#scott pinkmountain

[therumpus]

Maybe the greatest thing about podcasts is how easy and cheap they are to release, and how opaque that ease is (the listener doesn’t necessarily know). Of course a self-released show is going to have a harder time getting attention, getting well-ranked on iTunes, etc… but the audience doesn’t view a self-release any differently than a supported release (unlike with a book or an album), in large part because the medium is so new, they’re not trained to pay attention yet. So there’s still a grassroots, democratic ethos in the podcast world that is either long gone from most other mediums, or only exists in a super DIY form that looks and feels radically different from the mainstream form. If you’re cruising around iTunes, my podcast looks the same as all the rest, and because the means of production are so cheap and widely available, it’s also easy to make it sound legit. Plus all the other great things about podcasts, too, like the freedom and range of the format, the simplicity of production, the flexibility of consumption, and the portability. I love the medium. I think it’s the punk rock of this moment.

PODCATCHER #6: The History Channeler

[therumpus]

In Episode 36 of The Rumpus’s Make/Work podcast, Scott Pinkmountain speaks with author and photographer Abeer Hoque about her long journey to publication, and her obsession with memory and nostalgi...

In Episode 36 of Make/Work, host Scott Pinkmountain speaks with author and photographer Abeer Hoque. Hoque lives in New York, has Bangladeshi roots, was born and raised in Nigeria, and identifies home in several different places. She captures this kind of simultaneous global existence beautifully in her new collection of linked short stories, The Lovers and the Leavers, which was recently published by HarperCollins India. She speaks with Scott about the radical difference of the publishing world in India, her long ten-year journey to publication, and her obsession with memory and nostalgia.

I used to think that things didn’t happen or exist unless I’d written them down.

Listen to Episode 35 (and subscribe to Make/Work!) now in iTunes. Or get the direct download. And you can now get Make/Work through Stitcher.

[therumpus]

The keyword here being “community,” meaning, we support one another. I almost never buy a big name author’s or musician’s work new. I’ll wait and pick up a Lorrie Moore book at a thrift store or stream a Dylan record. But I buy tons of records and books made by friends, acquaintances, former professors, and collaborators. And it makes no difference to me if I buy it after it’s manufactured or before, via Kickstarter. In fact, I can’t wrap my brain around why that distinction could possibly matter.

Kicking & Screaming: Week #6 by Scott Pinkmountain.

[therumpus]

It still breaks my heart to listen to my big band record. Sure, No Country Music is better (and I hope I feel the same about whatever I’m working on a decade from now) but I should have found a way to release it, if for no other reason than to free myself up to move on with my life. I decided I couldn’t let yet another album fall away without putting up more of a fight.

Kicking & Screaming: Week #5 by Scott Pinkmountain

[therumpus]

I assembled a massive email list of every friend, family member, potentially receptive acquaintance, musician, and writer I could possibly think of. This psychic and geographic tour of my last twenty years was like an imaginary “This is Your Life,” complete with visits from once-intimate friends and lovers I’ve lost touch with or simply lost, former creative heroes and collaborators who no longer maintain a creative practice or who have far surpassed me with their abilities and careers, and people I consider my closest friends and allies—people who, in my head, share my daily thoughts—but I rarely speak to and don’t see more than once every five years.

Kicking & Screaming: Week #2 by Scott Pinkmountain

[therumpus]

The sloggy middle weeks in a Kickstarter campaign are widely known as a kind of celebratory doldrums. You’re like a party boat set adrift so far from shore you become a fuzzy smudge on the horizon. Everyone on Facebook is now officially immune to your posts. Your hardcore supporters have all re-tweeted and shared to the degree that you could rationally expect them to. It’s too soon to start going berserk with a fever-pitch rally, as you need to keep something in reserve for the final push. But you still have to maintain an Everything-Is-Awesome presence or the dawdlers, the distracteds, and the well-intentioned souls who are just too busy to pledge at the moment will be lulled into thinking you’ve gone away, you’ve met your goal, you don’t need them anymore.

Kicking & Screaming: Week #3 by Scott Pinkmountain.

[therumpus]

No one’s arguing (out loud) that music and art should be free to the world at the maker’s expense. No one’s even saying that they wouldn’t buy the album after it was released (though why would they since they could stream it for free?). The embarrassment about, or distaste for crowdfunding comes from the perception of weakness. The implication being that if the work was “strong” enough, an artist wouldn’t need help in getting his or her art made and disseminated. This capitalist, rugged individualist, Ayn Randian view of creativity which seems so all-pervasive and eternal—the idea that the almighty market will bear out True Quality and everything else is masturbatory self-indulgence—is about 15 seconds old in the context of human history and has been proven false so many times it reads like a punch line.

Kicking & Screaming: Week #4 by Scott Pinkmountain.

[therumpus]

In Episode 34 of The Rumpus’s Make/Work podcast, host Scott Pinkmountain speaks to Joy Castro about her unorthodox writing process, the course of her career, and the distinctions between literary a...

In Episode 34 Make/Work, host Scott Pinkmountain speaks to Joy Castro. Castro works in memoir, nonfiction, both literary and so-called commercial fiction, and poetry. And she’ll also be directing the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln this fall.