Thank you Catherine Forsman for a comment on one of my posts (about the people who don’t want to pay artists and don’t want anyone else to pay them, either.) I was happy you mentioned one of my favorite books, “The Gift.”

In “The Gift,” author Lewis Hyde makes an amazing case for re-thinking our ideas about buying and selling art, especially art that can be copied (books, CD’s, posters, etc.) I think Hyde is saying that some amount of getting paid for a copy of a creative artwork is appropriate, since we all have an interest in authors and inventors being rewarded for their ideas and inventions. But he doesn’t seem to think that you should get paid for it forever, nor that your heirs should be able to get paid for it forever, either.

I understand that word “commodification” to some degree, but I think it’s used too loosely when it comes to a lot of artists’ work. Artists who make a 3-minute song, or a 300-page novel, or a painting that hangs on a wall, no matter how mindblowing and great, are already thinking about bringing these artworks to market. Why else would they work within an established form? They’re not getting “commodified” against their will – they’re hoping someone will buy their stuff so they can pay the bills and make more stuff. And maybe over time they can also help to re-invent the form, and hopefully people will pay for that too, so the artist can pay the bills and go back to work and make more stuff.

On the other hand… One reason I keep having to re-visit “The Gift” is its emphasis on thinking of artistic creation as part of a “gift economy.” Hyde urges the artist to think of artistic ideas, inspirations and ability as gifts coming from beyond them, part of a continuity through time and other artists; and Hyde urges them to consider their artwork as being essentially a gift to the world. And then the reward coming back from the world is not part of a transaction for the artwork, but more like a gift of gratitude from the world back to the artist.

I love this idea, and yet because I’m a 21st century American, I can only understand/believe it by returning to it over and over, and reviewing the arguments in the book. It’s really influenced my thinking a lot.

Somebody read the book for me and let me know if you found the ideas within it easy!

Meanwhile, speaking of a gift economy, for the last few weeks and for the coming months I’ve been giving away my favorite unreleased songs and tracks to the folks on my e-mailing list. The series is called “Songs from the Ballroom,” named after my recording space. I think the idea for doing it partly came from my desire to get more deeply involved in Lewis Hyde’s model “gift economy” – to see what it feels like more directly. And so far it feels great! Click on the link above and to the right and you’ll see more.

This is just the kind of artwork (engraving?) that drives my imagination wild. I think both of going to sea myself and the crazy adventure and danger of it; and at the same time I think of someone in the 1500’s thinking about going to sea, and what that must have been like. Bruegel rocks, that’s just the facts. He’s one of my favorite artists and you can see a lot more of his stuff here.

(My 7th-grade signature, perfected in class and ready for my appointment as Secretary of The Treasury or – what seemed more likely to me at the time – my becoming a world-famous cartoonist.)

The current mock-hullabaloo about Prez Obama’s nomination for Secretary of The Treasury, Jacob Lew, centers on Lew’s undignified loop-de-loop of a signature:

The Prez made a gentle witticism during his announcement of the nomination, saying, “Jack assures me that he is going to work to make at least one letter legible in order not to debase our currency should he be confirmed as secretary of the Treasury.”

Here, gloriously, are the other signatures Jacob Lew’s will have to live up to if he is confirmed – this graphic shows every signature to have graced US paper currency from 1928 to the present.

I vote for as coolest; but sneaking up behind her is George Magoffin Humphrey (maybe because he also has a cool name.)

By the end of Junior High, in preparation for great fame as a cartoonist and caricaturist (having practiced, to powerful effect in various ways, both good and bad, on the faces of my teachers,) I had perfected my “famous cartoonist signature”:

Time passed, I became wise and austere as a twenty-something painter. Living in grungy apartments with gunshots ringing through the alleys must have made my outlandish cartoon signature seem frivolous. I replaced it in my paintings with the “just-a-guy-writing-his-name” signature, which I continued to use into the early 90s:

Then, moderate fame having struck not through my drawings but instead through my songs, I found myself signing autographs – lots of them – and a complex set of factors led me to the next incarnation. At signings with large numbers of fans lined up for autographs, speed became much more important. Neither my elaborate cartoon signature, nor the deliberately upright painter signature were easy to write quickly. In addition, I disliked the thought of hundreds of Semisonic posters, tee shirts and albums out in the world with my name scrawled illegibly on them. These considerations led to the “I’ll be damned if no one can read my name on this poster in ten year’s time” signature. See it in action next to the signatures of Jmbls Slush and Jh Murisnn (Morrison? Mzzmm?) below:

Which brings us to the present. My current signature is a kind of hybrid of the three main versions to date. I’m sure it will morph again, but here’s what would appear on the dollar bill if President Obama were in a jam and turned to me as a last-ditch Treasure Secretary nomination: