First Thoughts on Tremonter

I’m heart­ened by the ini­tial response I’ve got­ten with Tremon­ter. I’ve received an email from a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er who would like to take some pic­tures for me, an email from a Tremont res­i­dent who has B&W pho­tos that she’s will­ing to have post­ed, encour­age­ment from fel­low blog­gers and most impor­tant­ly, vis­i­tors I’ve nev­er heard of.

Although it is still far too ear­ly to deem the site a suc­cess, I think that my gut feel­ing that a com­mu­ni­ty site was need­ed was well found­ed. I know I’m not the most qual­i­fied Tremont res­i­dent to run the thing, since I’ve only lived in the neigh­bor­hood for 6 months, but the impor­tant thing is that I did some­thing. All too often it is easy enough to talk about doing things but nev­er doing them. Some­times I think all the time spent talk­ing is a waste, when it could be spent doing instead. And here I am talk­ing, instead of post­ing over at Tremon­ter…

My moth­er thinks I should sell adver­tis­ing on the site, she also thinks I should be paid to write the things I write, she thinks I should try to get some of my poet­ry pub­lished [ha!]. God bless her, but I don’t need to do it for mon­ey. The focus on “How can I make a buck off of doing this?” pri­or­i­tizes val­ue where cash is pri­ma­ry. I try to pri­or­i­tize val­ue dif­fer­ent­ly. If some­one is edi­fied by some­thing I write, laughs at some­thing I do, or finds some of the infor­ma­tion I pro­vide on Tremon­ter to be use­ful, I con­sid­er myself paid. [I did­n’t even want to say that, pay­ment.] So instead of try­ing to fig­ure out how much mon­ey I can make off Tremon­ter, I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how much I can make Tremont bet­ter. It is like Banksy says:

The time of get­ting fame for your name on its own is over. Art­work that is only about want­i­ng to be famous will nev­er make you famous. Any fame is a by-prod­uct of mak­ing some­thing that means some­thing. You don’t go to a restau­rant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.

or to para­phrase:

The time of get­ting mon­ey for your work on its own is over. Work that is only about want­i­ng to make mon­ey will nev­er make you mon­ey. Any prof­it is a by-prod­uct of mak­ing some­thing that means some­thing. You don’t go to a restau­rant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.

If we quan­ti­fy val­ue by things oth­er than mon­ey, it opens a whole new area for action.

Which has sort of got­ten me off the top­ic of Tremon­ter, but not real­ly. Hope­ful­ly that site will become an exam­ple of what I’ve been talk­ing about. Per­haps this is old hat for many peo­ple, but it is new to me. Like the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who has offered to take some snaps; she wants to build her port­fo­lio and résumé, and I need good snaps so we barter and no mon­ey is exchanged. A friend of mine her Con­necti­cut com­mu­ni­ty first intro­duced me to the mod­ern barter sys­tem. It seems like a good way to trade work for work, work for skill, skill for skill. So a painter might use bar­ter­ing points to devel­op some film and then the film devel­op­er might use some points to buy some­thing from a local bak­ery, and the bak­er might use the points to buy a por­trait from the painter. Stuff is exchanged for equal val­ue, or close to it, com­mu­ni­ty becomes impor­tant, and actu­al cash can be spent on things that can’t be pur­chased any oth­er way. Maybe Cleve­land could use some­thing like that?

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