I shall call this the sentence of disappointment. Or the sentence of broken promises. It goes thus:
I am not Martin Luther King, nor am I in the position to campaign for black rights. Mainly because a lot of people already did that a long time ago to great effect. I sometimes wonder who will be the Martin Luther King of the gay rights movement. I hope it's Neil Patrick Harris personally; my current favourite homosexual.
Anyway, while I will not be talking today at any length about rights, I do have a dream.
Smooth David, onto the point.
My dream is quite simple, and it's an idea I've had for a few months now and not really shared. Mainly because it only formed properly in my head about 45 seconds ago.
My idea for my blog in the first place, as I'm sure you know - if you don't, then have a click on those links over there --> where've you been? But anyway my idea for this blog came from a sudden fear I had that I wasn't trying everything I should be trying, in all areas of my life. I'm a 21 year old man living in London, a city which screams 'come here! Experience me!' That sounds sordid and I don't even care, I experience the hell out of this place.
I love trying things because I love discovering new places and new things to interest me and benefit my life. It's an incredibly positive way to live to be willing to give anything a try and I can only recommend it, it's up to you whether you want to follow it too.
The tricky thing is though, how to find things? Most of the time I go on a random adventure somewhere, say London, and while there something will catch my eye and I'll give it a go. The other day it was seeing One Man, Two Guv'nors. I had no plans to see it but I was walking past it, there was a friendly sign saying 'tickets for tonight!' and I walked in. I flashed my National Theatre pass and saw one of the best, funniest plays I'd ever seen for £5. On another note I want to get an FBI style flippy wallet for my NT pass. Or maybe I'll wear it as a badge on the inside of my outerwear.
My point is, on my spontaneous adventure I experienced many things, this play for instance. In the play there was a band playing between scenes. They're called 'The Craze' and they're my new favourite band and my soundtrack to writing this blog. I think it would be silly to merely go to the NT website, click on the shop and purchase their album there. I suggest instead scooting over a couple of tabs, getting yourself an entry pass. Skipping over to the tab next to it and using that badboy to see One Man, Two Guv'nors and then buy their album at home. They're amazing, they're a skiffle band with a punky, indie twang to their voices. They're like the Beatles meets Alex Day, the Youtuber formerly known as Nerimon, who I also suggest you check out.
This is my point though, not everyone has the time or the patience to go on spontaneous trips to London. As much as I think everybody should because I have a lot of fun doing that, but it would be good if there was another place I could visit, here on the internet which pointed me in the direction of The Craze, or Alex Day, or One Man, Two Guv'nors, or indeed the quirky shop I discovered the day after on a second trip to London called 'The Vintage Magazine Shop.' A place which doesn't actually provide magazines disappointingly, but instead a whole host of retro merchandise that I really wanted to spend money I don't have on. It's awesome and on Brewer Street near Leicester Square...What are you still doing here, go now! I'll wait for you to get back...
...Hiya! It's amazing isn't it? What? You went and saw a bit of spontaneous theatre too? A reader after my own heart. As I was saying though, I'd like to see a website which promoted the indie. I think indie is a vastly misunderstood term. I think a lot of people hear the word 'indie' and go 'ugh idiots in skinny jeans.' And yes, we may like our jeans slender, but they make our legs look sexy! Indie means independent, and so much is made of the fear that nowadays independent things are dying out. I have a contrary opinion. What people like Alex Day show us, is that independent people are thriving, there is just not the general worldwide advertising they require. This is a crying shame. Not that these independent people should advertise themselves, by paying people to do so, that kind of defeats the point of being independent. However, there needs to be a platform for these people, led by the people who love listening to them, reading their work, visiting their shops.
It's always a huge shame when an independent shop goes under. I direct you to the film 'You've Got Mail.' It's very sad when Meg Ryan's children's bookshop gets closed in lieu of the arrival of Tom Hank's book megastore down the street. And it's a situation only two relatable to the situation we find ourselves in. Especially for artists of all disciplines. Amazon is not only putting independent shops out of business with their cheap books/cheap dvds/cheap everything. They are putting entire chains of shops out of business. I direct you to Borders, murdered by the Amazon giant. Waterstones and Barnes and Noble are also on shakey ground because of the online superstore giant.
I'm not going to say I don't use Amazon, of course I use Amazon, it's unavoidable, especially as a student with limited funds. But do you really want a high street that only has the word Amazon above every shop? It would be so boring, and more importantly it makes only the one person any richer, the person sitting at the top of the Amazon pyramid. And it's not fair. Why should the Rupert Murdoch type people of this world own the monopoly on everything? Money should be spread evenly amongst all the people who create the work that they produce. This opens up the avenue of self publishing. You can now upload any old writing you do on the side to the Amazon Kindle Store, and give Amazon a share of the profits. What about the publishers who make writing publishable? I can sit here and complain about my book being published all I like but the fact of the matter is I haven't produced something good enough to be published which is why I always strive to make what I write better. Editors and publishers deserve their place in the business, and Amazon is trying to put them out of the business in supposed 'fairness' to get everyone's work out into the public. But it's not about that. The people who become big through self publishing. The EL James type people in this world (the author who penned Fifty Shades of Grey) are only out for the money, not for the work. As are Amazon who helped her self publish the work in the first place.
I know it sounds like I'm contradicting myself. EL James was of course an independent person at first. However she is now published by a bona fide publishing house, and the fact of the matter is, her work is not up to the standard of other books published generally. The point of being independent, like Alex Day is that the work he produces would get signed, I have no doubt, there will be record labels snapping at his converse. And I'm sure they are. I don't fully understand Alex's position, all I know is that he's not signed, and from what I am aware happy to stay that way, under the independent producer DFTBA records, a vlogbrothers production. The point is that being independent can work. I'm not lauding book publishers, they are a business, and if you believe your work is good enough, then self publish, but you could start by doing so for free. There's a difference in wanting to get the work out there and selling out *cough* EL James *cough*
I've gone off on one, but the point remains, companies like Amazon are out to kill the independent people, not support them. They're trying to monopolise independence! And sneakily. And I think it's wrong. It's dog eat dog you might say, and I agree, which is where my dream comes in, and I really hope I can achieve it.
I want to set up a website, or a web magazine that promotes the new things you can all go out and experience in the world. It would have new music, new books, new theatre shows, new clothes, new art exhibitions, new vlog channels, new absolutely everything so people can click on them, and then go and experience what they want to experience. The problem with good art, I often find is that there is no platform for everyone to see it, or not as big a platform as there should be. I only found out about Alex Day by word of mouth. To be honest he doesn't need my help, that guy's going places, but I doubt anyone would disagree with a little bit more publicity from a fan who would just like to help. The same goes for The Craze who I really hope get places. And I'm not completely against self-publishing per-say, there are good self-published novels out there, and I would promote them too, along with all the new theatre shows you should go to as a theatre goer, along with everything else which people need to experience.
I'd also have on it a book club and a platform for people to talk, get to know each other, exchange ideas. If you have a band, and you need a bassist, then you could go to the website and there would be a section for people who wanted to promote their musical talents and new and exciting bands would be formed to be out there and in the public's ears. I'm excited, I hope you can tell, I have a lot of ideas, some of them rubbish, but I think this one has legs. The best thing about this website, if you want your stuff on there, it's free. A social networking site for stuff as well as people if you like, like MySpace but not rubbish.
I'd hope a website such as this would encourage people to go out and give their money to the independent people. The ones who create amazing stuff which gets overshadowed by the giants. The Twilights and the Fifty Shades of Grey of this world. The monopolised money spinning doommongers who suck the life out of anything vaguely creative. Don't go to Amazon go to a bookshop you found in a backstreet in Soho. It's the same book, and you keep them afloat and the person who wrote it gets more of your money. Don't give your money to the people who have too much of it already.
NewThings.co.uk. Watch this space.
Alex Day: http://www.youtube.com/user/nerimon
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