Updated Business Plan

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 26 July 2014.

Pasiphaë and Daedalus

Okay, when July starts drawing to a close, it's time to take stock. Not much else is going to get accomplished. I'm not even going to go over what I hoped to have accomplished by August 31. I'm just going to explain what the plan looks like to me now.

Bear in mind this is an artist's business plan. Which is not really a business plan.

Blogging

I have gotten into the habit of blogging.

I'd like to add the "Follow" buttons to the page and send out the responsive email by the end of the summer. I personally don't think copyrighting makes sense in this case. The copyrighting era righted some wrongs that had been occurring up to that point, but I think it has also stifled the free flow of ideas, so critical to the development of culture. Nor do I think total obscurity makes sense. And I don't want to stop doing the blog, because I think it could play a role later on.

Honestly, I don't think anyone is going to take anything. If we suddenly see a television series that bears a remarkable resemblance to the characters, plots, and themes we've been fleshing out, then we have 3 courses of action: (1) take legal action, (2) kick ourselves, or (3) praise God and retire to a life of prayer and austerity. But anything published online is considered copyrighted.

Music

I don't see a lot happening here. But here's my attitude at this point.

I'm continuing to write the material for Concert for Iceland. I am getting a kick out of the idea of not sharing it with anyone (including you) until it's time to do the Concert. I don't think it's time to do the Concert. So I like it to exist in the future. I'm not exactly sure why. I just like to keep stuffing it down and preventing its emergence. Maybe it's a volcanic thing. Maybe it's a neurotic thing. But it is one of the central motifs: the empty frame. Did the Concert ever happen? Are there any songs at all? The idea of virtuality replacing reality after the turbulent reversals.

Aside from all that, if at any point you feel compelled to record or play a show, I'm up for it. I think this is another one of the reasons I don't want to do the Concert for Iceland material: we have a lot of other material to play. Just an observation, but I think your band fully occupies your time at this point--even to the point where you seem overextended and may need to scale back.

That's not surprising or disappointing really, but there is some frustration for me.

I'm having trouble understanding God's will in all of this, because I feel like I'm back to square one by myself again. The blog seems borne out of bearing these frustrations. It seems to be a place that I exercise the supernatural virtues of faith and hope in that it's where I wait on the Lord vis-à-vis this project. I've definitely progressed in some direction, even though it doesn't seem to be in any worldly direction.

I'm beginning to think that certain thoughts I have had are prophetic.

Namely the idea that Arthur White would never exist but in a reunion capacity. I smiled once or twice at the thought of this being a project I pursue in retirement, and that the next 20 years or so is preparation: songwriting, working on my chops, etc. But I've also had the thought that this is like Hjalmar's "life lie" in Ibsen's The Wild Duck: the tragic idea that this project is the fantasy world that impoverishes my true reality. Essentially, that I'm a walking Willy Loman. I give the good stockings to my fantasy world, while my wife makes do with frayed ones in the real world.

I'm also wondering if I'm more of a King Minos figure, who was given the sign from the god (in his case, Poseidon), but held onto it for his own self-interest. And, so, following the Campbellian exegesis, I can only create a counterfeit of the hero's journey: an involuted labyrinth with the perverse offspring of the hoarded gift. But the unwillingness to sacrifice the gift, to give it back, to maintain an outward, outgoing, evolving orientation is the sin that is its own punishment. Does that make you Pasiphaë, Theseus, an Athenian youth, Ariadne, Daedalus, Icarus, or the Minotaur?

Maybe, like Daedalus, you escape and, when I finally track you down, you and your new friends kill me by pouring boiling water on me.

How's that for a business plan?