As from this issue, October 2011, Subud Voice goes back to being free to the whole world.
Bit of a shock? Those who have already subscribed may well be thinking, “But I paid! Why should I be supporting all those freeloaders?”
Think of it as supporting the mission of Subud, part of which is to make ourselves available to “all of mankind”. Not to advertise, not to evangelise, but at least to make it possible for people to find us.
But if any subscriber feels hardly done by, please email me at editor@subudvoice.net and I will happily refund your sub. I know that many of our subscribers will want to contribute to the continuation of Subud Voice. You will still get all the value you paid for, but you will be helping a lot of other people get it too.
When I lived in America, I used to watch the Public Broadcast TV channel. It was so much better with its excellent dramas and documentaries than the commercial pap.
Every so often, in the middle of a program someone would come on air and say, “We’re desperate. Send money right now! Please subscribe!” You got the feeling that unless you sent some money right then the channel would go off air and disappear before your eyes.
I subscribed. I did not mind that millions of other people who watched, did not subscribe. I was glad that my subscription kept it going and that I was helping to make it available to “all of mankind”. I was happy to do it. It felt good.
I am hoping that those wonderful people who have recently subscribed to Subud Voice will feel the same…
Why?
Why the change back to free? We didn’t get enough subscribers. Not enough people are interested in paying to follow the unfolding chronicle of the development of Subud. There is no point in us doing all the work of producing Subud Voice for about 100 people. Past experience shows that if it is free a lot of people come to it (about 10,000 a month).
Thank God, that the wonderful Guerrand Hermes Foundation for Peace who once again came to the party with sponsorship – otherwise we would not be able to continue at all. And thank you to that wonderful band of people who did subscribe and who combined with the Foundation will enable us to continue.
Nowadays, I live in Melbourne and I subscribe to several non-commercial radio stations that provide niche broadcasting in things I am interested in, things I value, things I am glad that they are there. One is a classical music station, the other plays jazz, blues etc.
I am happy that I help support them to go out to everyone. I do not mind that I am helping a lot of people to get it for free. I feel no resentment about that. I feel joy.
And these days, through the internet these little radio stations in Melbourne do go out to THE WHOLE WORLD. People in Vladivostok listen to them. People in Singapore, people everywhere.
I hope you’ll feel; like doing he same for Subud Voice.
New Format
I know that many people still long for the days of getting the Voice in the post, but those days are gone. This is the way the world is moving and I believe that we are offering more and better than ever before.
You will have already found that this month’s Subud Voice has a new and much better online format. Many people complained about the size of the .PDF as taking to long to download, downloading badly etc, so our new system solves that.
Also makes it easier for you to read and print out the articles of particular interest to you rather than having to print out the whole thing and use up your colour cartridge (another frequent complaint!). We can publish more content than ever before and display photographs more powerfully.
Our new format also carries a lot more interconnectivity so the vast resources of the internet are made available. Click here www.subud.com and you go instantly to the site. Click here editor@subudvoice.net and you get an email to me (saying how much you like Subud Voice and how happy you are not to want your subscription back).
The new format also gives us the capacity to carry video and audio right here as part of the magazine. For example, here is a video clip in keeping with the rock ‘n roll tone of this issue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YuKTYqiU8o
To read all about Borneo Productions International and see more of their films go to www.borneoproductionsinternational.com
The Talks
Being free to the world means that we cannot publish Bapak and Ibu talks anymore as these are “for Subud members only”. We know that in the old print days people always liked to get their talk in Subud Voice and we used to be an important conduit for the talks.
But no longer so. There are now many ways the talks can be accessed. SPI prints many volumes of them and regularly emails talks And then we have Subud Library, a vast treasure house of, I think, almost every talk ever given. New talks by Ibu come out by email as soon as they available and are often available on video within days of having been given (at Subud Library www.subudlibrary.net).
We will select a talk which perhaps has some special relevance to articles in the issue of SV. You will have noticed in the September issue, when we had material about Sri Lanka, we published a talk from Colombo.
In this issue there is a bit of an emphasis on talent, so we suggest a talk touching on talent. We publish a brief extract from the talk and suggest you go to Subud Library to read the rest if you wish.
In This Issue
We might call this the “Rock and Roll” issue of Subud Voice as there are several articles touching on Subud members’ experience in the music industry. But of course there is much more besides… the solid gold of the ongoing interviews with Mansur Geiger on Kalimantan and Olvia on YUM, for example, and others too numerous to mention.
Love to all
Harris (and Yo-Yo) for The Subud Voice Team