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Let's talk greed (the desire to
make one's own lot better at the expense of making someone else's worse) and
what we call reality. The greed of corporations is blind to its real effects in
the world. It's main technique is to convince you to buy things from their
company, and not the other company. The music-media industry works by the
creation of fads and lifestyles for teenagers. There is little else for
them to work with. Romantic Love, Race. Death. Violence. Sex. They choose
these things not out of evil intent, but simply because they sell. As we become
over-saturated, these aspects become 'normalized', objectified, concrete and
worst, taken for granted. By perpetuating these as virtues, the
world re-creates alienation on a daily basis. The recording and music
industry as well as television and movies, which only sees itself as a business,
does not see its true function in the world as the definer and distributor of
mass reality, mass illusion, replacing what religion used to do. Just don't
watch TV for a month then turn it on and watch the producers and directors jack
your emotions around with an appeal to your deepest values. As all
musicians know, music is about creating energy. I think it strange that we as a
culture perpetually create musical energy forms that harm us, rob us of
intelligence and enslave us to fantasies.
The
huge question for the future
for all of us is--what do we want to be real. In a word, what is
value? Reality, as we will come to know it, is malleable, not
fixed. Music will have to go inward to find truths outside perpetuated
illusion. Music is one of the primary carriers of change. As time
advances, will find more accurate and honest links between sound and sensuality
and experience. Music may control mood with such depth that it might
become like a drug, especially when it hits a new grounding in values. The
real power of music to not only alter one's temporal state, but to fundamentally
change the essence of a person is about to be discovered. This, of course,
only happens when we remove the irresponsible people out of the music industry.
Indeed, they hold our culture hostage! How many more silly love songs do we have
to endure before artists that truly connect others are let in the box? How
many more Britney-bods are going to be on the screen before music gets real?
The longer we allow greed to be "acceptable" in our order of things, the longer
we will wait for real music to appear and popularize. Once it does, we
will never, ever go back.
The giant bulwark
to be
moved is our fixation on sexuality as a culture. It is not currently
escapable. Underlying our sexual obsession is simply a desire to feel
connected. With the mass networking of beings about to happen,
connectivity promises to subjugate sex. It will someday be seen as something
only mentally challenged people want to pursue. I know that sounds weird now.
One big problem for songwriters is, what the heck are you going to write about?
This is why, perhaps, techno and trance have really spun out lately. You
don't have to talk. Talking throws you back into the old world of love
story fantasy. Hey, this is just a reading from my crystal ball.
That is the very point where the human species evolves. It will be in our music
long before it changes our behavior. Sure, we as a culture loves songs
about loving someone for the rest of your life. Anyone who has been
married knows this is myth, not reality. Just an example of how our music
perpetuates lies and swoons us into regulating our lives by them. The
honest issue is how do we raise children. In an unconnected, alienated
world, issues like these are big problems. In a connected and
understanding world, there are guiltless, creative solutions.
Reflect on this. What
created the counter culture in the 70's? Music did because the record
industry allowed it. Did they make money? Oh, man oh man, did they.
What ended the Vietnam war? Gave women more freedoms? Made environmental
awareness a political act? Forced politics into focusing on its inherent
racism? The counter culture. Something was transmitted through the
airwaves of music that transformed a generation. In the music, ALL of us
connected. Music touched a new value and by touching value, it created history.
Those moments foreshadowed the possibility of connectedness, without an actual
physical network to make it happen other than radio and records. We will touch
value again in music and in other cyber media.
Once freed of the tyranny of the
selfish recording industry, the distribution of music will be global and
immediate. The selfish wealthy people running major record labels don't realize
it was the connectivity that gave them their power. They can only continue to
hold it by restoring connectivity and enhancing it. If their greed is so
blinding, it is time to remove those irresponsible, unconscious people from
power. They hold way more power than your congressman or president. But
you won't need to do anything to make this happen. Money always flows
towards connectivity, be it television, computers, cell phones, or napster,
mp3.com, or the next more efficient solution. Right now, it only flows
towards them because we allow ourselves to be succumbed by false desires that
hurt us in the long run.
I remain, the Tweak
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