We have evolved quite a bit in our ideas about barn cats in recent months and since Minnie’s leg amputation. Minnie and Flo come into the farmhouse in the late afternoon and stay until the early morning. One thing Maria and I are both very clear about – they go out each morning, no matter the weather or the temperature, there are many places for them to go and hunt, find shelter and hide. On mornings like this one – this has been an almost unrelentingly gray winter – Minnie in particular seems reluctant to go outside. I went out to collect some firewood for the wood stoves and I saw her traveling from the chicken roost – where she gets water – to the barn, where she holes up in a haystack while it’s snowing.
I have seen Minnie and Flo both hunting outside and I am determined they keep their lives as barn cats, that they move around, explore and hunt. Seeing Minnie hobble across the snow on her three legs, I was tempted to call her in, but stopped myself. She has to keep her life. Barn cats are among the most independent and mysterious creatures I have seen, I don’t want either of them to lose that.
I reached my funding goal for “Talking To Animals” on Kickstarter.com yesterday around noon. This morning, I woke up to find people had donated another $1,000 to the project, and there are still 26 days of funding to go. I am not easy asking people for money beyond the goal I set, but if it keeps coming, I will put the money to good use and apply all of it to my project, now democratically funded in a very new way for me.
The first thing I did yesterday when I reached the funding goal was tell the people on my blog, the second thing I did was call Maria, she was at lunch with friends, the third thing I did was to call my friend George Forss and tell him he needs to go on Kickstarter and seek funding to publish the brilliant and as yet unpublished photographs he took in New York City in the years before 911 – his work was called “Project Access,” it is a powerful photographic record of innocence and beauty before that awful day. George went on Kickstarter to take a look and got the idea immediately, we are going to work together to help set up his project. “Wow,” he said, “you are the man.” More about that later.
Seeking money this way is transformative for me, and quite a change. In my life, when I wanted something like a camera, I went out and bought one, the idea of asking other people for money to fund my projects seems strange to me, somewhat uncomfortable. Yet I always got funding for my work, it was always from a publisher only, I never funded my work myself or asked anyone else to fund it. I will not seek or take money for my life, my mortgage, groceries, bills, that is a clear boundary to me. I have to be able to pay for my life in order to live it, a dependent life is not a sustainable one. Interestingly, I have always gotten paid for my work, this is another and very new way of doing it, a democratic way. They call it crowdsourcing, but I like George’s term – democratic funding.
Lots of people are curious about the Kickstarter experience and I tell them this is the true power of interactivity, bringing the writer and artist into contact with the many people who consume art and content. They now have a role to play in its creation, and they relish that. This is precisely what entrenched cultural institutions – newspapers, record companies, some publishers – have not yet figured out, are not yet able to do.
When I go to a publisher for a book contract, the process is very different. The publisher is asking two questions: is the work good?, can money be made from it? There is a scene in the new movie “Inside Llewyn Davis” where Davis, a struggling folk singer travels to Chicago to seek representation from a famous music producer and club owner. After he plays a heartfelt song, the producer, played by F. Murray Abraham, ponders the music, and then says simply but not unsympathetically: “I don’t see any big money here.” There you have it, that is the age old battle of the creatives versus the funders. Creative people never have any money, people with money are rarely creative, yet the two are locked in this eternal embrace, each needs the others.
My publisher and their marketing department always want to know if there is big money there, but the people on Kickstarter amazed me, no one asked me that. The only thing they cared about was the project – “Talking To Animals.” If they liked it, they pledged, there was no marketing department to get past. The funders only asked one question – do they like it? That kind of freedom and affirmation was oxygen to me, I have been struggling for some years now to balance my creativity with money and affirmation, this week there was no such struggle, every pledge was a vote for me and my project.
And to my great surprise, it isn’t nearly over. I made $1,000 from the time I reached my funding to this post this morning, the project will be up for funding on Kickstarter until February 12. I am using the proceeds to buy equipment and time for photographs and research. The initial funding will get me a new camera, fast and powerful and good in low light to capture the emotions I am writing about, and every additional dollar will buy me more time to work on a project that has been on my mind for 15 years. It will be a book and an e-book and generate lots of images. I am grateful for the $9,000 any more money is a boon on top of an already wonderful experiment.
So I will continue to share the democratic funding experience with you. Creativity evolves and changes, this is a very different way to think, and thinking differently is, to me,a sign of being alive. “Talking To Animals” will live, the people, not just the gatekeepers and marketers, have voted.
