Archives
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
A Slice of
InstaPunk
PROJECTS. IP's prodigal son Brizoni has somehow found time to distill from the massive InstaPunk corpus of posts (2 million words plus) a BOOK that features writing more than graphics, YouTube, and bile. He thinks it's 80,000 words of good stuff, not necessarily "The Best," not necessarily representative of the whole range of the site, and definitely not preclusive of subsequent manuscripts. It's simply the first and therefore spans the entire eight years InstaPunk has been a thorn in the side of the left, the right, and everyone in between. His editorial approach was to make a kind of written mixtape, looking for the right combinations of songs by band, genre, mood, and time. I've got to say, he nailed it. His manuscript is not "everything important about InstaPunk." It's more an InstaPunk trip, a flow that makes its own kind of sense to those who might read it. It will be published at Amazon.com sometime in April or May. It will cost actual money (about time).
The last remaining step before publication is the collation of a foreword. One of the conditions set by the InstaPunk writer(s) was that there would be a role for you, the commenters who are so necessary and esteemed at this site. Some of us have already volunteered to contribute to the Foreword by identifying specific quotes which moved or provoked us and explaining how they relate to our appreciation of the site. That's InstaPunk all over. If there's going to be a book, he wants us to be heard from -- the audience and interlocutors -- because we're the reason the site exists at all.
So this is the clarion call. Participate in the Foreword. Select one or two (or even three) quotes from the years of IP posts that meant the most to you. Explain why and how they mattered to you. Describe why you keep coming back to a site where the mere act of commenting can get you assaulted by the author(s), even when you intended no insult.
This is not a setup. We're all here. We've all been cuffed at one time or another, not always fairly (as even IP might admit). Nobody's taken more of a beating -- tongue in cheek or not -- than Brizoni. Remember the Ayn Rand posts? Yet he's put together this extraordinary manuscript. I've had a bad moment or ten myself but it didn't stop me from obsessively compiling theboomerbible.com, along with Apotheosis and Guy T. Why are we here after all these years? I know why.
I think you do too. I have an email address for all of you who'd like to be in the Foreword: instapunk@theboomerbible.com. I'm asking you to help explain to the world why we're all here and keep coming back. All of you. Any of you. But especially Peregrine John, Beckoning Chasm, Pete, Eduardo, Helk, Null, Urthshu, Apotheosis, Dirty Rotten Varmint, Billy Oblivion, Guy, JS, Jaytee, I Used to Love Penny, Barbara, Harley, MaryMcl, Ralph, BalowStar, GW, Alfa, Winston... and anyone else who has dared to stand on South Street and face the sometimes arbitrary wrath of InstaPunk.
Please do NOT make your submissions in the Comments section. If you do, the entire Comments section in which you submit will be deleted. Yet another arbitrary diktat of InstaPunk. Sorry, you know how he gets.
You can have a few days to put your ideas together, but try not to take much more than a week to submit.
I will undertake, in concert with Brizoni, to include your contributions in the Foreword to the manuscript. IP wants you all to have your say, to be part of anything he publishes. I'm dying to read it, too. Thanks in advance, and thanks IP for letting me post this.
