Showing posts with label Arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arts. Show all posts

1/21/17

OK. So here we are.
There's confusion, sadness and even despair going around and I get it. Some of us are old enough who remember what the "back" in taking the country to actually means and its not pretty. In fact, it represents all that my generation, and marginalized generations before, had railed against our whole lives. And for 8 years we were sure we would enter our dotage having had done our job by pushing the monolith of democracy every so slightly to Justice. That our efforts were amazingly becoming meaningful and productive. Alas, as the Sages remind us healing the World, Tikkun Olam, is a daily struggle and many of us look out today with a despondency I can scarcely describe.
What to do? I want you to do me a favor, try this. Seek out local artists, poets, writers, dancers, craftspeople and journey people, your neighbors and by extension your community. Find them and do what you can make them part of your everyday life. No need to look far, you'll find them. Find your tribe in other words. Not in the ether, on these false platforms which only trick the mind into believing things to be real. Go out and touch the real. Make the real. Put some art on your wall made by a face you know. Eat food from your local garden down at the local farmers market. Make a connection, in that place where art, science and culture all intersect. It's VITALLY important that we look to each other now, and realize as someone noted 8 years ago, you are the people you've been waiting for.
Cover art by Howard Rains
Here's the link to donate my project, which I'm very proud of. But be sure and donate to somebody's efforts either by simply buying what they make or hiring them to do what they do. We'll only progress if we support each other, not by tweets and posts, but by our budget choices. Resist and Peace, MR

*(I've been advised by my mental health professionals to avoid all social media and I'm following their advice. No joke and I'll bet you can relate.)

6/29/14

The Peon and the Patron

I've been thinking a lot about patronage and peonage these days. Times are such that the arts are required to make their own way or simply go away. Everyday someone tells me how they heard my music on Spotify, and I guess that's cool. But they used to say that they bought my CD and enjoyed it. Now the trend is to not buy anything and just stream it all. Great for the listener, but it begs the question: Why should the artists continue to create content for a community that doesn't value it, even when they claim they enjoy it? Are we only to enjoy art made by the idle rich, the only people who can afford to produce it? I spent over $3000 on my last CD release and have to date recouped less than $500. Are my releases simply vanities? Dynamic conversations on every end of the question.

But frankly, I'm too old to get into all the arguments. All I can do is say "Here's my catalog."  If you like what I've been putting down all these years, then let me know the only meaningful way you can in our present society and buy something. Anything. Every little bit counts, even the .0057 cents I received from a years worth of my music streaming on Spotify: