A collapsing society provides very fertile soil for artists to work in. In my opinion some of the best art draws from, and speaks to an ill society. There are lots of “happy” songs out there; songs that have a generally positive message but don’t speak at all to the crumbling of society around us that I’m sure we can all see and feel. The world has enough happy songs. Happy songs never did much for me. And despite how truly sad and dark a place the world appears to be right now, it’s great fodder for what we do as a band. Out of the dark is born the light and vice versa. I’m very interested in this paradox that sad songs can be the most uplifting and cathartic things we’ve got. Maybe it’s simply that misery loves company. Regardless, if you’re into sad, there’s an endless supply if you care to look around. For me personally, the greatest source of sadness (and I guess the deepest wellspring of inspiration) is what has seemingly been decided as most desirable virtues in today’s society- namely mankind’s fixation with status and wealth.
As an American man now in his forties, it’s dawned on me only recently that I was born into an inherently shallow culture. And so was anyone younger than me. And if you’re a generation or two older, likely the same, but I’d wager it’s been shallow for a long long time and only gotten worse as time has trudged on. This is not to say that everyone of my generation is shallow (or proclaim that I’m deep), or that the younger are any more so. It’s also not to excuse people of past generations, but I do believe there have been places and times when empathy and compassion were major values of importance. I’m of the opinion those values are of utmost importance for the survival of a civilization, and they seem to be in scant supply in most corners of the globe right now from what I can tell. I can’t put my finger on when the shift happened (I’m sure if you polled indigenous populations around the world they’d have some answers that might sting a little), but I do believe that if we could retrace our steps we might be able to find solutions. How and when did we get to a point where humanity at large values status and wealth over service and charity? I imagine there was a time when the equation was flipped, at least in some places, long before we got to whatever it is we’ve got now; when taking care of each other and not just their own really mattered to people. Remember the toilet paper hoarding back in the early days of the pandemic? What a time to be alive.
An aside…About 7 or 8 years ago I was standing at my desk (way back when I had a desk, and an office, and a career, and a wife, and a house…) and I had what I suppose some folks would call an epiphany. It dawned on me that what I was doing at my desk was amassing wealth mainly for someone else (probably some shithead that was already loaded to begin with), and to a much lesser extent, for my own personal gain and comfort as well. The main source of my life’s “heaviness” was also what was supposed to be making me fulfilled. All of a sudden I couldn’t look anywhere without seeing it. I and everyone I knew was trading the bulk of our living moments to make money and acquire things. This is not a novel thought for a lot of people (I’ve admitted before that I’m pretty slow on the uptake), but for me it felt revelatory at the time and not in the positive “I saw the light” sense. I suppose sometimes personal revelation, or the hand of God (not that I believe in such anthropocentric nonsense), or whatever you wanna call it, can leave a bruise.
I made a choice that I didn’t want to spend my life playing that game of ladder climbing and acquisition anymore. It’s probably akin to what losing one’s religion feels like when someone raised in some sort of fundamentalist church has their worldview shattered when they experience for themselves what life is like “on the outside”. In fact the argument has been made that consumerism is the largest religion the world has ever known (readers of Sapiens will recall this line of thought), and almighty consumption is what most of us in the developed world are fed daily as “spiritual food”. This change of heart and mind for me came at tremendous emotional cost, financial costs be damned. It was a form of cultural alienation. A sudden and seismic shift that told me life was too short to prioritize amassing wealth and acquiring things. I want to clarify right here that in no way do I feel that everyday working folks and people gaining traction in a dog-eat-dog world are prioritizing wealth and status, per se. It’s the simple reality of existence for most of us, especially in the good of U.S. of A. But at that time I had a very visceral and undeniable feeling that the game was rigged, and I was just toiling away my days to make some rich guy somewhere all the richer. A 401k, a company car, and a couple 2 week vacations per year was not going to fix this aching in my head. In all fairness, I still ask for compensation for my services as a musician so I’m not totally clear of the money game, sadly. A guy’s gotta eat. What I did not anticipate once I’d set the wheels in motion, and shook loose the shackles, was that adopting this new worldview (and occupation) of mine would smart just as bad, if not worse, than leaving my old life behind.
It can be hard on the psyche when you recognize the extent to which you’re constantly being bombarded with messages that fame, fortune, having lots of cash and owning much, and that a life of glamor and ease are the most tangible measures of your true worth. Society tells us everyday that the nameless homeless person you just walked past is, in fact, worth less than the rich celebrity whose “life” you ostensibly know more about than your next door neighbor. It’s a nonstop barrage when you really pay attention. In my mind, this is the death rattle of society. It hasn’t been this way forever, and on this continent in particular, its a fairly novel idea that land ownership, material wealth, or simply being powerful or famous are the ideals most worthy of pursuit. And again, I as a modern-day musician in a band with “an online presence” is just as culpable of unraveling the social fabric as anyone (minus the warmongering charlatans on Capitol Hill, of course). We as a band try to be positive, and not self-aggrandizing, authentic, informative and entertaining, but still… We pay into the popularity machine that is social media, and beg for digital streams (which earn us basically nothing), at times feeling like a hungry dog slinking under the dinner table.
Sadly, the name of our game in the music business IS popularity. We HAVE to generate revenue (not just for ourselves), or we’re not a commodity worth working with from the industry’s perspective. If you can’t get enough people in the door at a venue and sell enough booze to cover their operating expenses for the evening, you’re very unlikely to be invited back. So as a minor league band looking to get drafted to the big leagues, we must be inherently contradictory by being self-effacing while also aiming for larger audiences, and selling as many tickets and merch as possible. Don’t forget, one must always aim to increase profits year over year, like any good capitalist enterprise. That’s showbiz, and it’s completely unsustainable from the outset. From a modern/western perspective this is heresy. Capitalism is crumbling, there I said it. And there goes my presidential bid.
At this point, probably a fair number of readers are non-plussed. This is not intended to be an admission of guilt or some sort of confession or manifesto to ease my mind. Nor is it an admonishment or attack on hard working folks- many of whom genuinely enjoy their work or operate from a need to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families. There’s pride and honor in that. I count my blessings that I live at a time and place where my situation is such that I can make a living playing a banjo and fill in the gaps doing other things when the need arises. And I actually believe in what my band is doing and what we’re speaking to. I believe that music serves a unique role in its ability to heal and maybe even help unite humanity, despite the pitfalls of showbusiness and commodifying that which is a human birthright.
I use my own life and myself as examples here, not to be braggadocious or pitiful, but because I’m the only thing I know much of anything about. But if you can relate to any of the sentiments I spoke of earlier, if you feel like I do about our capitalist inheritance (or lack thereof), if you’ve ever questioned your own motives, if you feel that a life in the arts (which means a life of asceticism for most), a life dedicated to the service of others, or simply just making interesting stuff for the sheer pleasure of it is of importance, then please follow that notion and swim upstream. The bastards in power are all too happy to act as social prions- toiling day and night to bend us to their will, convince us that productivity is a virtue and that cash is king, and ensure every individual conforms and looks and thinks exactly like them. Monoculture is what they’re after. They will not rest until humanity looks less like a river, an ecosystem of free floating creatures with hearts and minds of their own, and more like some grotesque eschatological doomsday machine where human beings are nothing more than interchangeable parts and the stubborn, unruly, or non-uniform are discarded and replaced. Sounds like I’m working on another song here, doesn’t look like it’s gonna be a happy one, fertile soil indeed…
Until the next time, thanks for reading.
-Brian