I have long had issues with the phenomenon known as Collective Consciousness. Not because I don’t believe in it. Quite the opposite. I have issues because sometimes it seems as if it is actually a sentient force bent on messing up my life. I’ve had instances of “synchronicity” and co-occurring ideas all my life, every day, in fact. It comes from being an open sort of person. I am used to it to the point where I often don’t even take notice. However, sometimes it gets painful. I don’t think my life should have such a high level of potentially painful synchronous events, but I’m not sure if it’s something that can be avoided. I also don’t think I should it have such a sense of senseless personal persecution. I’m working on that. What my life should have is a soundtrack. I’m working on that, too.
Back to the Collective (Resistance is Futile. It’s true.): In the ’90s I decided to stop dawdling and actually write a fantasy novel. My story was based on an idea I had while reading a Welsh interpretation of the myths about swans. My story was set in pre-Christian Ireland, had distinctly Irish settings and Irish character names (not just the obvious ones). It was a rather short piece as those go, but it was definitely a novel rather than a short story. I don’t think it was all that good in the end, but that’s neither here nor there. I started sending out queries to publishers in November.
Just before the new year, a friend began telling me of this great, engrossing new book by a first time author that she had seen early proofs of. It was a story loosely built around the swan cycle of myths. It had distinct, pre-Christian Irish places and unusual Irish names. It wasn’t mine! I later read it and was appalled to find that it echoed my story in the most detailed ways, right down to several main character names!
I was upset, initially, but I chalked it up to Collective Consciousness, and tried to let it go. After all, Marconi wasn’t the only man inventing the radio. But I didn’t try to write a book again for years.
I’ve mentioned somewhere before how I tell stories on the spot to amuse my friends, I think. In the early part of this decade, I was keeping a running record of what I would jokingly tell people was not called The Guide for Groupies (although, that idea was to be a small part of either of two things I was working on, and has a companion: A Guide to Groupies). One of the things I was working on at the time was an on-the-road look at how the indie touring circuit and life in the van had changed from the old “rock star” model to the new-millennium DIY movement, and how that affects everything from the music to the way artists were engaging with fans. Funding kept falling through, because I guess I wasn’t convincing enough. Few people thought anyone would be interested in reading about the daily lives of touring artists, fan interactions and the new web-based, community-model music business.
Today, that book would be called Amanda Fucking Palmer’s Blog and Twitter Feed, Annotated, but in 2006, I scrapped those plans. The second piece I was writing was a collection of humorous stuff about life as a rock and roll girl. In 2005, before realizing the issues with My Space and ownership of posts, I started blogging there. I also started taking steps to turn my blogs and concert experiences and humorous observations about bands/fans/music and life on tour into a book. Something along the lines of Hollis Gillespie’s brilliant Bleachy Haired Honky Bitch and Confessions of a Recovering Slut and Other Love Stories in format, but about my Will To Rock. It would consist of short, loosely connected pieces, like a collection of columns. Or a bunch of blogs, which is mostly what it was. I believed this would make a fun book because 1998-2006 were filled with snapshot moments of unseen rock history for me. They were also full of fodder, so I felt I should share. Anyway, I often get a giggle and just go. Some absurd turn of phrase twists its way around a backstage encounter and I can’t stop. I have to record it even if it’s stupid (and often it is). I just riff. Some would call it babble (Once, I spent an entire afternoon drunkenly dissecting the second side of Exile on Main Street using mainly Stones’ lyrics as my mode of “scientific” explanation.).
To break up this wordy monstrosity some more, here’s an image of the cover of Hollis’s newest book:
I digress (get used to it!). So in the midst of blogging about shows and albums and bands and my own experiences. I posted little pieces of the aforementioned fodder. In 2005 or 2006, I posted a small sample in a silly blog and I titled it “Rules to Rock By”. It got a lot of hits. It was, I believe, my fourth most viewed blog post during the time I had a My Space blog. I got more comments from friends, and a few from bands, than any other single thing I’ve ever written (and I include the huge backlash about my review of Cheap Trick’s The Latest on PopMatters in that statement!). I received a ton of new friend requests. Some of these new “friends” consider themselves the new generation of the old-school groupies (“Groupie” was a tag for the post). I was pleased to have proof there might be interest in my idea.
Shortly after this, as I prepared my book (and took down all the related blogs because of My Space’s ownership clause), I heard that a famous name’s book was being reprinted to include an added chapter at the end that featured new, up-to-the-minute interviews with modern groupies and die-hard fans. “No worries,” I thought, “So that person already has the big publishing deal and the PR team, I’ll just delay my project a bit so it isn’t seen as too similar (like the swan novel). Because it isn’t really similar at all.” Then I read some excerpts from this interview chapter.
You already may have guessed that some of the interviewees were the new groupies from My Space. As I read their responses to the author’s inquiries, I wasn’t having that deja vu feeling, I was having that, “I’m gonna kill you!” feeling! Some of the answers were word-for-word from MY BLOG. I’m not saying these girls and I can’t have had similar experiences (musicians are more alike than they like to admit), but the phrasing, the choice of adjectives… whole bloody sentences that came from my unique little brain were there in black and white, supposedly coming out of these girls’ mouths for the very first time! And there’s nothing I can do, I mean, it’s not the author’s fault. She has no way of knowing that the answers weren’t formed on the spot. I can’t sue the publishers. And, because of My Space’s policies at the time, I can’t even prove Prior Art.
That, if you are wondering, is the plagiarism portion of this post. Ok. It isn’t truly plagiarism, but it feels the same. Obviously, the above examples aren’t the only times these sorts of things have happened to me. I’m an artist and a writer, and I’m tapped in (in more ways than most). It would be ridiculous to expect that these kinds of things NOT happen with alarming, if seemingly random, regularity. Sometimes they occur because people I know do stupid things (share my proposed business ideas with idiot boyfriends who convince them to steal the idea and then implement it so poorly that it loses all credibility), sometimes they happen because I do stupid things (register this domain and then lose the ability to access it for a couple of weeks while the same friend is still blabbing my ideas about, resulting in a similarly named and themed music/concert promotion and booking site. That was what this site originally was intended to be, A tour promotion and booking company as an arm of the greater independent/virtual public relations firm: “(The) Restless Muse -Always Inspired, Never Tired!”).
Sometimes, these things just happen, like all my proposals for community artistic sites (see creativeallies.com) or all of the label free/label circumventing business and social plans and courses-of-action-to-achieve-greater-notice-and-translate-it-into-success that I recommended to bands over and over again for years (see pretty much anything the group OK Go has done in the last 5 years and you’ll get the idea), but which those bands thought were too “out there” to work. What’s wrong with “out there?” Just because something is “out there” doesn’t make it wrong, or unachievable or not worth trying! Hello? You’re supposed to be artists. “Out there” is your natural habitat (Like bears and Studebakers!)!
Moving right along…
As I was saying, it would be ridiculous to expect examples of the insidiousness of Collective Consciousness not to be regular occurrences. Which brings me to today. After years of health concerns, geographical imprisonment and general “I Give Up”-ness, I have in the past few weeks found renewed inspiration, so I’ve been connecting with people, writing more, exploring other artistic avenues of expression and revisiting my old ideas, business plans, mission statements and grant applications (that’s how I located the one that is what creative allies is now doing). I’ve also found a new sense of invincibility that tells me, “don’t over-think, just do what you want”. So I began resurrecting all the pieces I’ve culled, and even started adding some new ones, for my manuscript for Rules To Rock By. I have been mentally compiling an accompanying soundtrack for this book since that first blog, and I started writing down those ideas with renewed purpose this year, because I think that a soundtrack to a book is a very savvy, somewhat original idea, given that most media and artistic endeavor bleeds into other forms these days. It’d be easy to produce a soundtrack for the book, because it’d be, essentially, a playlist that would feature similar artwork to the book cover. Incidentally, I came across the impetus for the idea that may become that book cover just this weekend while at an open-mic performance during the Wow Hall Volunteer Appreciation party. That’s the kind of synchronicity I can support
All very exciting things, the stuff creating itself in my brain. And it’s all-consuming and energetic, too! I become absorbed in creativity and it just feeds itself, like a perpetual motion machine for sustaining the soul. Yesterday, I spent 15 hours creating logos for a contest on creative allies and writing my new RTRB introduction. I also jotted down plans to self-publish if that’s necessary. My note says, among other things, “Can I use Kickstarter for this like Shearwater did for TGD?” “Maybe live readings to get interest/publisher attention?” I was so happily occupied, I didn’t even realize it was after 1 a.m. Perhaps I don’t actually keep Rock Star Hours, maybe I operate on a “Creatively Clicking Clock”.
This morning, my appointments were canceled, which is ok, because my wheelchair is non-operational anyway. It’s also ok because it allows more time to work on my projects. I scheduled a re-arranging session for Rules To Rock By segments (debating chronology vs. themes vs. location and such). First I checked my email, Facebook and Twitter, to make sure there wasn’t something more pressing that should be pounced on immediately today. I didn’t find pounce-worthy creative pursuits. Instead, I found Collective Consciousness thumbing its collective nose at me.
There’s going to be a reading from a new book at its NYC launch party. It’s not about what mine is, unlike the swan story (it’s apparently fiction about a teen girl who plays bass). It is, however, titled “Rules To Rock By”.
It also has a soundtrack.
This is the place where I’d insert “Here It Goes Again”, because I feel like I’m dancing on a treadmill and I don’t know the routine. However, I think today–and the above post–calls for this video instead:
* All images and media are the property of their respective owners, be they Paramount Studios or Paracadute. If said owners take issue with their properties’ presence in my blogs, they are encouraged to please ask me nicely to remove them. Such items shall be purged, upon request, quicker than you can say “Peregrinations!”
