Jimbo's Big Tent
HERE & NOW—HEAR, NOW, HOWDY!
A First Installment From JIMBO'S BIG TENT
Hello—a brief intro
My Hopes—not quite so brief
Supporters' Perquisites—a pitch
Typical Issue Contents—the sorts of narratives that subscribers can expect
Ciao For Now
INTRODUCTION
In the phrasing of a muse, 'I have a preposition for you.' Actually, I've got three of them, 'of, by, and for,' as in tall tales, yarns, reporting, and other media of, by, and for the people, ha ha. My hope is to provide folks a B.E.A.M., Beautiful, Entertaining, Access to Meaning. Thus, I present you Jimbo's Big Tent and its wide variety of stories, ideas, essays, and more.
Many who are reading this will have come to know me through Marshall Arts and its “guaranteed kick in the ASSthetic.” As I've often noted in my conversations with buyers of my categorical art—Philosophy, Psychology, Spirituality; Love & Erotic Passion; Politics & Personal Empowerment; Life & Love & Art in the Time of COVID—I've been churning out reams and reams, or 'beams and beams,' of other narrative materials. Through good fortune and my belief in what I'm doing, ha ha, the time has come to take a stand for the whole kit and caboodle, as my Dad liked to say.
When one ponders why one is doing something at a particular time in a particular sort of fashion, one must acknowledge that something in the precise present makes this the right occasion for advancing one's schemes and dreams in this way, and blah blah blah. Most centrally, however, when, as with me, one's entire cultural existence has revolved around being a humble wage-earner, one must emphasize budgetary considerations as the core components of accomplishing anything at all. Working class people have zero other credible options than to center fiscal affairs.
Inferentially therefore, in other words, miraculously or otherwise, I have found the means to afford this experiment in outreach and engagement. For at least a year or so, imagining a small but loyal group of supporters, people who enjoy what I offer so much that they'll pay for the privilege of getting more, is a vision that I have a budget to pursue. This is the good news, attenuated by the need for steady future income in order to sustain this enterprise. In aggregate, then, this introduction to Jimbo's Big Tent efforts seeks to find an audience for production of one sort and another, primarily writing and readings, wild and challenging and sexy and bizarre, that I cannot stop myself from producing.
After all, my first existential duty is to create and share beautiful ideas. At least occasionally, readers and other participants believe that I succeed in this effort. If you are one of the first to read these lines, then you've known, at least in outline, about my work and probably agreed that I've got interesting, evocative, and entertaining things to say—especially for those with nerdy bones in their bodies.
WHAT I WANT
This is very simple. I have some fairly expansive production dreams. They require money in order to happen. If I can find enough followers, then I'll probably—Lord willing and the Creek don't rise—be able to do some of this larger confabulation, so to speak. Basically, in this vein, I need folks who will give me $120 for a year's content.
My sense of things is that if, for a few years anyway, I could find two hundred people to support my endeavors in this way, with $120/year, equivalent to ten bucks a month, then at the end of those three years I will have accumulated the cash to finance “Lu-Lu,” the first movie that I want to make. One of the many perquisites that subscribers have is access to conversations about “Lu-Lu” and other planned extravaganzas of Jimbo's Big Tent.
To test whether my prediction about “Lu-Lu” is correct, my audience has only to play along. Readers have a free ride, if they like. I appreciate their reading.
Still, I ask one and all to consider subscribing and being part of my third existential duty, to participate in creating sustainable social transformation. This, after all, is the point of everything that I do, to find viable ways to avoid the mass collective suicide with which our kind is toying every single day. Not that I want to play 'Debbie Downer,' on the contrary, I am a jolly bloke, but that I care enough about embodiment's multifold miracles to want them to persist.
I might almost put matters like this. 'Let me entertain you while, together, we find some small ways to participate in saving our own asses,' LOL!
WHAT SUBSCRIBERS GET
Primarily, subscribers receive evocative textual nuggets, things to read and hear, although other output—videos and such—will also appear now and again. To start, to make sure that I can keep up with the pace, the publication will be fortnightly, so that every two weeks what is essentially an online magazine will show up on the site and in inboxes. Everyone can read and hear a little bit. Subscribers get the whole experience, the textual and aural output that will predominate here.
Followers will also have ongoing opportunities to participate in moderated discussions that focus on both the work that shows up here and any issues that relate to the stories and readings in the magazine section. At the outset, this discursive element of everything will likely take the form of an e-mail list's serving up exchanges about things.
And that's not all.
Subscribers furthermore receive all 'Special Programs,' occasional deep dives into topics of interest.
They get automatic free entry to an annual in-person get-together and to regular online events— show-and-tell, workshop, or otherwise.
They receive each year one free Spiral-Spread Tarot Reading, either in person or online, as well as two Daily Plucks, one card to examine something of interest.
Every year as well, they can claim a no-cost introductory cultural production session with Jim, or, occasionally, with guest producers.
Every annual subscriber also earns a ten percent discount on Marshall Arts' Driftwood Message Art and fifty percent off cards and journals and photos and such.
Finally, no fooling, paid participants will get 'bonus packages' that haven't occurred to me yet, but, guaranteed, will do so as things unfold.
EACH ISSUE’S TABLE OF CONTENTS
My work has remained consistent over time, even as new ideas and forms take shape. For instance, Driftwood Message Art is relatively recent. In any event, each issue of the Jimbo's Big Tent periodical will likely include something in most of the following thirteen categories.
Tarot's Tantric Corner—This portal will lead to summaries and explications about actual readings for clients.
All God's Cousins—This section will consist of the content's of Jim's most polished novel, more or less one chapter per issue.
Wood Words Essays—This vector will include brief essays or other ruminations on pieces that have sold, with a focus on the text and implications of a given item of colorful wood.
Empowered Political Forays—This window into the magazine's material will deliver reports, commentary, reviews, and the occasional investigative expose.
New Fiction Series—These tales will offer various new series, novels or other longer or otherwise ongoing storytelling.
Old Stories & New—These pieces will be stand-alone, shorter works, generally no more than a few thousand words or so.
Classic Folk, Rejuvenated—This element of the whole package proffers mostly well-known fairy tales, turned into brief novellas of five to ten chapters each, thematically and narratively very up to date, as it were.
New Folk Fables—This sector of the work introduces Magic Jack and The Reluctant Wizard and other incarnations of evolving narrative about characters evocative of my life and times.
Nerdy Nuggets—This will cover a lot of ground: research into science and technology and such, ideas about innovations and epiphanies about how we think about things; spiritual speculation, and more.
Communication & Human Survival—This programming will examine media literacy and history, along with the political economy of culture itself.
Happy Union Grammar Nerds—English usage fascinates me; people who love to explore matters of style and diction, clarity and grammar, and so forth will find much to like here.
Erotic Snippets—The Love Panels and Amorous Staffs that Marshall Arts sells are stylistically similar to these narrative installments—torrid and dripping with love's libations, blah blah blah.
Odd Beginnings, New Endings—Quite often, a beginning or premise for a yarnspinning exercise occurs to me; less frequently but more than merely occasionally, a dream or daylight pondering will suggest an ending, examples of which will appear here, awaiting input about continuing and expanding and such.
Despite how much I appreciate the number thirteen, additional types of material may emerge over time. The journey could delineate a social and intellectual journey, part adventure, part exploration. Last but not least, moreover, every issue will include an audio excerpt from each specific title.
A FINAL WORD OR SO
Intuitively, I know that what I am proposing is possible. After all, I only need one out of every forty million of my fellow traveling cousins to sign up to form what I believe will prove an adequate foundation for fruition of my plans and projections.
To anyone reading this, I'd just ask for a little acknowledgement that this expenditure is less than the cost of many meal tabs, at the same time that it could contribute in ways at once palpable and mysterious to making life here on our fair planet a little more pleasant, perhaps something like sustainable, and in any case a bit more beneficent to all and sundry.
Anyhow, I'll begin posting actual content almost immediately. Folks on this initial list will, if my understanding of the Substack system is accurate, find these installments in their inboxes. Free participants will be able to read a bit of each item; paid subscribers will get the entire file, plus audio, in addition to the other benefits listed above. As always, I'd love to hear from folks. Keep me posted. Ciao for now.