living intelligent system, and I also believe that it does exactly the kind of things that you seek in your models. So thanks E, for all you do, and Im so glad youre still doing it. And I will keep doing what I am doing. My book Redeeming Money is available for free download on lulu.com. Pound and Fuller and you all figure prominently in it.

Namaste. And I will send you my address via e-mail and would love to read The Gift.

My favorite system of old times was the Potlatch, which was an economic system based on large celebrations in which the host worked years to prepare a feast and gifts for all attendees, and then gave everything away. The Indigenous People lived a quite beautiful life on the Puget Sound until the Christian missionaries outlawed their feasts.
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