Re: future of Looper's Delight (long)

[TR <tomrollison@yahoo.com>]

What finally got me involved here after years of casual reading was the 
recognition that LD as a musical consideration has only become more 
relevant over the years. Credit that to Kim's foresight. I don't see how 
it can't only continue to grow in relevance as we as a culture continue 
down the path of "remix" as Lawrence Lessig described it. Layers and 
layers of loops. Seems a natural extension of cyber culture to not just 
have huge amounts of cultural data available but for people to start 
repurposing and remixing.To me ,looping is remixing samples derived from 
any time/where. This is the contribution of DJ based music. They will not 
be constrained by "local" content. Okay,new t-shirt: "Life is Looping". 
And it is !
  Violet,I'd say your priorities are spot on. May the loop be unbroken.

--- On Mon, 6/28/10, Violet Xoxox <violet@missviolet.com> wrote:

> From: Violet Xoxox <violet@missviolet.com>
> Subject: future of Looper's Delight (long)
> To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
> Date: Monday, June 28, 2010, 10:27 PM
> I've been trying to write something
> about this all week, but finding time
> and strength has been hard.  It's difficult to write
> this even now, but I
> feel compelled.  I don't know how eloquent it will be,
> since I don't feel
> particularly coherent right now, so bear with me.
> 
> I know many of you are reeling right now and worrying about
> what's going to
> happen with Looper's Delight.  Will it fall
> apart?  Will it be abandoned?
> I know it's hard not to fret, but please try to have
> faith.  I need
> everyone to, because...
> 
> What's going to happen now is exactly what was going to
> happen anyway.  For
> a long time Kim had been frustrated that the site was such
> a mess and he
> had no time to work on it.  Even the times he did
> update it, he had a tough
> time because he didn't know much about HTML; adding even
> the simplest thing
> was hard for him, which is why the site is so jumbled and
> inconsistent.
> 
> He'd been begging me for more than 10 years to help him
> clean it up.  Every
> now and then, I'd make graphics for him and help with
> layout on the site
> using my awesomely bad circa 1998 web skills (the CD ad
> banners, the
> navigational buttons ... ugh, please don't hurt me! 
> They were cool at the
> time, I swear!).  But the main reason I never fixed
> the site for him was
> because it needed to be switched over to CSS, and *I*
> didn't really have
> the skill to do what needed to be done, either.  But
> it was something we
> talked about many, many times.
> 
> I've worked on several sites since then and I know much
> more about site
> development than I used to.
> 
> Two days before Kim died, I told him I had finally begun
> site restructuring
> for Looper's Delight.  He was SO HAPPY!  I can't
> even tell you how excited
> he was.  For anyone who doubts that Kim still had a
> passion for LD, I can
> tell you that the passion never left.  The fire I saw
> in his eyes that
> night, the joy ... I will never forget that and I wish you
> could have seen
> it.  He was simply stretched thin and his job at
> Nvidia was so stressful,
> there wasn't enough time for him to do everything he
> wanted. I watched him
> wrestle with that for so many years.  You have no idea
> how frustrated he
> was that he couldn't do everything he wanted to do.
> 
> In the past I had added an interface to the site to make
> updating the news
> section easier for him, but he never had time to learn how
> to use it.
> (Currently, you'll notice the news page is giving a server
> error; that's a
> result of my moving the interface UNDERNEATH the running
> site when
> restructuring began in order to hide it so that the
> existing site can still
> viewable while I work on the re-org.)  I told Kim that
> since I already knew
> he probably wouldn't have time to give me much input or
> work on the site
> even with the interface added, I was also going to join the
> list so I could
> get input from the community directly and get you
> involved.  He laughed and
> said yeah, that was probably a good idea!
> 
> So the upshot is, Kim and I had already agreed that I was
> going to take
> over the day-to-day management of the site and seek
> input/help from the
> community.  I had hoped he would be here to guide me
> because I don't really
> know the sorts of things that are of interest to you, but
> sadly, well, we
> see how that went.  But I was going to rely on the
> community for much of
> that anyway.
> 
> So together we can do this.  You know the sorts of
> things that are of
> interest to loop artists.  I know what Kim's vision
> was, I know the
> principles that were important to him, because they're the
> same principles
> by which I run my OWN sites and mailing lists.  We
> were in absolute
> agreement on how mailing lists should be run - and as
> you've seen for
> years, he took great pains to structure the list so that it
> would be able
> to run without him personally babysitting it - and we also
> had many
> wonderful discussions on how we felt news sites should be
> operated.  I will
> miss those discussions so much.
> 
> You may not have Kim any more, but I hope you'll find that
> his spirit lives
> on in me.  We were two halves of the same whole. 
> (Although I am,
> admittedly, the more verbose half.)  I hope you can
> trust that I will take
> the site in the direction Kim would want it to go, because
> I watched him
> care about it for the past 14 years and I know how much it
> meant to him.
> 
> The trouble for me at the moment is that having lost Kim
> now, I won't be
> able to get to the actual redesign as quickly as I'd wanted
> to.  I was
> working on it, and now I'm reeling and life as I knew it
> has come to a
> screeching halt.  Not only am I too heartsick to focus
> on much of anything
> right now, but I'm also going to have to work on keeping
> Kim's personal
> sites - KimFlint.com and Annihilist.com - alive in his
> name.  This is on
> top of the work I have to do for other sites on our server
> and dealing with
> my own website, Undented.com.
> 
> I haven't given much thought yet to how I'm going to keep
> up with it all,
> but I do have people to help me through this, and I have
> all of you to give
> me input when I'm sorting out the LD stuff.
> 
> But for now, things are going continue the way they were
> and would have if
> Kim were still here: the list will continue running the way
> it has been,
> and I will be reorganizing the site behind the scenes and
> getting some of
> you involved when I'm ready.
> 
> I hope this gives you some hope for the future during this
> painful time.
> 
> Oh!  I nearly forgot ... although the way the site is
> physically run is
> going to change dramatically (in that it will be able to be
> updated
> regularly when I'm done with the re-org, yay!) the overall
> look probably
> won't change much.  Originally I had wanted to come up
> with a new design -
> nothing overly flashy, but something better than what's
> there now - but now
> that Kim has gone, his mother has asked if we can at least
> keep the entry
> page similar to what it's been all these years because it
> comforts her and
> makes her think of Kim, so we're going to do that. 
> But it will also
> feature a prominent memoriam to Kim.  I don't think
> anyone would argue that
> that's the way it should be.  So it isn't the overall
> look that will
> change, but the way the content is organized and updated,
> which will make
> it much more exciting and interesting for everyone. 
> I'll be relying
> heavily on the community to help with that.
> 
> And I'm going to clean up the archives.  When I looked
> at those, I was
> shocked by all the spam!  I wish Kim had told me that
> was happening - I
> could have cleaned that up.  Eesh!
> 
> So the site isn't going to suddenly turn all crazy, just be
> more coherent
> and easier to navigate and update.
> 
> Okay, I'm done now, and very tired, and I may not have the
> energy to
> respond to replies, but I *am* here and will be reading as
> much as I can.
> 
> Violet
> xoxox
> 
>