Why, hello there. My name is Colin Marshall, and you have reached my
blogular presence on the Information Superhighway. Due to my compulsion
to act on unhealthy variety of interests and convert them into various
forms of media, chances are better than even that I can offer you
something you’re interested in. Here, I’m going to list all I can, as
clearly as I can, because even I routinely forget what I’m supposed to
be doing at any given time.
My enterprises break roughly into what I think of as four handy “quadrants”: broadcasting, writing, film, and sound. While I make things about these things in and of themselves, I also use them as forms to make stuff about my other, less-broad interests: East Asia, languages, hybridity, the experimental, economics, aesthetics, the urban environment, conversation with neato people, and so on. If this sounds confusing, it kind of is! Let’s break it down piece by piece.
On this very blog, available since 2002 on Livejournal and since 2007 on Typepad, I write about every subject I’m competent to write about, and some I’m not. I used to write more about current events and stuff and express much stronger opinions, but then I realized I hate getting into internet arguments and that nobody, myself included, really knows anything about anything. Before that, I used to write more about cars and popular culture of the years 1978 through 1994, but then I realized those subjects are pretty much dead ends. Nowadays, most of my post turn out to deal with books, film, writing itself, and how to live a reasonably non-wasted life.
I write monthly primers on contemporary novelists which are published by the literary site The Millions. Most of the novelists I’m concerned with disregard the very concept of genre, do what I consider interesting things with form, structure, or language — I’m not particularly moved by plot or character — and seem somehow underappreciated. I’ve written primers on Kobo Abe, Alexander Theroux, B.S. Johnson, and David Markson. I’ve got more on the way about authors like Douglas Coupland, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Ryu Murakami, and J.G. Ballard. The goal is to have enough of them to publish a book, presumably to be titled something like 50 Contemporary Novelists Without Whom Your Brain Will Wither and Die. Except I don’t have an agent. Does anybody have an agent I could use?
Also every month — theoretically — comes a new installment of The Humanists, the film column I write for 3QuarksDaily. Each article focuses on one film from a particularly great director. I find great directors do the same things as great novelists: they work primarily in form rather than content, they take risks, they urinate all over genre. I haven’t written one of these in a while, but I’ll get back on the horse soon. In the meantime, some of the best, I think, are on Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse, and (my favorite film of all time) Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi.
At least once or twice a week, I update my Ubuweb Experimental Video Project. Ubuweb is the internet’s largest archive of avant-garde material from God Knows When to present, and they have a substantial archive of films and videos. I’m watching all of them, alphabetically by artist’s name and then chronologically, and writing my reactions on this blog. In one of my life’s cooler turns of events, Ubuweb’s founder Kenneth Goldsmith reached out and offered to host my writings on Ubuweb itself. Maybe you wonder why I would do something like this. I’d say it serves the three purposes of (a) honing my writing skills, (b) providing a vast body of audiovisual techniques to steal, and (c) being entertaining for people. (I try to make them funny.)
Since 2008, I have written a weekly podcast review for the web side of Public Radio International’s The Sound of Young America. The column is officially titled Podthoughts. The Sound of Young America, a nationally syndicated interview program, was founded and continues to be hosted by Jesse Thorn, a fellow with whom I’ve long communicated (and once interviewed) but only just met. There are actually a number of similarities between me and him, especially in that we both went to middle-tier University of California schools, we both started shows on our respective schools’ radio stations, and we both think public radio could do a lot better that it does right now. (His own efforts in the medium have inspired mine, about which more below.) Though it’s sometimes a drag how little feedback Podthoughts draws, it’s exposed me to shows I wouldn’t have otherwise heard and connected me with some fabulous people.
More recently, my girlfriend Madelaine Frezza and I started Santa Barbara Unseen, a project to collect and contextualize the images of Santa Barbara, where we live, which aren’t endorsed by the Santa Barbara Board of Tourism. It’s a small town and one nearly as full of palm trees and Spanish architecture as you’ve been let to believe, but there’s fascinating, gritty stuff here too. If enough people find this idea appealing, we’ll probably use Kickstarter to fund a similarly themed art book, something in the vein of Douglas Coupland’s City of Glass.
I also write for Santa Barbara’s weekly paper, The Independent, and I host their weekly radio show on KCSB-FM, Poodle Radio. Further trying to bridge the gap between these two local media institutions, I write a weekly column called The KCSBeat, in which I aim to raise awareness of all the cool radio people are making on the station. I’ve gotten to know a lot of the aforementioned neato people that way.
Since 2007, I’ve hosted and produced another radio program and podcast, The Marketplace of Ideas. It’s dedicated to hour-long interviews with the most interesting luminaries I can find: authors, musicians, scientists, filmmakers, professors, broadcasters, entrepreneurs, etc. I’ve done some of the work I’m proudest of in this venue, including conversations with people I’ve admired for years like Jack Hues of Wang Chung, Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt, comic artist Peter Bagge and Marginal Revolution blogger Tyler Cowen, and specials on things like the 40th anniversary of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left.
I host another, podcast-only show called Barely Literate, which is a book club in podcast form. We talk about the class of authors I write up for The Millions, but, through the other participants’ selections, we touch on the more engaging edges of sci-fi and other genres as well. (If you haven’t gathered by now, I really don’t engage well with genre.) The show’s on something of an extended between-"season" break at the moment, but I assure you it’s coming back.
Ever since interviewing musician/critic/label head/sound artist Lawrence English on The Marketplace of Ideas, I’ve been into field recordings. Last year, I released my first field recording album, New Zealand Stories, for free. I’m currently putting together a few sound art projects — perhaps with occasional visual components, once I obtain a Harinezumi — to submit to the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum’s 2011 call for entries.
Also last year, I made the first in a series of Santa Barbara Psychogeography videos. Though my camera broke shortly after completing it, I bring good news: there will be more! Madelaine and I are even now laying out plans to make Santa Barbara Psychogeography into a television series on Channel 17, which will, of course, also be viewable on the internet. It’ll hit somewhere desirably in the middle of my interests in still photography, motion photography, cinema, and field recording, not to mention be pretty fun to watch.
In July, I wrote and directed Observer, my first narrative short film. Since I’m submitting it to festivals, I can’t make it publicly available yet, but there are production notes here and stills here. The people from whom I’ve solicited feedback have called it a fine example of Santa Barbara noir and an effective inducer of creeping, amorphous dread. Tim and Pav recently interviewed me about it on their radio show, Radio Causeway. A trailer should make its way up Real Soon Now.
I regularly do live DJing here in Santa Barbara, most recently at the Contemporary Arts Forum’s 24-hour drawing marathon and every month at the Santa Barbara New Music Series. I lack a coherent way to describe my material, other than, in one of my sets, you will almost certainly hear Eberhard Weber, Alva Noto, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Scanner, Brian Eno, Mitchell Akiyama, Tim Hecker, Tujiko Noriko, and David Toop. (Two of whom have been on The Marketplace of Ideas, and two others of whom I’ll maybe aggressively pursue for same.)
I also do a bunch of personal journaling, have a few bookish things in the works, and am learning Korean and Japanese, but those aren’t really things I “make” or “have made,” per se. Oh, and I tweet — and tweet hard.
The really fascinating part is that I don’t get money from any of this. (Technicality: some of the print stuff gets me money.) I draw more or less a hobo’s salary, and it doesn’t come from any of the above. (It does get spent on many of the above, though.) It’s actually a pure fluke that I earn even that, since I only possess the skills involved in the above. I sometimes sit and wonder about what happened to my modest material aspirations at the end of high school, such as, say, a t-topped Nissan 300ZX, market value $6,000. Now, I find I must force even the thought of a 1991 Tercel out of my mind, for the mental image of such a forbidden desideratum is too beautiful to bear.
I always figured I could establish a substantial audience and go from there, but, as the astute Justin Wehr put it, I am a living refutation to “If you build it, they will come.” Ben Casnocha suggests I be the first recipient of a Junior MacArthur Foundation fellowship, which isn’t something I’d turn down, but something inside me still believes strongly that, if I’m supporting myself on anything other than customers’ money exchanged for goods provided and services rendered, I am “not a productive member of society.”
Though this does feel a bit like I “did life wrong” at some point, I’m not exactly saddened — just sort of confused, like I released a bowling ball and it somehow fell up. Unless I’m missing a bunch of critical factors, my calculations tell me that The Marketplace of Ideas alone should have at least ten times the listeners it does. Hmm. Hence my goal to level up in life, i.e., to make it more consistent, more aligned — to make it a life where the things that take up 90 percent of my time aren’t technically “on the side.”
How, you ask? Dunno.
My enterprises break roughly into what I think of as four handy “quadrants”: broadcasting, writing, film, and sound. While I make things about these things in and of themselves, I also use them as forms to make stuff about my other, less-broad interests: East Asia, languages, hybridity, the experimental, economics, aesthetics, the urban environment, conversation with neato people, and so on. If this sounds confusing, it kind of is! Let’s break it down piece by piece.
On this very blog, available since 2002 on Livejournal and since 2007 on Typepad, I write about every subject I’m competent to write about, and some I’m not. I used to write more about current events and stuff and express much stronger opinions, but then I realized I hate getting into internet arguments and that nobody, myself included, really knows anything about anything. Before that, I used to write more about cars and popular culture of the years 1978 through 1994, but then I realized those subjects are pretty much dead ends. Nowadays, most of my post turn out to deal with books, film, writing itself, and how to live a reasonably non-wasted life.
I write monthly primers on contemporary novelists which are published by the literary site The Millions. Most of the novelists I’m concerned with disregard the very concept of genre, do what I consider interesting things with form, structure, or language — I’m not particularly moved by plot or character — and seem somehow underappreciated. I’ve written primers on Kobo Abe, Alexander Theroux, B.S. Johnson, and David Markson. I’ve got more on the way about authors like Douglas Coupland, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Ryu Murakami, and J.G. Ballard. The goal is to have enough of them to publish a book, presumably to be titled something like 50 Contemporary Novelists Without Whom Your Brain Will Wither and Die. Except I don’t have an agent. Does anybody have an agent I could use?
Also every month — theoretically — comes a new installment of The Humanists, the film column I write for 3QuarksDaily. Each article focuses on one film from a particularly great director. I find great directors do the same things as great novelists: they work primarily in form rather than content, they take risks, they urinate all over genre. I haven’t written one of these in a while, but I’ll get back on the horse soon. In the meantime, some of the best, I think, are on Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century, Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse, and (my favorite film of all time) Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi.
At least once or twice a week, I update my Ubuweb Experimental Video Project. Ubuweb is the internet’s largest archive of avant-garde material from God Knows When to present, and they have a substantial archive of films and videos. I’m watching all of them, alphabetically by artist’s name and then chronologically, and writing my reactions on this blog. In one of my life’s cooler turns of events, Ubuweb’s founder Kenneth Goldsmith reached out and offered to host my writings on Ubuweb itself. Maybe you wonder why I would do something like this. I’d say it serves the three purposes of (a) honing my writing skills, (b) providing a vast body of audiovisual techniques to steal, and (c) being entertaining for people. (I try to make them funny.)
Since 2008, I have written a weekly podcast review for the web side of Public Radio International’s The Sound of Young America. The column is officially titled Podthoughts. The Sound of Young America, a nationally syndicated interview program, was founded and continues to be hosted by Jesse Thorn, a fellow with whom I’ve long communicated (and once interviewed) but only just met. There are actually a number of similarities between me and him, especially in that we both went to middle-tier University of California schools, we both started shows on our respective schools’ radio stations, and we both think public radio could do a lot better that it does right now. (His own efforts in the medium have inspired mine, about which more below.) Though it’s sometimes a drag how little feedback Podthoughts draws, it’s exposed me to shows I wouldn’t have otherwise heard and connected me with some fabulous people.
More recently, my girlfriend Madelaine Frezza and I started Santa Barbara Unseen, a project to collect and contextualize the images of Santa Barbara, where we live, which aren’t endorsed by the Santa Barbara Board of Tourism. It’s a small town and one nearly as full of palm trees and Spanish architecture as you’ve been let to believe, but there’s fascinating, gritty stuff here too. If enough people find this idea appealing, we’ll probably use Kickstarter to fund a similarly themed art book, something in the vein of Douglas Coupland’s City of Glass.
I also write for Santa Barbara’s weekly paper, The Independent, and I host their weekly radio show on KCSB-FM, Poodle Radio. Further trying to bridge the gap between these two local media institutions, I write a weekly column called The KCSBeat, in which I aim to raise awareness of all the cool radio people are making on the station. I’ve gotten to know a lot of the aforementioned neato people that way.
Since 2007, I’ve hosted and produced another radio program and podcast, The Marketplace of Ideas. It’s dedicated to hour-long interviews with the most interesting luminaries I can find: authors, musicians, scientists, filmmakers, professors, broadcasters, entrepreneurs, etc. I’ve done some of the work I’m proudest of in this venue, including conversations with people I’ve admired for years like Jack Hues of Wang Chung, Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt, comic artist Peter Bagge and Marginal Revolution blogger Tyler Cowen, and specials on things like the 40th anniversary of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left.
I host another, podcast-only show called Barely Literate, which is a book club in podcast form. We talk about the class of authors I write up for The Millions, but, through the other participants’ selections, we touch on the more engaging edges of sci-fi and other genres as well. (If you haven’t gathered by now, I really don’t engage well with genre.) The show’s on something of an extended between-"season" break at the moment, but I assure you it’s coming back.
Ever since interviewing musician/critic/label head/sound artist Lawrence English on The Marketplace of Ideas, I’ve been into field recordings. Last year, I released my first field recording album, New Zealand Stories, for free. I’m currently putting together a few sound art projects — perhaps with occasional visual components, once I obtain a Harinezumi — to submit to the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum’s 2011 call for entries.
Also last year, I made the first in a series of Santa Barbara Psychogeography videos. Though my camera broke shortly after completing it, I bring good news: there will be more! Madelaine and I are even now laying out plans to make Santa Barbara Psychogeography into a television series on Channel 17, which will, of course, also be viewable on the internet. It’ll hit somewhere desirably in the middle of my interests in still photography, motion photography, cinema, and field recording, not to mention be pretty fun to watch.
In July, I wrote and directed Observer, my first narrative short film. Since I’m submitting it to festivals, I can’t make it publicly available yet, but there are production notes here and stills here. The people from whom I’ve solicited feedback have called it a fine example of Santa Barbara noir and an effective inducer of creeping, amorphous dread. Tim and Pav recently interviewed me about it on their radio show, Radio Causeway. A trailer should make its way up Real Soon Now.
I regularly do live DJing here in Santa Barbara, most recently at the Contemporary Arts Forum’s 24-hour drawing marathon and every month at the Santa Barbara New Music Series. I lack a coherent way to describe my material, other than, in one of my sets, you will almost certainly hear Eberhard Weber, Alva Noto, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Scanner, Brian Eno, Mitchell Akiyama, Tim Hecker, Tujiko Noriko, and David Toop. (Two of whom have been on The Marketplace of Ideas, and two others of whom I’ll maybe aggressively pursue for same.)
I also do a bunch of personal journaling, have a few bookish things in the works, and am learning Korean and Japanese, but those aren’t really things I “make” or “have made,” per se. Oh, and I tweet — and tweet hard.
The really fascinating part is that I don’t get money from any of this. (Technicality: some of the print stuff gets me money.) I draw more or less a hobo’s salary, and it doesn’t come from any of the above. (It does get spent on many of the above, though.) It’s actually a pure fluke that I earn even that, since I only possess the skills involved in the above. I sometimes sit and wonder about what happened to my modest material aspirations at the end of high school, such as, say, a t-topped Nissan 300ZX, market value $6,000. Now, I find I must force even the thought of a 1991 Tercel out of my mind, for the mental image of such a forbidden desideratum is too beautiful to bear.
I always figured I could establish a substantial audience and go from there, but, as the astute Justin Wehr put it, I am a living refutation to “If you build it, they will come.” Ben Casnocha suggests I be the first recipient of a Junior MacArthur Foundation fellowship, which isn’t something I’d turn down, but something inside me still believes strongly that, if I’m supporting myself on anything other than customers’ money exchanged for goods provided and services rendered, I am “not a productive member of society.”
Though this does feel a bit like I “did life wrong” at some point, I’m not exactly saddened — just sort of confused, like I released a bowling ball and it somehow fell up. Unless I’m missing a bunch of critical factors, my calculations tell me that The Marketplace of Ideas alone should have at least ten times the listeners it does. Hmm. Hence my goal to level up in life, i.e., to make it more consistent, more aligned — to make it a life where the things that take up 90 percent of my time aren’t technically “on the side.”
How, you ask? Dunno.
Colin,
I think MOI is peerless, and have often surfed around trying to figure out how I could "support the show" (financially, as I am not an iTunes user).
This could be a small part of the problem (assuming that I haven't been missing something "obvious").
I genuinely feel guilty that I take so much without giving in return.
Help me help you, and we'll both sleep better (I assume).
A million thanks,
Mark
Posted by: ML Cohen | August 24, 2010 at 05:44 PM
Even though I make orders of magnitude more money than you doing orders of magnitude less work, I envy you, and I intend to become more like you. I am glad to hear that you are devoted to leveling up, and no doubt you deserve it, but I think you are one of the rare birds who's figured out -- and I mean *really* figured out, not just intellectualized -- that life's too short to be spent doing anything other than . . . you get my drift. I'll stop before it becomes too cliche.
Posted by: Justin Wehr | August 24, 2010 at 08:16 PM
Hi Colin, The Market Place of Ideas is your signature it all revolves in who you are and how you appreciate and adapt to new and neato ideas. Boy you're shipping interesting stuff, and if you keep up yourself energized many of your interest will evolve into something even more admirable to what you ship now —it seems to me that your rituals have paid off.
I’d say your purpose of honing writing skills, as I know you from this blog and TMPoI, is to embrace clarity, and it helps me too. It's been helpful to me as to think better and to appreciate other's work significantly.
well the question is undoubtedly; how you make a living?
Posted by: Andres | August 25, 2010 at 10:45 PM
Colin,
I'm a big fan of much of your work -- and I have a lot of respect for your output. Your work is significantly more impressive than anything I have created and, like Justin, I am jealous.
That said, it seems to me that you are *hoping* that your work will magically monetize itself -- rather than analyzing how you could drive revenue and following through on it.
You won't like many (all?) of these ideas, but... you could write an e-book on how to produce your first low-budget art film to feature when you release your upcoming film. Or, you could put ads up on your sites (I click as "tips" for great content). You could offer to help people brainstorm what their art / purpose is. You could teach people how to DJ. You could find a host of things that other people have built and endorse them through affiliate links. You could make one of your podcasts only available for paid download. You could offer a "donate dinner to Colin" link on your page. You could keep everything the same, but devote 15% of your time to something you would never do if not for the money. The list goes on and on.
It seems to me that you are more uncomfortable with the idea of monetization of your work / art, than incapable.
Posted by: Rebecca | August 30, 2010 at 10:18 AM
All I can provide is praise. Love your work and a few ideas: you may be on the avante garde, which means it may be difficult to build a broad audience without compromising your artistic sense. Another idea is you may just need to keep on keepin' on, for a breakthrough in the future. 3rd, perhaps you should partner with or get advice from someone who can think about creative ways to "market" your material, so that you're not compromising it, but it's getting to more people who might enjoy it. 4th, you could poll people and figure out what resonates with them, what doesn't, about your work. Maybe there are reasons outside of content, such as format, web presence, how your material is introduced, that are limiting your audience? 5th, maybe there is another way to make money based on the material you are amassing, again without compromising?
Above all I think the best thing is to keep following your heart. This usually helps one focus, also. Worst case, no one ever gets your work and you have to keep doing side jobs, but at least you will have enjoyed the ride and found it meaningful. Better, and more likely, is that your enthusiasm will continue to shine and wear through people's fixed impressions of the world, to offer them something new. Like you did for me, I just really enjoyed the podcast with Steven Moore and have myself a list of interesting authors to scope out. Hope to catch up soon, -A
Posted by: Andrew McKee | September 01, 2010 at 11:01 PM
I just really enjoyed the podcast with Steven Moore and have myself a list of interesting authors to scope out. Hope to catch up soon, -A
Posted by: Tiffany sale | October 18, 2010 at 07:15 AM