"Oh no honey, don't write about your bowels...how are you going to get grants if you write stuff like that?"
Suffering a wee bit of gastro intestinal distress today, thanks for asking. Fever, chills, something wanting desperately to come out and at the same time something blocking the way for that to happen.
This is a familiar feeling...reminds me of trying to play 'this music' in 'public'--festivals, concerts--you know, like 'normal' musicians do. Oh there's plenty of music ready to come out--pounding at the door even--but unfortunately there's this big, dried lump of shit in the way. What little comes out has no choice but come out around the big dried lump of shit in a compromised form. Which is to say the big dried lump of shit that's in the way has a significant say in the form and realization of the, uh, 'thing' being 'created.'
(It may also be that which wants to come out but which is blocked is poisoning me, giving me the fever, the chills, affecting how I think about things, how I relate to others. Interesting, that.)
While it may be the same for all forms of music, it is especially true that the unhindered realization of our beloved highly subjective music in the public sphere is endlessly constrained by hard dried lumps of shit--be it immediate issues of liquidity for the non-musical participants in a showing of music, be it the pervasive, barely veiled cronyism (the select perpetuation of which being the tail that wags the dog of actual music production) or be it our very busy schedules on account of our important and exciting professional lives.
Can a telling of the "history" of music really be complete, let alone, accurate, without a thorough examination of the processes behind who got picked to participate or, said another way, who (or what) gets free passage beyond that hard dry lump of shit blocking the way?
Does anyone get free passage? Or is it a bigger-the-front-the-bigger-the-back kind of a thing?
In my defense, I'm not the only one drawing on this analogy, or living it, it would appear. Cf. Matt Shipp:
"At times I feel like Herbie Hancock is taking up space. I feel his work doesn't warrant it. Everything he's done in the last 20 or 30 years is crap".
Crap, taking up space...do words mean anything? Sure they do. And if Matt Shipp is chapped because of the obstacles he faces doing his work, can you imagine the roiling over rage among the systematically excluded--those banished to total non participatory obscurity as a result of the non-musical caprices and extra-musical mandates of the parent culture?
Certainly you can imagine the puzzled stares of those for whom Matt Shipp's participation and station within the art-economy is (and will forever be) beyond their wildest dreams. You can get with that, right?
If part of the complaint that Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock are taking too much money at festivals and the like HOW ABOUT ALL MUSICIANS GET PAID THE SAME AMOUNT FOR THE SAME LABOR AND THE MUSICIANS THEMSELVES ORGANIZE THE FESTIVALS FOR THEMSELVES AND STOP THIS UNFLATTERING CHARADE OF EXPECTING ART-CAPITALISTS IN THE PARENT CULTURE TO DO IT FOR US THE WAY WE WANT THEM TO?
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How about Brian Eno's Blubber talk? Did you catch that?
In the above link Brian Eno says:
"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time...""It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber.""Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."
Here's how Eno got it wrong. Recorded music equals fuel, living human musicians are the whales.
(Extra-musical/non-musical) sellers of the packaged, refined blubber are the "energy" companies.
As far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a let up in the demand for energy, nor the demand for music.
Energy companies didn't start to make real money, didn't start to consolidate and centralize their position in the economy and the fabric of our lives until they got out of the whale blubber business and into oil-pumped-from-the-ground business. No interaction with living whales necessary.
Similarly, sellers of musical energy didn't start to make real money until electronic gagetry came along--drum machines and the like...you know, Brian Eno stuff.
If I had to guess, musicians (whales) will continue to decrease in number, despite the crash in the whale blubber business. Musicians, like whales will be put in to a "special protected endangered" category where they will become even more irrelevant. Musicians (whales) instead of living and function in society will become considered "rare and wonderful occurrences" to be glimpsed at from a tour boat off the coast of Cape Cod in a highly administrated, formalized way and otherwise left totally alone.
Recordings (refined, packaged musical fuel) will continue to be produced by less and less companies, using less and less humans, making a more and more insipid product, making more and more money in the process, becoming an even larger, drier lump of shit blocking the way.
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"Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit." — Guy Debord
copyright © 2010 Stanley Jason Zappa
