Between the worlds
So, in the interest of my ongoing efforts to write about who I really am in this journal I am going to talk about "the other side" of working with Eleusyve. They say on Samhain that the veil between the worlds is thin, so I am going to let folks look through.
This is where I make an effort to get real.
To start with, I love it. At the risk of speaking for lazuli93, she loves it, too. Not much of a shock there, but it needs to be said at the beginning, because if we did not love it then all our efforts would make no sense.
See, it is expensive.
And it is not a one time expense. We've made all kinds of efforts to try to make the project self sustaining, but it really is not. It never has been. I took a cut in pay a few years back when I changed careers, and that meant cutting a lot out of the household budget. But the Eleusyve stuff continued, because it really matters to us.
And we've tried all kinds of things to try to promote what we do. We've done pod-casts and sound tracks. We created merchandise made MySpace and Facebook pages. We've sent materials to be reviewed by entertainment writers and contacted radio stations. We jumped through the hoops to get on Amazon and imdb. In what can be considered the craziest move of all, we shot low budget t.v. commercials and timed them to premiere on the web in a way that would coincide with the released of The Rite of Mercury sound track, and the National O.T.O. conference.
But these efforts seldom result in CD, DVD or merchandise sales. Not in the kind of numbers it would take to fund one of our projects. We get a few, here and there, and we are happy with that. But for all the attention we make an effort to draw, we're not making great strides in market share. BTW, if you did buy a CD, DVD or T-shirt, thank you so much!
It's the damnedest thing, but the greatest success we have ever had with raising money for Eleusyve was when we quit trying to market our merchandise and just asked for money directly. I admit that I find this a little embarrassing, but clearly I am willing to do it in order to have what we need to create our art, and it has been very effective. If you donated, thank you, too!
Of course, this effort takes time.
All of it takes time. Recording takes time, planning takes time. Talking takes time, thinking takes time. Just coming up with content for the website and designs for posters and reviewing the script takes time. And then there are rehearsals, which are hour after hour of repetition and planning. And every time we try to come up with a new way to broaden our audience, or reach out to new people, it takes more time and effort.
And broadening our audience takes all the more time because we are on the fringe. We operate around the edges of the over-culture, so all of our inroads are narrow, and often populated by those critical of our interpretation of the material. Don't get me wrong, we get a great deal of support, and we are profoundly grateful, but we have no illusions about how limited our appeal is. In terms of the overall market, we appeal to a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
And the more visible we are, the more subject to ridicule...
Isn't that the way of it? A little constructive criticism is always welcome, but insults are more common. Being heckled on the internet is a special kind of obnoxious, because the insults just hang there, posted for years. I have known for much of my life that it is easier to tear someone else down than to lift yourself up. But that is why people are willing to make the effort to tear others down, because it is an easy way to try and drag someone down to your level, instead of making the effort to achieve a higher standard yourself. We have not had the ability to set the bar tremendously high by professional standards, but I have yet to see any of our vocal critics make an effort to surpass us.
Shit, if these folks really knew all that much about what it takes to be a performer, they would be virtuosos, not critics. It's easy to talk shit, and difficult to know that people are going to talk shit, and go ahead and subject yourself to it anyway. But we do.
So, what does this all mean? It means that for good or ill, we have chosen to be on the fringe, and there is not a lot of resources out here. We do our best with what we have secure in the knowledge that we don't have a Hollywood budget, and that our productions will reflect that. This means that our stage performances will not feature pop-stars or super models or amazing special effects or huge promotional campaigns, and as such every fool with a computer and an hour to kill can get off on calling us hacks. Then again, they would still call us hack if we had all those things. Trolls will be trolls.
And we deal with it.
I am too old to be a struggling artist on the edge of "making it", and to be honest, the art has never been a struggle. I love making the art, and it is as easy as breathing for me. Playing music and sharing it with our friends makes me smile. No, I am not a struggling artist. Just a marginally talented composer and a fair to midland promoter. But that is not really struggling, is it?
We'll keep looking for a way to share the material with the handful of people who will love it, and ignoring the trolls. I keep hoping that there will be time in the long run to do them all, and write the scores, and create the great body of work that I hope this finally is when it is all completed, but that remains to be seen.
So, that is what it is really like, with this important exception: Every so often, I get a letter or an email from someone who loves what we do, and is truly amazed that we do it, and I am grateful they took a second to write. Every so often someone tells me that they were inspired by our efforts to try something themselves, and I feel like all the effort was worth it. Even if what we do comes to very little, one of those we inspired might someday change the way we all see the world, and that would be great.
I hope none of this discourages anyone from getting involved with our staging of Mercury. We'll be casting soon, and it would be really great if I did not scare people off. It is going to be fun, as they have all been fun, and in the end I hope that we will all be proud of the work we have done.
It's just good to say what it is really like, sometimes.
Thanks,
~Jon
This is where I make an effort to get real.
To start with, I love it. At the risk of speaking for lazuli93, she loves it, too. Not much of a shock there, but it needs to be said at the beginning, because if we did not love it then all our efforts would make no sense.
See, it is expensive.
And it is not a one time expense. We've made all kinds of efforts to try to make the project self sustaining, but it really is not. It never has been. I took a cut in pay a few years back when I changed careers, and that meant cutting a lot out of the household budget. But the Eleusyve stuff continued, because it really matters to us.
And we've tried all kinds of things to try to promote what we do. We've done pod-casts and sound tracks. We created merchandise made MySpace and Facebook pages. We've sent materials to be reviewed by entertainment writers and contacted radio stations. We jumped through the hoops to get on Amazon and imdb. In what can be considered the craziest move of all, we shot low budget t.v. commercials and timed them to premiere on the web in a way that would coincide with the released of The Rite of Mercury sound track, and the National O.T.O. conference.
But these efforts seldom result in CD, DVD or merchandise sales. Not in the kind of numbers it would take to fund one of our projects. We get a few, here and there, and we are happy with that. But for all the attention we make an effort to draw, we're not making great strides in market share. BTW, if you did buy a CD, DVD or T-shirt, thank you so much!
It's the damnedest thing, but the greatest success we have ever had with raising money for Eleusyve was when we quit trying to market our merchandise and just asked for money directly. I admit that I find this a little embarrassing, but clearly I am willing to do it in order to have what we need to create our art, and it has been very effective. If you donated, thank you, too!
Of course, this effort takes time.
All of it takes time. Recording takes time, planning takes time. Talking takes time, thinking takes time. Just coming up with content for the website and designs for posters and reviewing the script takes time. And then there are rehearsals, which are hour after hour of repetition and planning. And every time we try to come up with a new way to broaden our audience, or reach out to new people, it takes more time and effort.
And broadening our audience takes all the more time because we are on the fringe. We operate around the edges of the over-culture, so all of our inroads are narrow, and often populated by those critical of our interpretation of the material. Don't get me wrong, we get a great deal of support, and we are profoundly grateful, but we have no illusions about how limited our appeal is. In terms of the overall market, we appeal to a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
And the more visible we are, the more subject to ridicule...
Isn't that the way of it? A little constructive criticism is always welcome, but insults are more common. Being heckled on the internet is a special kind of obnoxious, because the insults just hang there, posted for years. I have known for much of my life that it is easier to tear someone else down than to lift yourself up. But that is why people are willing to make the effort to tear others down, because it is an easy way to try and drag someone down to your level, instead of making the effort to achieve a higher standard yourself. We have not had the ability to set the bar tremendously high by professional standards, but I have yet to see any of our vocal critics make an effort to surpass us.
Shit, if these folks really knew all that much about what it takes to be a performer, they would be virtuosos, not critics. It's easy to talk shit, and difficult to know that people are going to talk shit, and go ahead and subject yourself to it anyway. But we do.
So, what does this all mean? It means that for good or ill, we have chosen to be on the fringe, and there is not a lot of resources out here. We do our best with what we have secure in the knowledge that we don't have a Hollywood budget, and that our productions will reflect that. This means that our stage performances will not feature pop-stars or super models or amazing special effects or huge promotional campaigns, and as such every fool with a computer and an hour to kill can get off on calling us hacks. Then again, they would still call us hack if we had all those things. Trolls will be trolls.
And we deal with it.
I am too old to be a struggling artist on the edge of "making it", and to be honest, the art has never been a struggle. I love making the art, and it is as easy as breathing for me. Playing music and sharing it with our friends makes me smile. No, I am not a struggling artist. Just a marginally talented composer and a fair to midland promoter. But that is not really struggling, is it?
We'll keep looking for a way to share the material with the handful of people who will love it, and ignoring the trolls. I keep hoping that there will be time in the long run to do them all, and write the scores, and create the great body of work that I hope this finally is when it is all completed, but that remains to be seen.
So, that is what it is really like, with this important exception: Every so often, I get a letter or an email from someone who loves what we do, and is truly amazed that we do it, and I am grateful they took a second to write. Every so often someone tells me that they were inspired by our efforts to try something themselves, and I feel like all the effort was worth it. Even if what we do comes to very little, one of those we inspired might someday change the way we all see the world, and that would be great.
I hope none of this discourages anyone from getting involved with our staging of Mercury. We'll be casting soon, and it would be really great if I did not scare people off. It is going to be fun, as they have all been fun, and in the end I hope that we will all be proud of the work we have done.
It's just good to say what it is really like, sometimes.
Thanks,
~Jon