Things Desired

In high school I copied out a poem called “The Desiderata” on yellow construction paper and taped it on my wall next to a poster of Prince in a leather thong (in a shower.) I must have found the poem in a book or magazine, because this was before the Internet. Regardless of its literary merit, the sentiments in “The Desiderata” (hang in there) helped me survive 12th grade.

The Latin title translates as “Things Desired.” I assumed it was ancient wisdom, especially since “The Desiderata” is often accompanied by: “found in St. Paul’s churchyard, AD 1692.” But the origin story was badly botched. An Indiana poet named Max Ehrmann wrote it in 1927. According to the Poetry Foundation, the confusion started when a minister in Baltimore mimeographed copies of the poem on his church's letterhead in the 1950s. “The Desiderata” went viral, for its time. It brought in revenue from posters, tee shirts, mugs, keychains. Leonard Nimoy even recorded it on a spoken word album and called it “Spock Thoughts.” You can easily find it on Amazon, or hanging in a frame in your cousin’s kitchen.

When online words and images go viral, they take on a life of their own. Influencers (and nobodies) can assimilate, re-enact, share, and generally take advantage of other people’s creativity. And it’s legal. To oversimplify: it’s okay to use found or borrowed content as long as you add something, comment, re-interpret, or re-present it. No one polices this on the web. But can we at least offer the author or artist a credit? Please?

In her newsletter, Adventures in Journalism, author Sari Botton addresses a viral tweet that “got away.” Over two years later, other people still repost her writing on their social media without any attribution to the author. Botton: “While it was just a tossed-off thought, I’m pissed that other people are getting mileage and/or possibly pulling in cash—directly or indirectly—from my words when I am not. Each time I spot the quote on one platform or another, I find myself trying to imagine a way to reverse engineer the situation so that I have generated a cool $111,330 (or more!) for myself with those 24 words.”

At Atticus Review, we’re not reverse engineers. (We’d like to be. Who wouldn’t?) We are, however, using NFT technology to mint literary work and multimedia. While NFT publishing may never address the issue of getting paid for every viral tweet, we think it is a step in the right direction for artists receiving compensation for work. With blockchain publishing, we’re not really talking about copyright. We’re talking more about the digital manuscript as a first edition for the author who mints it. The key element is the author’s contractual connection, in perpetuity, to what is minted. The NFT smart contracts and the digital assets on the blockchain are evolving. We’re still deciding how Atticus is going to work with them.

We believe NFT publishing will tilt the focus back on the originators. Blockchain also has the potential to eliminate grabby billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Think of all the energy, creativity, and intelligence artists and writers pour onto Instagram, Tik Tok, X, Youtube, etc every day for FREE, or to earn a small percentage of what those platforms make (as long as they please the algorithms).

NFT and blockchain have more evolving to do before a crypto wallet can act as a digital resting place or forum. They do, however, currently offer potential for artists to strengthen the independent creative and financial control they exert over their digital output. That’s a thing we desire.

Thanks for reading.

Boo Trundle
Atticus Review

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