James Fraleigh

From austinkleon, who inspired me to start a Tumblr log under my own name. Dave Eggers puts into words the free-floating urge I’ve always had to punch people who use the word “sellout”:

This e-mail is making the rounds. I’d reblog it from someone, but that would seem pointless. What I really like are the bits about the Flaming Lips and “saying yes”:

The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it’s corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I’ll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no’s you’ve said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say.

No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.

…

What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming Lips’s new album is ravishing and I’ve listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who’s up and who’s down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.

Die, trolls, die.

The entire email from which this excerpt came is well worth reading. Eggers won my admiration when, after a 2002 presentation at my alma mater, he did this:

A few minutes earlier, Eggers had quietly asked a group of students around him if any were education majors. (McSweeney’s, by the way, has just opened a nonprofit writing lab for underprivileged youth in San Francisco.) When one young man said he planned to teach high school English, Eggers took out what looked like his payment for the evening—a check for $1,500—and signed it. “You’ll be underpaid your whole life,” he said. And he endorsed the check over to the student.

And why not? And goddamn it, why not?