966) Well, for me, that whole business of narrative - I'm always uncomfortable with that. I wish I didn't have to do that. I'd like to be able to write books that don't need verbs. Just large collections of nouns and modifiers would work for me. [Laughs.] The ongoing descriptions of things is where the pleasure is in writing. But there's always the editor in the back of my head saying, Now wait a minute, these people have to be doing something and going somewhere.

William Gibson
science fiction author and screenwriter of the film
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
interviewed by Rogier van Bakel in
"Remembering Johnny" in Wired (6/95)

967) Punk was the last viable bohemia that we've seen, perhaps the last bohemian movement of all time. I'm afraid that bohemians will eventually come to be seen as a byproduct of the industrial civilization; and if we're in fact at the end of industrial civilization, there may be no more bohemians. That's scary. It's possible that commercialization has become so sophisticated that it's no longer possible to do the bohemian thing. [...] Look what they did to those poor kids in Seattle! It took our culture literally three weeks to go from a bunch of kids playing in a basement club to the thing that's on the Paris runways. At least, with punk, it took a year and a half. And I'm sad to see the phenomenon disappear. I think bohemians are the subconscious of industrial society. Bohemians are like industrial society, dreaming.

William Gibson
science fiction author and screenwriter of the film
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
interviewed by Rogier van Bakel in
"Remembering Johnny" in Wired (6/95)

968) Although he sympathized with the fanaticism of his colleagues [on the Xanadu project], [programmer Rob] Jellinghaus also began to question whether a hypertext revolution required the perfect preservation of all knowledge. He saw the beauty of the Xanadu dream - "How do you codify all the information in the world in a way that is infinitely scalable?" - but he suspected that human society might not benefit from a perfect technological memory. Thinking is based on selection and weeding out; remembering everything is strangely similar to forgetting everything. "Maybe most things people do shouldn't be remembered," Jellinghaus says. "Maybe forgetting is good."

Gary Wolf
"The Curse of Xanadu" in Wired (6/95)

969) The performer's copyright performance is vested in this performer. It is not given nor assigned to any other party who might claim this as a necessity to protect the performer's interests, collect their royalties, and defend their copyright at law throughout the world.

(A few words to the young musician: if a manager looks you in the eye and claims this necessity, that you might assign to them your copyright for your own best interests, know well that your manager is lying to you.)

The phonographic copyright in these performances is operated by Discipline (GM) [Global Mobile] Records on behalf of the artist. Disc. Glob. Mob. accepts no reason for artists to give away such copyright interests in their work by virtue of a "common practice" which is out of tune with the time, was always questionable and is now indefensible.

The copyrights of the composer's improvised compositions rest with the composer, who recognizes no good reason to assign them to the publisher as an inevitable, necessary, useful or helpful part of the business of collecting publishing royalties.

Crimson Music is currently administered by FujiPacific in Japan, Golden Pony in Hong Kong, and BMG for the rest of the world.

The right of Robert Fripp to be identified as the owner of this and these works is asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act (1988) and in pointed disregard of efforts within the music industry to limit and restrict the moral rights of those who bring music into the world. The formal view of Crimson Music and Discipline GM is that (widespread) business practices which seek to deprive the creative element of its authority are short-sighted.

Let us acknowledge, experience shows that some men will lie for money.

Robert Fripp
liner notes for 1999 (CD recording, 1995)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 610 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.