Like life itself, Kickstarter campaigns demand resilience, obsession, delusional thinking,…and an inbred, mortal terror of humiliation.
We’re getting naked here: It was a terrifying moment when we realized that not only was it was possible that we would fail, but likely: Kickstarter’s diagnostics predicted a 40% likelihood of achieving our goal.
We were literally on THE:
Barry proves, definitively, that history repeats itself. You should play this – 1965 – video and take heed. This ‘subversive’ classic would have been banned before Barney Rosset brought down censorship laws.
In the last week, many have asked us, what saved us? This:
• Three splendid volunteer part-timer social media mavens who helped us up our game on Twitter and Facebook. (Talk about delusional thinking: we launched with dead muskrat in the road social media platforms)
• Good press response from our torturously architected press release (think of self-lashing yourelf with a whip. Or wearing a flea-infested hairshirt for three days)
• Wonderful social media partners in the publishing world, all of whom revere Barney Rosset for unleashing unfettered creativity (Grove Atlantic, The Paris Review, Guernica Magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly: a toast to you guys)
• Our high-lit/pop culture mash-up daily (full confession: we missed a few days due to exhaustion) Kickstarter updates, which, improbably, started circulating
• The enduring attraction of our WILLIAMS S. BURROUGHS PARANOID t-shirt and the success of the introduction of our LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN t-shirt reward. (Both will be available for pre-order through our website, www.barneyswallthefilm.com, starting May Day, May 1. Scroll down for photos)
BUT MOST OF ALL DEAR BACKERS, IT WAS YOU WHO PULLED US THROUGH
With your generous donations, your shouting us out on your social media, your rebel hearts and your commitment to an open, tolerant culture, based on freedom of expression – whether spoken, written, filmed, painted, photographed, danced, emailed. We salute you. You temper our occasional paranoia that nobody cares about such things anymore.
What have we left out?
We cut our sleeping hours down to 4 a night. (Kissinger famously only needed four but we at this moment are so exhausted that we’re seeing strobe lights before our eyes.)
SO DEAR BACKERS: We’ll send one final update before we are shut down at 8:52am EST today (Saturday). Stay in touch with us through social media and seek out our continuing REJOIN THE UNDERGROUND BLOG posts on our website www.barneyswallthefilm
Someone (please email us who) said that every writer is Scherazade- telling stories to keep from dying.
Don’t let this happen, again, ever. Keep literature alive: Buy a book. Don’t ban it. Not one.
Remember these words by the writer Barney published in order to bring down literary censorship:
And when a diagnostic tool is right and takes you down remember:
