This thought hit me today about how a legitimate concert promoter told me last night that The Press is irrelevant. That everything has changed. He’s not completely off base. It’s a tragedy what’s happening. And it’s effecting a few bottom lines.
There isn’t as much money in music and the media. That’s a fact. Google and Amazon have gobbled up so much money that was filtering through communities. But it’s commerce itself. First the CD store at the Mall closed. Now the Mall is closing. Now teens that missed the generation of paper routes which was the entire 20th Century, won’t find their first job at Hot Topic or a Food Court.
That’s the real trickle down. That’s that bullsh☆t.
Maybe the trickle is more about the sewage stuffin’ up the storm drains.
But without making this another book, the other bottomlines are the loss of a democracy which has played out like a Text book in the age of an ignorant and ignoble Trump threatening to break rules of order he doesn’t even comprehend. FYI when I typed in “ignorant” my phone mysteriously corrected it to “honorable”.
The other bottom line is quality. New technology isn’t necessarily making Art and Culture better, just because it’s making it easier. And it’s not necessarily making art more accessible. The toys like tech that breaks in planned obsolescence after a year is busted and outdated before it gets to the hands of the lower classes, and access basic technology like a smart phone to even work, you are mortgaging a good portion of income that wasn’t even an expense when I was in college in the early 2000s.
I don’t know…I am no luddite, but all these rapid changes are just making us more off balance, more poor, more connected yet confused.
People keep telling me that the internet has made us so much better, but at what cost?
10% better but to be 30% worse isn’t even zero sum. Has not our attention span shrunk? Do not adults struggle more than generations before us to read a novel?
Articles I read now offer 100 and 500 word versions, as if we’ll truly grasp the Hong Kong protests in 100 words. But yes it is better than nothing…in a zero sum game.
The horrors of facial recognition software are just beginning to play out at concerts and protests overseas.
Bottomline? I think we’re losing.
They say it will make us more safe, but will it? Were we that unsafe at Lalapalooza? Or as Dystopian novels and wise folks like Benjamin Franklin warned us,
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Who will keep us safe from the Monsters who sell us these invisible safety jackets?
In America we can all be King. Or rather Emperors, or rather idiots parading in our new clothes.
Now to try to finish another book this month, that I can hold, and touch, and hand to another human being, and say read this, whether or not they have access to the expensive river in the sky.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com. Davin’s recent song has become a global earworm and Caribbean dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN. The video is now available on Youtube: Tuff Gong Television. His single with British band Sherlock Soul is available here.
