[gwirya]

Dear Mr Alan, even though I dont know you personally, I 've read many of your posts and try hard to understand your thought throught it. when I read someone post on a topic and I don't grab it and have to read it two or more times to understand the essence of the body; it is either the post is not clear and written by someone not well-informed or the post is written by someone who has very deep insight of the topic. Alan, to me, you are a very unigue person. you are the only one and one only, a westerner with western education, highly logical, gathering info, testing, draw conclusion supporting the fact, very scientific, and yet have lived in Java for many many years, understand and lived in the culture of keris, learn the art of keris-making, pounding the metal and making the wesi-aji yourself, has privileges to learn from Empu Pauzan and become a student and son of Empu Suparman.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

producing a book, or any kind of writing is work, uses time; if we put time into writing, it must come from somewhere else, and if we need to use time to produce income, the time spent on writing reduces income; once the book has been written, it then needs to be published, and finding a publisher for anything other than a book that will return a profit on sales is a futile search.

In purely economic terms, the production of a book dealing with anything other than the most popularist aspects of the keris is a losing proposition.

It may be possible to defend the production of a book on the keris if that book deals with aspects of the keris that will attract a broad and not necessarily specialist readership, however, books of this nature have been done to the point of being overdone. They may return a dollar profit, but they do not return much profit in the form of knowledge.

From purely business point of view, I totally agree with your economic argument but then when it involves passion and perhaps love, we sometime do things irrationally.
Most people only pursue wealth and status, but in the world how much can we aquire? The stars, the moon, mountains, and flowing waters. Each blade of keris are all there for you to appreciate.

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Thirdly, there is the motivation in production of a book.

I know of cases where a book has been produced for no other reason than to promote sales for the writer, and in the case of one very well known writer, deliberately incorrect, or inadequate information was provided in that book, in order to protect his own livilihood. When I pointed this out to the writer, his reply was:- "you don't need to tell the whole world everything; show them the door, but don't give them the key, they'll find the key themselves if they deserve to".

I know of other cases where a book has been written, sometimes with the backing of a wealthy benefactor, and for declared altruistic reasons, for the sole purpose of marketing a collection that was subsequently sold.

Then there are the cases, more than a few when we consider the keris, where a book, or books have been produced and privately published simply to feed the ego of the writer and to raise that writer's percieved level of expertise in the eyes of those who do not yet understand sufficient to differentiate between true knowledge and the appearance of knowledge.

If we desire knowledge, we should be prepared to seek that knowledge, not hope that it will be dropped into our laps when we open a book.

But then again, most of us don't have a privilege to seek the knowledge of keris from a living Empu. Nowadays, we seek info mostly through reading books and or browsing internet . And as we gain our knowledge of our interest, we can differentiate between great knowledge books from appearance one.

Reading a book of keris from a writter who possess a level of knowledge as good as a current Empu if not better, will be very interesting and delightful. You hold a great information in the art of keris, if it buried to the ground, it seems like a wasteful of knowledge.

With great knowledge comes great resposibilty

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Thus the concept of publication must be subjected to searching analysis before any book is even into a planning stage, and it must be assessed by a person who has the necessary level of knowledge to carry out this analysis and assessment. Very often the only person with this level of knowledge is the potential author.

Very often the person with this level of knowledge/potential author is becoming endangered or perhaps don't exist anymore.

Writing a book is the path to gain Immortality