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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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