Michigan Radio and Generation Y Michigan are inviting the audience to submit guest essays for publication on this website. If you’d like to publish an essay, please send it as an attachment to generationymichigan@umich.edu. Make sure to include “Generation Y Michigan Essay” in the subject line. We encourage you to provide a short bio (40-80 words), contact email (if different than the one used for submission), and a photo of yourself.

We are still working out the specifics of this new aspect of the project, and we don’t have too many requirements at this time. The essay should focus on the topic of young adults in Michigan, and the reasons why they would move to, stay in or leave the state. These can be based on personal experience, observation, interviews or research. The length should fall in the range of 500-2,000 words, with some flexibility. Your essay should be an elaboration on a theme or idea — in other words, please don’t submit a list of pros or cons about Michigan. Feel free to include an image to go with your essay, as long as you created it or you have the right to use it (include a link to the original image if it’s a Creative Commons photo from Flickr or a free-use image from a stock photo website like Stock.xchng).

At this time guest essays will not appear on the front page of Generation Y Michigan. However, they will be published under a Guest Essays tab in the site navigation and the Recent Posts box in the site sidebar. Essays will be subject to the terms of Michigan Radio’s User Agreement, specifically in regard to discrimination and hate speech. Michigan Radio will not edit the content of essays, but we may make grammatical corrections according to AP Style.

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Q: You have an idealistic site, aimed at showcasing the output of creative people. Do you get a lot of hits? Do the folks you showcase find an audience?

Q: How many other sites are there that are trying something broadly similar to what you’re doing? What kind of audiences do they pull?

Q: Why should anybody go to your site instead of one of the others – or vice versa?

Q: Ever been to one of the really large creative showcase sites like allpoetry.com? How easy or hard would it be for a good poet to get noticed there? How many people would be likely to notice them?

Q: So, some creative product “goes viral”. How would the audience of a successful viral product of today compare with the audience of guys like Kurt Cobain or Tupac Shakur? Is the difference due to quality of the work, or structure of the media?

Q: Do you think creative work that “goes viral” does so because it’s better than the stuff that doean’t? Or are there other reasons? If so, what would those be?

Here is an excerpt from my response:

To address your point about finite human attention, the core of my argument is that the FM radio and MTV model of music distribution is dead. My stance is more like, “Nobody has power, because power is an illusion.” I say the “center” isn’t worth fighting for, because music is an art form, and the center is based on manipulation and deceit. I think it’s safe to say that mass-produced garbage is usually the opposite of art. American Idol is crap, but it’s not intended for music lovers; it’s for pop culture addicts and those who like being indoctrinated. It’s our monetary system (capitalistic or otherwise) that turns music, books, and other artistic creations into trashy consumer products. I think it’s worthwhile to express yourself, search for truth, and work for progress — but not on the condition that you must be paid for it. Yes, I’d like my passion to be how I make a living, but it might be a long time until that happens.

I am also interested in the back and forth shift from underground to mainstream, especially with music. However, I have become convinced that musicians aiming for the center are looking for a music career, and that undoubtedly removes them from the realm of art. Talk about a paradox: indie music has taken over the public consciousness, turning many bands into the exact opposite of what they first stood for (e.g. — Modest Mouse, The Decemberists, Death Cab For Cutie). I’m not sure that I’d want another Nirvana, but I was never a huge fan. They probably did take advantage of that “psychic desolation” you mentioned. But I think we’re approaching a point when everyone turns their attention inward. We must work on the evolution of human consciousness if we are ever to move beyond the repetitive failures of the last 60 years (or 4000 years, depending on how you see it). And somehow, this always returns me to Fight Club.

I just watched Zeitgeist: Addendum, so I’m sure that is flavoring my lingo here. Essentially the Internet is the best modern example of how our world is constantly in an emergent state. There is no stationary point. It’s ever-changing, ever-growing, ever-improving (hopefully). What has happened in the past decade with music and the Internet does seem like anarchy, but that’s simply because methods of finding music are constantly emerging, and they’re being refined and improved.

The Internet provides many options for finding new music, none of which involve searching through thousands of albums. But then again, I feel that if a band is important enough or valid enough or determined enough, they will somehow find the route to their audience. I get a weekly release newsletter from AllMusic.com, which I can scan for band names and genres, then link to the page if more info is needed. Pandora and Last.fm are both tailoring playlists to the listener’s tastes. They work on slightly different systems, but are both pretty effective in introducing new music. There are also online publications and music blogs. (However, I wrote an essay about Pitchfork. You might be interested in reading that one as well.) Then there are the traditional, but always less used methods of talking with a record store employee or frequenting your local indie music venues. Personally I didn’t have that option before the Internet, because the area I grew up in had neither in close proximity.

I wasn’t familiar with AllPoetry.com or any creative showcase sites. It seems like a good idea. Initially, I’d say my site is different because of the various types of content published here. Secondly, I modeled my site after my favorite print and online publication design, so that people can self-publish their work in a professional, attractive setting. I admit that I needed a place to publish my work, and I was largely unsatisfied with journalism, book publishers, and literary journals. But my work is in no way showcased here, especially if more and more people start to submit (eventually I want them to be able to submit themselves, so that there only need be moderators to check that the creative work is legitimate and not an advertisement, etc).

As for traffic and audience, Supraterranean was launched on June 23, 2008, only four months ago. The site currently gets about 300-400 unique visitors per month. I’m hoping that will continue to grow. I did create the website with an idealistic foundation — the most extreme goal being a revolution of the publishing industry. However, I won’t be disappointed if I don’t meet that goal. Even if this site becomes an incubator for writers, filmmakers, and artists to learn and grow, so they can then move into some aspect of traditional publishing, that wouldn’t disappoint me. I don’t expect Supraterranean to be the end point of progress. It’s just (in my eyes) vastly better than the current system. I think that the publishing industry is about to face what the music industry just went through. One example is Amazon BookSurge, which provides self-publishing opportunities for authors.

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As you can see, some of these topics have already been addressed on this blog. But I’m hoping that interactions such as this will become more commonplace on Supraterranean.

Recently I realized  that it would be very difficult to write consistently on here about fiction and philosophy. Not only would it be exhausting, but I’m just not sure that I have those kind of resources. For this post, I turn to a sort of nonfiction reference book. I caught wind of Sin & Syntax by Constance Hale on a trip to the MSU Computer Store circa Spring 2007. A girl working at the counter set the book down to assist me, and I couldn’t help reading the cover when she went into the store room.

I found the book used on Amazon and started reading. For someone who hasn’t had an English class since 2001, this was a hefty undertaking. This feeling was increased since, on more than one occasion, I disagreed with her suggestions. For example, she seems to prefer third-person writing to first-person without question.

“In today’s culture of confession, many writers prefer the first-person point of view. Unabashed subjectivity may be fine for ever-popular memoirs on incest and inside-the-Beltway intrigue, but the third-person point of view remains the standard in news reporting and writing that aims to inform, because it keeps the focus off the writer and on the subject” (p. 36).

She’s correct about focus, but some of the greatest literature — especially in American history — has been told from the first-person view: The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, The Sun Also Rises, etc. Plus (as if I haven’t already made this clear), the authors that got me to write were all using first-person: Kerouac, Thompson, Miller. I would even go so far as to suggest that third-person writing is a way of hiding behind other characters, instead of facing the story head-on. Or maybe I just can’t understand the concept of omnipotence, or pretending to know what dozens of characters are thinking and feeling, let alone saying out loud.

Hale progresses through three parts: Words, Sentences, and Music. Each subsection (i.e. – Nouns) features both Cardinal Sins (what to avoid at all costs) and Carnal Pleasures (what to work hard at developing). One of her Cardinal Sins is the way that journalism copy editors remove interjections (short words or phrases intended for strong effect more than meaning), leaving the writing stale and sterilized.

How she omits Kerouac — one of the most poetic prose writers of all time, who infused jazz into his words in amazing ways — from the Music section is beyond me. But regardless of my opposition, the book is still worth reading.