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Overloading the Machine

Loved Poem No. 2

Of all the things
to be careless, the
distance chose you,
became rough with
a haughty splendor
unseen since your first
days of pen and pulse
and pendulum strokes
of maybe she will
and maybe she
don't. Always a
nice chin to keep up,
an appearance neither
too wet nor too
yours. Come, share with me
these dancing streaks.
I don't feel like leaving
before I know
the brush.

Today, an endless, recombinant, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of creative product (another antique term?). To say that this poses a threat to the record industry is simply comic. The record industry, though it may not know it yet, has gone the way of the record. Instead, the recombinant (the bootleg, the remix, the mash-up) has become the characteristic pivot at the turn of our two centuries.

-- William Gibson

This page was last modified on 2011 December 20. "Loved Poem No. 2" by John Sullivan is Copyright ©2003 - 2011, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.