Claude Lévi-Strauss was an exchange theorist.
He said linguistics was about the exchange of messages,
economics was about the exchange of goods and services,
and kinship was about the exchange of women.
He was influenced my Marcel Mauss, who wrote
The Gift: forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies.
Or, Essai sur le don. He introduces the concept of reciprocity.
In AA, they say to keep it, you have to give it away.
This applies to writing. Who are you doing it for?
Yourself? Society? The human race?
The cosmos? Aliens? Teenage zombies
from outer space? Vampires are stupid.
So is television. I don’t believe in
Bigfoot. Although I consider myself
a living fossil. Discovering me will be like
catching a coelacanth. It will force a revision
of the typology. Something new under the sun.
A sport or freak of nature.
A quantum jump.
A saltation.
Lester Leaps In.
Little Willie Leaps.
Leap Frog. On Bird and Diz,
Dizzy Gillespie plays three different breaks
on “Leap Frog” and each one is different from
the others. It’s breathtaking. A master and alternate takes.