I’ve apparently not been on this tumblr account in 2 years. And it’s been probably 8 years since I was on tumblr regularly. I’ve been trying to use social media less for a myriad of reasons, but especially meta-owned Facebook and Instagram (or worse… the one that other horrible capitalist owns) which are unfortunately my main form of connection with other adults right now, and I’m gonna lose my mind (for real) if I don’t have some connection with other adults, so here I am getting back on tumblr despite my overall commitment to using social media less. Weirdly, most of my Facebook and Instagram friends are people I met up tumblr 8+ years ago, when I was karenfelloutofbedagain. I’m tagging this post with some of my former urls in case any old friends try to find me. Anyway I gotta get off Facebook, my primary form of socialization with the last 7 years, because it is actually eating my soul. Nah even though I hate El* Mu* more, Ma* Zu* is smarter and is probably manipulating us in ways we can’t even imagine and it’s making my life worse on purpose for profit.
Today, March 17, marks two years since the day my family became homeless. To commemorate this day, my book Memoirs of a Homeless Bookstore Owner is FREE on Kindle. You can check out mikeverett.com/miks-blog for a download link, or search "Memoirs of a Homeless Bookstore Owner by Mik Everett" on Amazon. Here is an excerpt from the book: "I don't like stories like that. I don't memorize stories by their punch lines. I write poetry, because that's what I can write while I'm on the side of a highway, trying to string together words while semi-trailers zip by and the gust of hot wind picks up my skirt and prairie dogs bark at me and the kids fight in the cab of the truck while John leans down under the hood of a Dodge Sportsman while steam billows and hot oil burns his fingers and splatters my calves. I'm not there at all, I'm stringing words together in my head, while John and I fight over whether we will sleep in the slanted motorhome, resting at a tilt because it's parked halfway off the side of the highway and half on the steep ditch, shaking every time a car passes, or whether we will pay sixty dollars for a motel in Brighton, or whether we will sleep in the truck in a parking lot, or whether we will leave the RV behind and drive back to Longmont to sleep in the bookstore, or whether we will pay a hundred and fifty dollars for a tow. I'm lying awake in bed in a motel room, writing poetry, writing my masterpieces in my head, instead of wondering whether John is slashing tires at the car lot where we bought our RV or finishing off a bottle of whiskey under a bridge or when he's coming back or if he's coming back at all. I've checked out of the situation completely, though my entire body's weight is on the brake pedal, my fingers clenched and white on the steering wheel, my thigh is ignoring the sting of a yellow jacket, my body steers the RV, trailing behind five feet of tow chains and the back of John's truck, terrified of his rear bumper. My mind is not there. It is busy thinking of nouns and verbs and stories I can use instead of adjectives like lonely and desperate." #amreading #freebooks #freekindlebooks #homelessness #homeless #mikeverett #poetry
Last Monday, I woke up to something weirder than I could possibly imagine. I woke up to find that Drake had posted a quote by me on Instagram. And that he’d credited the quote to another author.
There is no Thought Catalogue article entitled “What To Do If A Famous Rapper Steals Your Quote.” There is no Buzzfeed article on how to cope with the rabid fans of a rockstar insisting that you’ve stolen from him. To the best of my knowledge, this isn’t a very common problem to have. Sure, I’ve heard of academic and artistic plagiarism before, usually involving two high-profile, Entertainment News celebrities. But I’m not a celebrity. I’ve sold, like, two hundred copies of each of my books. I live well below the poverty line. I’m a regular person who said something kinda catchy once on the internet, and lots of people liked it. And Drake liked it. I am so disconnected from that quote and the people who use it; I am simultaneously on the outside looking in on the very idea of fame, and in the very middle of it.
If this doesn’t say “forever,” I don’t know what does.
To be clear here, nobody broke any laws. Drake did not take credit for the quote. He attempted to cite the quote, like we all learned how to do in middle school. He just cited the wrong poet. That poet (he goes by Mustafa) did give me appropriate credit for the quote. But on the internet, that doesn’t matter. And there’s no way to fix it. Just try messaging Drake on Instagram.
On one hand, it’s not that big of a deal. The quote has been used several million times on the internet, and is rarely credited to me. On the other hand… I would really, really, really like to make a living as an author. And in our day and age, there are no more camera-shy Thomas Pynchons. To be a financially successful author is inextricable from being a famous author.
In the winter of 2011, I sat down at my laptop, got on Tumblr, and wrote out a quick exercise I’d had in my mind for a while. You can find the original text here. I entitled it “What Happens When You Fall in Love with a Writer,” because that was the sort of thing that seemed like it might explode on Tumblr. It did, by moderate measures (it currently clocks in at 35,647 notes, though that is most likely inaccurate. I’ve seen it approach 50,000 several times, only to fall back again, like unpredictable gas prices). But the final line of the quote– “If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die”– was extracted by another blogger, without credit, and it soon topped 200,000 notes. A friend in India messaged me to tell me that his co-worker had my quote pinned up on her bulletin board in their office building in Dubai. Again, modestly impressive for a nobody blogger– only I wasn’t credited. Thinking I could pick up on the sudden fame of my words, I made a Zazzle store, hoping to sell iPod cases and mugs emblazoned with the quote. A screenshot of one such product is the image that Drake, and several others, have posted on Instagram. I never made more than about $10 from product sales.
This design, by Big Mention, is MUCH better than the one I made for Zazzle (the one Drake posted)
It’s not about money, and it is. Drake isn’t making money off my quote, but again, in an artist’s world, income is inextricable from fame. And I’ve somehow found myself in the position of having a quote that is a million times more famous than I am. Could it generate income for me, if that quote was tied less tenuously to my identity as an author? It’s impossible to know for sure, but I wager a yes. Many of my readers found me by searching for the author of their beloved quote on Google.
Which brings me to the next weird thing that happened. A fan messaged me on Goodreads:
Wait, what?
Sure enough, it was apparently “news” that Drake “wants to date a writer.” Not that he used the quote of a largely unknown struggling author, mind you. That’s not news. Just the part where Drake posted something on Instagram. And it was tagged, “Almost as exciting as Amtrak’s author residency program.”
On one hand: Honor. Never in a billion years did I think something I would say would be ranked on the same list as Amtrak’s writer residency program (which, admittedly, was a thing I got more excited about than I’ve been in years). On the other hand: No honor. No mention of me. The quote was referred to a a ‘popular Tumblr platitude.’ I might as well not even exist. Despite the fact that by Googling the quote, as the reader Jackie Cooper obviously did, it’s very easy to find that I am the sole author. Apparently journalism school just isn’t what it used to be.
No credit? Again? ok.
My dad used to end every story by saying, “and the moral of this story is…” and supplying us with a lesson, whether one existed or not. Here’s one of my favorite stories: There was a famous athlete at University of Kansas when my dad attended school there. The athlete’s name was Neugent, and he was a swimmer. He had fans, and they would all carve “Neugent Bites” into the wooden desks of the lecture halls at KU. You could walk into a lecture hall with a thousand seats, and every single seat would have “Neugent Bites” etched into the desk. You could always tell the posers because they didn’t spell Neugent right.
One night, the swimmer was in a sorority house after hours. The story goes that he was in a room with several nude girls, but that’s always how stories go. They were tipped off that the house matron was on her way up the stairs, and Neugent, likely inebriated, did a toad-dive out the third-story window of the sorority house and broke his leg. My dad had a 9 a.m. lecture the next morning, and when he walked into class, every single desk was etched with “Neugent Jumps.”
My dad took a semester off to work in the salt mines (back when you could do that to pay your tuition), and when he returned, the desks had all been replaced. He never saw “Neugent Bites” on another desk again. The moral of the story is that fame is fleeting. Mr Neugent was my special-ed math teacher in high school, and his brother was my sister’s orthodontist.
My friend Owen always knows just what to say.
I’ve learned my own lesson, inflicted Greek-gods style. Rather than turning me into a flower to stare at my own reflection forever, I’ve watched my few, trite words achieve fame and immortality, while I remain unknown, along with my numerous works on homelessness, social issues, and literature. Any number of meaningful quotes from me are largely unknown. No one talks about my poems on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or gender identity. No one cares. That is, probably, the best karmic retribution for making trite statements about immortality for immortality’s sake. I may remain unknown, but it’s clear to me that this quote will never die.
