Dispatch Number 15 -I'd Rather Be Pickpocketed

Open your ears, your mind, have a better life, came the condescending words from the music peddler when I showed no interest in his self produced music. It was a put down since I would not buy from him or tell him how great he was. I am always polite in my refusal to buy. I don't waffle and I am consistent.

He began with an insincere, Don't I know you? as he tried to get between me and my journal, I was writing a scathing piece on the weak souls of the Rainbow Gathering movement, while gritty blues blasted from my truck. It is the same everywhere, especially backpacker hippie travel havens like this one called Sayurit. I would rather be pick pocketed by an Italian. At least that is a sincere art form and when practiced well, it is like magic. This is to be respected.

The music man was whinny, insincere, and petty.The world is weakened by his ability to publish his own music. The whole vetting process that brings us quality music and writing has been bypassed when art is promoted this way. The New Way is vain and filled with people that have seriously thin skin; to them the first draft or cut is perfect and when you voice otherwise like any editor or producer worth his weight would, they take it personal, they become piqued. You don't understand them.

The world is also weakened by my ability to publish. I hate telling people I have a blog, it makes me sound self important and somehow different, as if I were a writer. Without being vetted by editors I am very little, only vain enough to publicly share travel experiences that were perhaps better laid to rest in the paper journal where they were given birth.

The New Way, self publishing, is filled with mythical success stories of being discovered. It is a myth perpetuated by those of us, the desperate and the vain, who use it -it keeps us in it. It makes the unimportant feel important. We feel superior to the 9 to 5er's who let the anger out on the vicious commute home, hardly contemplating the traps they have worked themselves into.

The system is weakened when we self publish our souls, when good friends might perform an equivalent function over a bottle of wine. With less friends, less ideas we take the shortcut and self publish, instead of working like writers and musicians who use publishers, editors and producers.

I better finish those articles and hope they are accepted.