tracydimond:
Amanda Fucking Palmer
I can’t help but pair...
Amanda Fucking Palmer
I can’t help but pair this with Jonathan Lethem’s “essay,” “The Ecstasy of Influence.” In particular, I think about the unstoppable spread of culture. No matter how high Disney raises their walls around Mickey, Mickey is going to appear in non-Disney situations. It is sad to think of how protective Disney is of that fact. Fortunately, culture is bigger than Disney. And I understand that a writer like Lewis Hyde has to start his argument from the property side of intellectual property, because everything about the copyright law in the United States is about private ownership.
But what I see Amanda Palmer speaking of here is culture as humans exchanging something that is not easily monetized. And I like that her assumptions do not start from the who-really-own-what side, but more the I am seeing real people in front of me. I live among real people. I live a radically open life with all these people who want to share that life with me. There is something in that gesture, in that quality of her personality, that feels like the definition of art.
