Why Write for Free When You Can Pay to Write? [Updated]

This is a situation in flux, so if things change, well, fuck it, chalk it up to transparency.

Lots of people, most of whom you can find links to here, have been talking about whether or not one should write for free. Mostly, I agree with Doree, who says--Oh, shit. I guess it wasn't her. Well, whomever said most of the time you shouldn't, but some of the time you should, I agree with that person.

The truth is that writers take assignments for many reasons. Much of the time, one takes a high-paying assignment for money, and the subject is crap. I have done more than a few of these in my time. We like to call these "compromises," but really they are acts of "literary prostitution." The lube is the money. The integrity is nada. The feeling one gets left with afterward is the sensation of having been fucked in the ass without permission.

Other times, writers take assignments because they are awesome, or exciting, or enable the writer to go creepy-crawling into some crevice into which they have not crawled before. Many of these assignments do not pay well. Sometimes, they do not pay at all. Or, they may as well not, because the pay is so shitty. The payoff is that you get to have a really great time, you can tell the story of whatever wild and crazy things happened to you at the next dinner party you attend where everyone will listen to you in a state of rapt attention, and you can eyeball your well-worn copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and tell yourself that you have lived your own Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.

Over the last few years, I have experimented with the "writing for free" phenomenon. I had a brief affair with the Huffington Post, which ultimately didn't really work for me. There was no money. I didn't really get the point of putting stuff up there I could post to my own blog without having some editor poke a pencil in its eye first. And, I don't know, maybe all those nasty Gawker posts about the redhead turned me off or something.

In another case, not long ago, I did a story for fray for free because I was a) bored, b) feeling hostile and looking for some way to pretend I was really hell-bent on "doing my own thing," c) they were putting together a "sex and death"-themed issue (it's not online yet) that was, you know, up my alley. I wrote about doing The Letters Project. So, you know, it wasn't all that hard. Maybe it took an hour or two. Sometimes having more freedom gives you an ego boost that enables you to slog through the other shit.

Last week, for the first time in some time, I turned down a paying assignment. I was sort of torn about doing so, and I still feel kind of conflicted about having done so. (Who the fuck turns down money in this economy? Assholes. That's who.) The pay was low for the amount of work involved, but it was also about something that I sort of consider to be, uh, precious to me, and I didn't feel like I wanted to "give away" that story for that amount. The story was worth more than that to me. The stories we hold in our heads, as writers, they have a kind of value, or weight, or gravitas that we imbue them with that transcends what the Wu-Tang Clan once so poignantly referred to as the "dolla dolla bill, ya'll."

Cash rules everything around us, and writers are whores or tricks, depending on the day, editors pimps looking to exploit their bottom bitches to the best of their abilities. Let's call a spade a spade, shall we? At least, that's how I see it.

In any case, in April, I did something I have never done before. I paid to do a story. It's possible the pay for this story will change, but I don't know. Whatever. An experienced journalist knows it isn't what it is until the money is in your hand. All told, I shelled out [oh, I cannot bear to say it] to get this piece done. I also delivered it at some 8,000 words over what I had been enlisted to write.

I think somebody told me to do this, to do the story, to foot much of the bill myself, but for the life of me I can't remember who. (If it was you, thank you.) And, you know, it was about the smartest thing I've ever done. (Knock on wood. It's not online yet. And you never know, you know?)

I paid for my experience. I paid for my time. I paid to write what I wanted to write, and I was lucky enough to have an editor who didn't stop me--she let me. Of course, as Stephen Elliott writes, "To only write what you want is a luxury." What I let myself do was a luxury, indeed, a luxury I may one day in the not too distant future be no longer able to afford, a luxury I do not regret spending.

It was the best time I've had in years. It made me feel like I wasn't a whore anymore. It was worth it.

Update: Later, I got a note from a reader, one who has given me permission to reprint his email here.

Interesting post you wrote about writing and money. I made my living as a writer during those wonderful late 1990 and early 2000 days you mentioned in your first post. 45 cents a word for practically anything I wanted to do. Great time to be doing that, free money and easy work. I also made my rent money as a guitar player for a few years of my life. Obviously I didn't get rich, but I know what it's like to get paid for one's 'art' and to compromise it. It got depressing after a while, but the lifestyle was great and there were still the cool, great gigs I could enjoy. Call it turning tricks or whatever, I just used the phrase, 'You take the king's shilling, you play the king's tune.'

I spent the weekend in NYC doing a two day music workshop where I got to meet one of my musical heroes, and not just meet him but play with him. It was amazing, and reminded me of why I started music in the first place. There were probably 75 other people there, all or nearly all of them many years younger than I. They were almost universally talented, optimistic, and hell bent as making it in music on their own terms. They were the antithesis of the stereotype of the lazy musician, they already had indie labels they started, they were gigging anywhere they could get, and they were sure it was just a matter of time until it was their turn to get on the ride. I wanted to tell them, 'Just so ya know, it ain't gonna happen. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, because you'll hate yourself if you don't, but just because you think you're choosing failure or death doesn't mean you won't wind up with both.' I wanted to tell them about my most accomplished guitar teacher, a guy I took lessons from when I was about twenty. He was a legitimately well-known jazz player who had seen so much failure, including losing two wives mostly because he refused to give up music as his living, that he actually had come to hate music. Not hate drummers who are late and singers who can't come in on cue and staying in awful motels to make $150 at 2 AM. We all hated that shit, but he hated music itself, for what it had done to him and what it had refused to do for him. I vowed that whenever I got close to that I'd find something else to do so I at least would still love music.

And I did. After washing out of both the music and writing rackets I program databases now. I still make my own music, people still seem to like it on the rare occasion it's heard, and I still write. In fact, I write for a blog run by some of my favorite writers in the world and I do it for free, because I know they're broke and need the money and I don't. So by scything my 'art' off from my money I've kept my art pure, and it's still fun when I do it.

On the other hand, my money is what's impure now. It comes from prostituting my brain to do something 8-12 hours per day that I don't care about. Financial reporting does not speak to my heart, I do not pine for more hours in which I can write SQL code. I use a mind capable of producing decent music and better than decent prose for digital greasemonkey work. So, I guess the moral of the story is that you're fucked either way, there just isn't a lot of purity to go around.

Love your blog,

[name redacted]

Punk & Porn [Updated]

[The content of this post is particularly graphic in ways somewhat more vulgar than usual. So, if you are a) a gentle soul, b) eating, or c) easily excitable, you may do best to click elsewhere. If not, read on.]

Last weekend, I watched "Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies," which Pitchfork is playing because the director, Todd Phillips, directed "The Hangover," which is, like, the hit movie of the summer or whatever.

Years ago, I saw either this documentary or another one like it, if there is another one, which I doubt. I can no longer remember. If you're unfamiliar with GG, he was born Jesus Christ Allin and went on to become a notorious punk rock, eh, artist, who was perhaps best known--ok, for sure best known--for crapping on stage during his live performances, and various other acts, including slashing himself up with razor blades and punching himself in the head. You know, the usual.

Because I'd seen the movie, I think, before, I wasn't really surprised by what I saw, although it had been a few years. Here's GG wacked out of his head on smack. Here's GG smacking himself in the head. Here's a bunch of people talking about what a fucked up motherfucker GG was. All in reverential tones, of course.

My favorite anecdote in the movie is told by GG's brother, Merle Jr., as I recall, who recollects how their father, Merle Sr., expressed an interest in killing the boys' mother, and himself, and taking out the kids, too. At some later point, the father reappears after having spent some time in the basement. What was he doing down there? Digging four graves.

In any case, GG grows up to scream punk rock lyrics, and poop on stage, and score press attention for his bloody, shitty antics. They even do "Geraldo," which is kind of awesome. The drummer, who is always naked and spectacularly out of his mind, rivals GG for most interesting character.

But one scene in particular captured my attention.

[This is the part where I'll remind you that you may not want to continue reading if you are, say, eating a bagel.]

There's this scene where GG's on stage, and I think he leaps off it, and then he squats down, and he takes a giant dump in front of everyone. The crowd is surrounding him in this semi-circle-jerk of fucked up adoration. Then, GG gets on all fours, and the camera work gets a little funky, but I think he sticks some of the shit in his mouth, and then he spits it out. Then, he throws some of it at the crowd. Everybody pretty much backs off. No doubt, it smelled like a beast in there.

So, GG goes on to just, like, completely smear his own feces all over himself. I mean, if you've seen it, you know what I mean. But this isn't like when Ozzy accidentally-on-purpose bit the head off a bat, and then spit it out, or whatever. This is full-on. This is full-tilt. This is Texas No Limit Hold 'Em Living.

And, watching this scene, I was kind of transfixed. I used to be more into this kind of well, shit. You know--we've all had our "Faces of Death" phases, haven't we? But there was something definitively, inarguably, authentically real about what GG was doing. Something more than wallowing. Something beyond what he appeared to be doing. Something deeply primal. Something more complicated than can be written off with a wave of the hand and a reference to nostalgie de la boue. Something, well, true.

Occasionally, I get these letters in which people say I'm, like, a horrible person, right? Which is fine. We are all entitled to our own opinions. Although, why people email me their opinions of me or what I do, I do not know. I could live without them. [NB: Please stop sending them.]

Sometimes, though, I feel like that, too. Like I'm wallowing in a pit of shit. Only the pit of shit I'm in is called "porn."

Of course, I am not alone in this opinion. This April, on the set of "Fuck Machines 5," director Jim Powers told me--well, here's an excerpt from the story that I wrote about it.

"Now, the market is saturated with porn, the Internet is pirating porn left and right, and the economy is in the shitter," Powers laments, looking like a spurned lover: heartbroken. "Porn destroyed itself," he moans. He gazes through the sliding glass doors at a fountain trickling pleasantly in the backyard. "2005 was the peak of shit." He shakes his head. "Now, we’re just living in piles of shit." He sighs, crestfallen over what has become of his profession. "It completely destroyed everything." He stares at the floor.

I hear you, brother.

Anyway, it occurred to me, while I watched GG dance around in a mask of his feces, that what separates porn from shit is the length of a perineum. More or less. If you know what I mean. In other words: Not much.

I have no idea what type of point I'm trying to make here other than perhaps finding kinship in GG Allin is better than finding no kinship at all.

Isn't it?

[My lengthy feature story on the adult movie industry and its currently decidedly shitty state is at this time in temporary editor limbo and will, I'm sure, be online in the, I hope, not too distant future. I'll let you know when it is. This just in: Looks like Zombie Radar Online removed my interview with indicted coprophagy and bestiality pornographer Ira Isaacs: "But Is It Obscene?" Bummer.]

Update: Tomorrow, I'm going to post a vintage interview with "Hated"/"The Hangover" director Todd Phillips on what it was like shooting with GG and other fun stuff that a kind reader sent to me.

Crazytown

"You know, madness is a lot like gravity ... sometimes all you need is a little push."

-- The Joker

Back in the Day

Once upon a time, I used to teach English to freshmen in college. Now, not so much. Yesterday, I got an email from a former student of mine. It was very kind. Which was very nice.

After I posted my letter to a young writer, I was sort of surprised by the reaction. Like most of what I post on this blog, it was written on the spur of the moment, with little forethought.

It certainly drew some strong reactions. Some people liked it very much. While others disliked it enough to write what amounted to hate mail. Strange how so many people can view the same thing in such drastically different ways. Or not.

Of course, some people "got" it, but some did not. In particular, Young David, to whom the letter was addressed, did not appear to "get" it, as he wrote a follow up email that was very ... unhappy. It included a stab at my writing, indicating that I, in fact, was the one who could not write, that I was a failure, a victim of capitalism, a competitive fool hell-bent on being jealous of whatever he may or may not take from me in the future.

That was not really the point. For the most part, it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. In many ways, it was more a letter to myself than someone else. It was an over-the-top self-annihilation of a part of myself, a part of most or all of us, that is grotesque, and competitive, and, well, sort of sick.

But there was a lot of truth in it, too. That the most important thing is not to write, but to live. And some of us forget to do that, sometimes daily. I loathe the idea of squandering. Squandering one's life. Squandering one's talents. That's spite. That's failure. That's the horror, the horror.

I guess I'm sorry that some people missed the point. Because while some things were caricatured near the beginning, all the stuff that I wrote at the end was true. The part about losing everything, if you have read my blog long enough, you know is something that happened to me, and that included, at one point, my mind. And it was just this April that I was standing in a San Fernando Valley apartment with a man who was showing me his AK-47, and someone was telling me porn will never die, and a porn star was crying in front of me. And it wasn't all that long ago, really, that I was talking to the young man who had the vast majority of his body burned when he drove over an IED in Iraq, and we were joking, about him giving a stripper an implant that was stretching the skin of his skull, when he was done with it. Those are the stories that matter. The ones that live on in your head. The ones that will never be sated by words. They're beyond that.

In the end, though, the letter was to me. A reminder that golden handcuffs can be a dangerous thing. That fear is a horrible ball-gag. That writing is not enough, but sometimes living is.

Hi Susannah,

I came across your blog by chance after reading an article on [redacted] and when your name was familiar to me somehow, I recalled that you were my TA at UIC. You were such an intellectually passionate teacher and I think I still have the reader from your class. I ended up moving to SF that summer and lived there for 10 years and had no idea that you were from the Bay Area. It all makes sense now how stifling the midwest must have been for you! I grew up there so I was so delighted to live in SF at the age of 18 away from all of that repression and judgement.

I am so excited for all of your success and look forward to reading more of your writing. You definitely made real for me lots of feelings I had about racial inequality and social injustice and a love for Flannery O'Connor. Growing up in Chicago everyone just thought I was weird for being different. In the Bay Area I was "normal" for thinking outside of the box :)

Ciao,
[redacted]

Me Love Bigfoot

Graham Roumieu is one funny fuck. And I mean that in the sense of like, you know, "He's a funny fucker!" Not, like, "I slept with him, and he is into some weird shit." Because I have not. Although, you know, because of that, I cannot speak to his personal sexual proclivities, which I'm sure he appreciates me speculating upon, or, really, not speculating upon, on my blog.

Anyway.

He's on Twitter, because all the cool kids are, as Bigfoot, because he wrote a really great book about Bigfoot that is really awesome. Buy it. I hope I didn't ruin it for any of you who thought that was Bigfoot's real Twitter feed. Everyone knows Bigfoot's only on Facebook. Duh.

So, there's a tweet that links to this love letter that Bigfoot wrote, and it's a scream. Read it here.

Some people can write. Some people can draw. Most people can't do both. Graham the Man can.

Just remember, when you're living phat and hirsute in the woods, Bigfoot says: "It's all about getting freaky."

Word.

I'm a Human Tweetbox

One of my dearest pals is someone you probably know: Xeni Jardin. She is a super-great time. Recently, she asked me if I would be interested in contributing to a new Boing Boing featurette, and of course I said yes.

As you'll see on Boing Boing, Xeni has announced the beauteous makeover and relocation of Boing Boing Video. It features the latest BBtv episodes on a "big fat 962 pixel doublewide, baby!" And it has a muy especial sidebar mini-blog featuring live tweets of wonderful video samplings from across the web. I am one of the @BBVBOX contributors.

My Twitter feed is here, if you'd like to follow me. Anyway, check out the human video tweet box, and thank you to Xeni for inviting me to participate! Oh, and the tweetbox archives are here.

They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?

From something I wrote:

In the late 19th century, California state senator Charles Maclay stood atop the Cahuenga Pass that runs between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley and of the pastoral valley sprawling before him proclaimed: “This is the Garden of Eden!” Nowadays, conquistadores Californianos, grazing cattle, and sheltering Oaks have been replaced by depressed suburban sprawl: “FOR SALE” ranch-style houses and bloated McMansions, “FOR RENT” strip malls stores and closed gas stations, “FOR LEASE” abandoned warehouses and gravel lots. Between these lines, porn conducts its business in condominiums that homeowners rent out by the day to forestall foreclosures, on soundstages where independent contractors have sex to pay the bills, near kidney-shaped backyard pools that serve as backdrops for movies in which everyboy gets laid but no one swims. From this 345-square-mile valley, bound by a series of dramatic mountain ranges, a never-ending deluge of pornography is sent out across the country and around the globe. Welcome to Porn Valley, USA.

That is all.

On the Beauty of Violence

As a species, we are not good at moderation. We manage to pervert all good things. We turn food into an obesity problem. We turn sex into a perversity problem. We turn shelter into McMansions. But when the chips are down, this is a real tool that is very, very valuable. And it’s the reason there’s so damn many of us on the planet. I do not personally approve of war. I think war is to be avoided under almost all circumstances. But I also believe that group cooperative effort is essential. Ten small guys with spears bringing down a mastodon to feed the entire tribe is a pretty remarkable achievement. And maybe it’s not quite as remarkable as the five hundred guys who put up the Empire State Building with only three deaths, or whatever it was, but nonetheless, these are cooperative endeavors that harness not just organizational ability, but fundamental individual aggression for the good of the community. I don’t think those things are to be lightly thrown aside. I don’t think we would be benefited if we could breed a designed population of bovine people, of sheep who would follow and bleat and never rise up and complain.

--the great Katherine Dunn

Letter to a Young Writer

Yesterday, I received this email from a young writer seeking guidance.

Hello Ms. Breslin-

My name is David, and I've been reading your blog "Reverse Cowgirl." I'm a young (24) aspiring writer, and by aspiring I mean, hoping to someday be reimbursed my for contributions. I don't mean to bore you, but I'm intrigued by your style and topics, and would like to know more about how you forged your writing career. If you have time I would love to know more about:

1. Did you attend journalism school? Is it a good way to "break-in?"
2. Are you able to support yourself solely on your blogging and writing? If so, how long did it take for this to become possible?
3. What was your "break"?
4. What suggestions might you give for someone like myself who has a years experience writing for a handful of small magazines?

I understand you're very busy, and however you prefer to answer my questions (via email, phone, later on) please just let me know. Thank you again for your time, and the best of luck to you.

Thanks,

David Johnson-Igra

Today, I respond.

Dear David:

Most of the time, when I receive emails like yours, I delete them, leaving them ignored and unanswered. Now 12 years into a little-rewarding writing career, I have grown bitter, jaded, and tend to see bright-eyed, bushy-tailed upstarts such as yourself as little more than potential competition. Why would I help you? I was about to delete your email, which I found to be particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and therefore especially worthy of deletion--when I stopped myself. What was it? Your odd name? Your supplicating ways? Your seeming understanding that I am "very busy," when, in fact, I am not? Anyway, I decided to respond. Consider yourself ... lucky? Or, maybe, unfortunate.

1. No, David, I did not attend "journalism school." Is there really even such a thing? I guess that's what they call j-school. For some reason, I only associate it with Columbia. Go figure. I took one "journalism" class in college. I remember something about pyramids. And a book. But I remember all too clearly the day the professor said how much journalists made. That was the day I changed my mind about becoming a journalist.

I have no idea if that's a good way to "break-in." Considering that the state of journalism today is like that of a bank that has been robbed, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to "break-in" to it anyway. Mostly, I think schools are for dipshits and traditional ways of going about things are for losers. You can see where that got me. Blogging. And writing to you. And ruing my life choices. Go if your parents pay. If they don't, forget it, or you'll end up with $50K in debt you can never hope to repay.

Conclusion: Fuck "journalism school."

2. Am I able to support myself solely on blogging and writing? Well, David, nosy, aren't you? I guess that would make you at least a half-decent journalist. Either way, I am too chronically obtuse to answer your question other than to say I have a day job that involves writing and editing without which I would be shaking a tin cup on the corner and shouting at you about the coming end of civilization in 2012. (All journos are deeply invested in the Mayan calendar, FYI.)

If you think I make money off blogging, you are misguided. Once, I made some money off this blog by running some American Apparel ads featuring porn star Sasha Grey wearing some thigh-high socks and a thick genital shrug of pubic hair. Welcome to journalism 2009. It's an ugly world.

Sometimes, I like to torture myself by thinking back to 2000, or whenever it was, before the dot-com bubble burst and we all died. It was an amazing, heady time. I used $20 as toilet paper and ate Chicken Kiev flown in from the Russian Tea Room for breakfast. Truly, I wrote for a website called Beer.com that paid me, like, a $1,000 for, I can't remember, a monthly 500-word column or something. That was a good time. Until it wasn't. And then it wasn't.

Conclusion: Don't quit your day job. Ever.

3. What was my "break"? Ah, surely you jest. Do I seem like someone who has had one? I'm like the grimy-faced canary in the mine that the head coal digger keeps on a tiny dental floss leash so he can beat it with a miniature sapling whenever he likes.

Seriously, kid, my first big break was when I was corunning some asinine site about postfeminism and cajoled a booker at "Politically Incorrect" into letting me on the show. They pitted me against Erica Jong. It was kind of awesome.

More recently, the word "break" brings up less happy connotations. Like the idea of a broken person whose industry is slipping through her hands like a gelatinous jelly fish. Make it stop, David.

Conclusion: There are no breaks.

4. What suggestions might I have for someone such as yourself "who has a years experience writing for a handful of small magazines?" Well, to be honest, my first mental response was: Learn how to use apostrophes. But that's not very nice, is it?

In the past, I've written my response to aspiring writers: Don't. It's just that simple. Pick something else. Don't do it. Go become a rug cleaner like your mother suggested. Writing is a hideous, torturous art fit for expert masochists and idealist losers. Learn a trade. Marry a cougar. Go away and leave me the few jobs that remain. You little shit.

But, Young David, if you insist, my advice is this. Become a writer. I actually bothered to Google your name, and it seems like you can write, a little bit, at least, which is really the only reason I bothered to respond.

So, if you insist on becoming a writer, against my wishes, do this. Do something different. Most writers can't write. Most journalists are shit. Go where no one else will go. Write what no one else will write. Tell the stories nobody wants to hear. Write for love. Do gigs for free. Stop churning out the same boring fucking copy that your peers are dutifully filing like a bunch of self-congratulating monkeys and find out what "beyond the pale" really means. Read this. And this. And this. Go into the ghetto. Interview a homeless person. Find out what it's like to get jizzed on for a living. Fuck the pyramid, fuck j-school, fuck writing for a living. Fuck your computer, fuck your rent, fuck whatever your parents said. Go and live. Go be in the world. Go push yourself until you cry and then go back for more and then write about it. Because that's what real writers do. They don't just write about it. They live it. And then, if you're lucky, you can find out what it's like to lose everything, how to get the guy to show you the AK-47 that you know he has hidden in his closet, or joke with a soldier about giving a stripper the implant in his head that's stretching his burned skin because he drove over an IED in Iraq after he's done with it. Why? Because then you can die knowing that whatever you did, or whatever you wrote, hey, at least you weren't a fucking coward like all those lame-asses that went to j-school, wrote shit copy for lame newspapers, and thought they were really pushing it because they did an email interview with Sasha Grey.

Conclusion: Get out of here, kid.

You're welcome.

Love,

Susannah

How to Sound Smart About Books Even If You're an Idiot

Find yourself sitting around in book clubs, feeling like a fool? Don't know much about Foucault except some feces-related anecdotes? Wonder why everyone has read Ulysses, and you haven't, and now you are sorry, aren't you?

If you were too poor, or, like, whatever to go to grad school, here's how to sound smart while people in your proximity have polysyllabic conversations about books you haven't bothered yourself to read.

It was written by my stoic, tolerant, foul-mouthed BFF Lydia Netzer, who is a writer, really great, and a book doctor that I highly recommend if you have a tome that needs tending.

From "Ten Words to Make You Sound Smart in a Book Discussion":

7. French Feminism: French feminists invented the idea of a female kind of writing, "ecriture feminine" which is super-sexy and completely different from phallocentric male discourse. French feminists believed women should write about women, and their bodies. If you use the phrase "writing the body" you will get knowing nods from male friends and phone numbers from the girls.

Read the rest here.

Street Life

Earlier today, on Twitter, I visited Douglas Clark's Twitter feed, and then clicked on his website link, which took me to his Flickr account. I knew right away what I was looking at--photos of working girls--but the context was enigmatic.

Who had taken these photos? How? Why? Their frankness reminded me of Philip-Lorca diCorcia's street work and their happenstance of Merry Alpern's Dirty Windows. The images are curious, voyeuristic, coincidental.

I sent Clark, who lives in Miami, an email, asking him about his enigmatic photographs.

He replied:

It started because a friend had given me a supertelephoto lens, and I happened to have some time at work one day.

The photos are of the people that habit the area around my work, and most end up being crack/heroin users.

Many turn to prostitution to support that habit. There are multiple agencies near this location that provide programs and help to anyone that needs it, but I end up seeing the same faces time and time again in the area....

I hope these images provoke a discussion at least.

His "Street Life" set is here. His Twitter feed is here. And his Tumblr, "the street," is here.

[Thank you to Douglas Clark for allowing me to republish his work and words.]

Things I Saw While I Was Gone

1. Strangle Girl
2. "My weird obsession with armour might have come from the Surrealists."
3. "More time to think about Susie."
4. "[Ulysses is] a turgid welter of pornography (the rudest schoolboy kind)."
5. Marilyn Minter
6. Cunts
7. The new 15
8. "But mostly I am thinking about that girl, and what she is doing now, and whose advertising account she is working on, or what yoga class she is taking, or whose baby she is about to steal."
9. Swim
10. Narcocholo ultraviolence
11. Oceansize
12. STILETTO
13. The Sex Issue
14. "When he turned away, I could see he was in tears."
15. Shutter Island
16. "Rage is a part of my grief for what I've lost, for who I was, for who I was to be."
17. The Vampire and the Nun
18. Calder jewels
19. "It's a lot easier to shove somebody out with the wind holding the door open."

Breakdowns

This is a page from BREAKDOWNS by Art Spiegelman, an oversized, hardbound, beautiful reprint of some of Spiegelman's older work accompanied by a blistering, riveting introduction, part of which you see here.

The page is a compilation of a series of sketches that Spiegelman made in 1972 while living in San Francisco. His mother, a Holocaust survivor, had killed herself in 1968. "She left no note," he notes.

Suddenly, he had what Oprah would call a "light bulb moment."

"Funny, how the mind works," he writes. "I'd somehow FORGOTTEN that my mother committed suicide four years before ... Shielded myself from the memory."

The next panel: "I tossed aside the genuinely paltry piece of shit I'd been working on, and began to write as if I was possessed!"

The sketches would become "Prisoner on the Hell Planet," a raging, terrifying, electrifyingly dark comic about his mother's death.

"MY FATHER FOUND HER IN THE BATHTUB WHEN HE GOT HOME FROM WORK ... HER WRISTS SLASHED AND AN EMPTY BOTTLE OF PILLS NEAR-BYE ...."

It's about guilt, and death, and the inescapableness of trauma, and how sometimes, even when people die, they have a way of coming after you.

"...YOU MURDERED ME, MOMMY, AND YOU LEFT ME HERE TO TAKE THE RAP!!!" screams the last panel, in which Spiegelman screeches from a prison cell.

This aesthetic shift towards autobiographical self-vivisection lay the groundwork for what would one day become MAUS, which, as you may have heard, won him a Pulitzer Prize.

What I love is that the very first hints of the work, in the upper left-hand corner of the page, are little more than chicken scratches, messy scribblings, three globby, gathered figures. Yet, without it, would MAUS, his greatest work, have come into existence? I find company in this image when everything I do looks like nonsense. Maybe others do, too.

Things I've Learned About Photography Recently

1. If you think, "I'll take a picture of that later," sometimes it's not there when you get back.

2. If you run after people and ask them if you can take a picture of them, sometimes they say yes.

3. If you sit in the street trying to get a photo of your rims, for reasons you won't be able to explain later, and do so unsuccessfully, you may not get run over by passing cars.

4. If you go down by the river by yourself, you will wonder whether or not you're going to end up belly up in it.

5. If you don't take the lens cap off, you will feel stupid and wonder if anyone saw but most of the time nobody will have noticed.

6. If you think you got it, you probably didn't.

7. If you think you didn't get it, you probably got something else.

8. If you take a photograph of an animal, it will not do what you say.

9. If you take a photograph of a child, it won't do what you say, but it will do something better, especially if you tell it: "Just be exactly who you are."

10. If you think you are getting better, you are not. Not yet, anyway. Someday, maybe.

[Video]

The Pornographer Speaks

Pandora’s box has been opened. The Internet did that. There’s no going back. -- Pornographer, the Valley, 4/10/09

[Image via Ashley Benigno]

The Playboy Microscandal [Updated]

I've posted a defense of sorts regarding the Playboy.com microscandal over Guy Cimbalo's "hate fuck" piece that was subsequently removed by the site.

"Yesterday, Playboy.com posted a provocative story: 'So Right It's Wrong.' The piece was written by Guy Cimbalo, and its premise was to target those conservative women that he would like to, as he put it, 'hate fuck.' But if you click on that Playboy.com link, you'll find the piece is no longer there. And that's because the blogosphere went crazy after Playboy published it, going so far as to call for a boycott, and Playboy pulled it."

Read the rest at Double X.

Update: Here is a thoughtful email response I got to my post.

You are not the sharpest pencil in the box are you? First amendment rights extend to private citizens, obviously. What took place was an exercise IN THE !ST Amendment, not a limitation of it, you stupid, silly bitch. An ignorant asshole wrote an offensive piece which should never have been published in the 1st place. It was published and place out there for people to read. A variety of people, EXERCISING THEIR 1ST AMENDMENT RIGHTS EXPRESSED THEIR VALID OPINIONS ON THE TRASH THAT HAD BEEN POSTED. The publisher, perhaps realizing what damage was being done to their brand, and perhaps in a bit of ex post facto exercise of good judgment, made the decision to remove what was, a pice of shit from their website. This is in no way an abridgement of anybody's 1st amendment's rights. The fact that you don't understand this, or are to fucking stupid to realize this, explains why you spend your time in the Valley writing about the pron industry; that is about the levl of your intellect...sub three digits. Now don't waste our time with furhter idiotic comments as we really can't keep oursleves from laughing all day long at such idiots like yourseld who pretned to be journalists be are really simply voyeurs with a camera. BTW, stupid cunts like you really are boring and nobody wants to hate fuck you, thats for sure.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, [redacted], whose email address is, I shit you not, [redacted].

Update 2: Ed Morrissey weighs in on Hot Air regarding my "clueless" support of "a vile piece of effluvium." I think I saw that on sale in the cheese aisle one time. Next to the Roquefort, I believe.

Update 3: More from The Week.

I Saw "The Girlfriend Experience"

Last weekend, I watched "The Girlfriend Experience," and, I'm surprised to say, I loved it. Really loved it. I'd read a lot of negative reviews and heard from people I knew who had seen it that it was cold and remote and not so good, but I thought it was glorious.

First and foremost, I loved that it was terrifically beautiful. Here is an audio slideshow in which Soderbergh talks about using almost solely available light, and I love that. It's so lush and painterly. Just exquisite. It reminded me a bit, not literally but impressionistically, of the "Punch-Drunk Love" title sequence, created by the late Jeremy Blake. I suppose a lot of what I'm after, when I write about the sex industries, is trying to capture some of the desperate beauty in it, and I loved that Soderbergh did that.

I thought Sasha Grey was pretty great. She got called out for being cold or distant or impossible to read by various critics, but I agreed and didn't agree. One: Of course she is; that's how many sex workers are. Two: Simultaneously, of course she's not; she's only that on the surface. I don't know if it was me projecting based on my own experiences with sex workers, but I thought she did that, inadvertently or intentionally: revealed the sort of walking contradiction of sex work: that you are often totally there and very hidden. What appears to be invisible on the inside--if you look closer, is intensely complex beneath the surface. So, she worked for me.

The depiction of the men was the movie's greatest strength, and I loved that Soderbergh saw in them a kind of piteous grace. I feel the same way, often, when encountering these men. They are sad, desperate, lonely, busy, powerful, complicated. They aren't simply marks or fools or clowns. He got that sometimes the ridiculousness of man is a thing at which to wonder. I loved the scene with the orthodox Jew (I think?) in the jewelry shop. And film critic Glenn Kenny as the lecherous erotic site reviewer was appallingly spot on; I have known men like him.

I think the thing I liked most about the movie was that, at least to me, it was oftentimes deeply, quietly humorous. And I thought that was really true. You can get all complicated and poignant and insightful about sex work, but there's something totally, completely, irrationally hilarious about it. Sex work, in a way, is patently insane, in part because only men would be ridiculous enough to pay for sex. That's sex work's one true thing. Or, hey, you know, maybe that's just me.