Okay, so let's talk about the little off-handed remark I made at this journal yesterday, that I said I'd get more into later this week; my belief, that is, that by 20 or 30 years from now, you will see the practical and permanent death of almost all non-profit artistic organizations currently in the US. And this is a pretty bold statement, I know, and prone to a lot of misinterpretation, even if I explain it in detail; so I'll just try to go step by step today and see if I can't explain myself, and hope that all of you might keep an open mind about it all yourself.

So first, let's get two things perfectly clear: I'm not talking about the death of mere charitable support of the arts by the general public; and I'm not talking about the death of all non-profit organizations either. I think that NFP is here to stay when it comes to certain topics, especially community centers, religious organizations, political groups and like, and I also think that it's entirely appropriate that the NFP structure be around for them too. And let's face facts - by its very definition, the public always has and always will in one shape or another support the arts voluntarily, just because they think it's a good thing to do. Because it is a good thing to do, and most people know this; artists, after all, are the people who make sense of all the chaos in our lives, who examine it in minute detail for us, and deliver back stories that make all of it easier for us to understand. So whether that's an ancient tribe respecting the village elder, because he tells the stories of their history, and gathering his meat for him so that he won't have to hunt; or whether that's a feudal King paying for a Royal Court of Artists And Scientists, to create works for his royal subjects; or whether that's people paying a tuppence in the 1600s to attend a Shakespeare play; or whether that's people agreeing to let some of their government tax money support artists; it's all ultimately the same. No matter what time in history you're talking about, there's always been one popular form or another of voluntarily supporting artists, because most of us understand how important those artists are.

I do believe, though, that the conventional way we've specifically been supporting the arts for the last 50 years or so - through pervasive non-profit organizations - is coming to an end, yes. And it's coming to an end for the same reason that traditional business is coming to end these days as well; because we're moving into a new age, an Information Age, where things will work as radically differently from the Industrial Age as that did from the Agricultural Age. And the idea of non-profit artistic organizations, that's an Industrial-Age idea, there's no denying that; and so therefore is dying as rapidly as the idea of pervasive screaming advertising, or working at one company your entire career, or any of the other old ways of doing things that used to work fine.

It's hard to deny, for example, that most artistic non-profits in the last 20 years have started profoundly failing the audience and artistic community they were designed to support; not offering real benefits to artists, not offering the services their paying members want, screwing both groups in almost imperceptible ways more and more, kind of like airlines removing five peanuts from each bag to save an extra $100,000. And who can blame these non-profits? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to maintain an artistic non-profit anymore? You've got the shrinking government grants; the elimination of many corporate foundations; more and more regulations on how your group can raise funds; less and less people even pursuing the arts professionally; and of course the giant lynch mobs of religious conservatives, ready to strike at any random moment, when you least expect it, and bring your non-profit to ruin in just a matter of weeks, all for accepting one penny of government money for something they consider inappropriate.

God, no wonder most artistic non-profits are failing us! Instead of doing what they're supposed to do, NFP employees now have to spend the majority of their time and energy merely seeking enough money just to pay the bills, in any way and through any option they can. Which is difficult, of course, because NFP laws put extremely tight restrictions on exactly how such organizations can raise money. So one result is that they're delivering less and less to their paying membership; I mean, jeez, you know, what scam is PBS onto this week, for example? Only $75 for a coffee mug? Only $125 for a tote bag? And then another result is that they're delivering less and less to the artistic community as well; that's the whole reason I'm starting my own center, CCLaP, after all, because after ten years of being an artist myself, I was disgusted with the lack of real benefits any local non-profits offered to working artists. And this makes people more and more unhappy, and less and less willing to support these organizations. And that means less membership fees, so an even smaller budget. And then when some conservative starts howling about the NEA again, and how it needs to be shut down for good, this makes more and more of the general public support the idea, because they can't see any good that they're getting out of it...because they're not getting much good out of it, frankly.

So what's the answer? Well, in my opinion, just like the smartest business experts out there are starting to radically readjust their thinking, I think arts administrators (AAs) need to do this too. And specifically, I think AAs need to start thinking beyond the idea of traditional non-profits, where severe restrictions are placed on how to gather revenue, and open themselves up to the idea of combining traditional donations with free-market capitalism. Yes, as in "give your customer what they paid for." Yes, as in doing commercial publishing, or commercial merchandise, or taking on the right kinds of corporate sponsors. Yes, as in paying taxes. Yes, as in actually trying to turn a profit, albeit a small one, and to let those who were going to donate anyway to help you fill in the cracks.

This is how I'm planning on running CCLaP, after all, and is why I'm not registering it as a non-profit; the whole idea is to combine professional, retail merchandise and events with a system of small donations and other volunteerism from the community at large. If people want to get rid of the NEA, that's fine as far as I'm concerned; much better anyway, I think, to get these people actually down to your physical space or roving events, get them personally involved with what's going on, make them profoundly understand just how important the arts are in their lives, and how personally it really can affect them. That's part of the problem in America right now, I think - that a lot of people have lost that personal connection with the arts, the thing that makes them understand why it's so important to their particular life, through this impersonal process of paying taxes and then having that money doled out anonymously to a bunch of anonymous groups. If your group wants that grant that formerly came from public taxes, I say get those taxpayers actually involved, and get them to just donate the money directly to you.

But, you know, don't make it overwhelming to them; that's why you have all the commercial products, after all, to generate the majority of revenue, and to let the community pick up budgetary slack through donations, or perhaps chip in towards a specific goal. But in the meanwhile, though, do everything you can to make that organization matter to those people; hold as many free events as possible, provide as many free services as possible, always charge a fair price for what you're delivering, instead of this "$75 for a coffeecup" bullshit we see so much of now with artistic organizations. Get your audience to suggest ideas for products and services; get them involved with actually creating them, if they want to be that heavily involved. Get the audience and the artistic community introduced to each other, for fuck's sake, something not a single non-profit artistic group was good at here in Chicago, the ten years I pursued the arts professionally myself. That's really not that difficult, people - do interviews with the artists so that the audience will understand where they're coming from, and actually introduce them when they're in the same room together, and hold events so that they will be in the same room together. That's it; that's all you really have to do. Why no one could manage to do this in the ten years I myself was an artist is way beyond me.

I'm predicting that the audience, Members and Fellows we do end up gathering at the center are going to be pretty fanatical ones, precisely for the reasons outlined above; I think not only are we going to make a lot of money from them, but that they're going to be willing to lay down in front of fucking tanks for us. And why shouldn't they? Look at all the things we're delivering to them. We deserve that money and loyalty, because we're earning that money and loyalty; we're always keeping them in mind, always remembering that we ultimately answer to them, always inviting them to come in and change things if they don't like the current situation. And that's perhaps the biggest problem of all about non-profits, in this day and age; that the employees don't answer to their audience at all anymore, but instead to a faceless federal employee or corporate executive doling out grants. CCLaP has to pay close attention to what our audience and artists want, because we'll go broke if we don't; I'm hoping that it'll make us a lot more responsive, forward-thinking and just plain friendly than a lot of the non-profits I've had to deal with over the years.

So anyway, that's my take on that, and why I believe that almost no artistic non-profits will even be in existence come 20 or 30 years from now, but rather will have all switched over to the type of system I just described. And I'm one of the first people I know of to realize this, which is why I'm confident that CCLaP will be a huge success; we'll have no competition at first, after all, at least not from groups doing it the way we'll be doing it. I wouldn't be putting this kind of energy, time and resources into opening CCLaP, if I didn't fundamentally believe that it's going to be a runaway success; that's precisely what I believe, in fact, that it will not only be a smash but one that will surprise a lot of people by how much so. I wouldn't be trying to open it otherwise, after all. Anyway, only time will tell, I guess; this time ten years from now, maybe I'll be getting my nose rubbed in it all, like a puppy into its own shit. We'll see, I guess.

Okay, well, it's been something like two months now since I was interviewed by this newspaper in Chicago called RedEye (a sister publication of the Tribune), regarding the subject of pornography addiction; and the article still hasn't run, so I'm officially saying 'fuck it' and giving up on the idea that it ever will. And this actually comes as somewhat of a relief, to tell you the truth, because of what I learned during my third and final round of interviews with the reporter, Jimmy Greenfield; that instead of it being a small interior article, where I was one of but many being interviewed (which had been my impression), it would be a cover article, with my photo on the front cover, and the article being almost entirely about me. And eh, you know, it's one thing to talk about my experiences here at my site, or within a small article buried in a newspaper; quite another to have your ugly mug in 11-by-14-inch color, splashed across the front of 200,000 newspapers, with a headline pasted over it screaming "HOOKED ON PORN!" I think you see what I'm saying. So I can't say I'm exactly disappointed that they've decided not to run it.

Here, though, is the cool thing that came out of it all - I made a new acquaintance! And he's really cool, too - his name is Barry Brecheisen, in fact, and he was the guy who photographed me. We met separately from the reporter, in fact, up at Dollop Coffeehouse in the Uptown neighborhood where I live, and ended up hanging out quite a bit both before and after the shoot itself. He was the official photographer for The Jenny Jones Show! Dude! Oh, plus he was a senior editor at RollingStone.com at one point, freelances for MTV all the time, just all kinds of really fascinating stories with both his past and present. Plus he wears leather and curses as much as me, and we're both a couple of assholes who hate most of the random people sitting around us...so we hit it off, needless to say. Anyway, Barry was kind enough to forward along three or four photos from the shoot, since the article never ran; above there is my favorite, taken next door to the coffeehouse in this weird little basement building access. Hey, man, I was photographed by the former Senior Editor of RollingStone.com; does it get any more rock-star than that for a nerdy writer? (In fact, Barry made a joke during the shoot, that this was his first-ever "badboy of literature" assignment; to which I replied, "Make me look like James Frey, except not as much of a goddamn pussy.")

So, great news to report with the reader fundraiser going on right now, in an attempt to purchase a Mac Intel Mini; thanks to recent donations by Bryan Ott and Patrick Spiroff, the grand total is now up to $405! Wow, only a week since the fundraiser started, and I only have $195 to go! Thanks, everyone, for supporting my efforts to try to start playing the alternative-reality videogame Second Life; as regular readers know, I recently discovered that I'll have a chance to make real money within the videogame, which in turn will let me do more fun stuff in the real world and write more entertaining journal entries here about it all. And so this is why I'm asking my readers to chip in five or twenty dollars towards the cause, so that all of my journal entries here will get better in quality.

Well, and plus, of course, if I do end up getting this Mini and starting to play, I've also promised all you fellow gamers that I will start up a brand-new blog as well, one written specifically as my character in Second Life (Miller Copeland, that is, who will hopefully one day be the powerful and mysterious owner of both an in-game artistic club and late-night sex club - that's how I'm planning on making my money, through admission fees). And so that'll be daily entries along the lines of the ones about Second Life I've written here already, over at that other blog, with a lot of screenshots from the game as well to illustrate things. So if you're a gamer yourself, or perhaps another player of Second Life, or even an employee of Linden Lab, owners of the game (hint-hint), maybe that's a little extra motivation for you to donate some money, so that I'll keep talking about this game obsessively online and making new converts each day. (This has already started happening, by the way - I've heard from four readers now, in fact, who have decided to start playing themselves, because of what I've said here about it, cough, cough, lindenlab, cough).

Anyway, so here's my Paypal link:

Damn, I'm getting so close to owning this Mini I can almost start to taste it; won't you please be a pal and kick in a couple of bucks as well? I promise, no more annoying fucking fundraisers for at least another year and a half, once this one is over!