Support Your Artists To Strengthen Your National Security

 

OCTOBER 29, 2020 ~ FLYAGARIC23

But it is the names of the artists who have yet to grace those stages, the artists the public do not yet know and risk never knowing, that we should be talking about. Grassroots music venues aren’t about the past of our music industry, they are about its future.–Mark Davyd.

Yes, I’m an artist, musician, but a professional? (not if you base it on my income) many of us, if you hadn’t noticed, are not in this for the money and fame. This is a therapy for our friends, family, extended audience, our perceived enemies and above all therapy for ourselves, as all else flows forward from self. Until the government fully supports creative arts properly, in all sectors (during a pandemic or not) citizens will be wide open to foreign state interference and the toxic tip of disinformation.     
 
I used to joke twenty years ago that the local Job Center should make “Job Seeker Records” due to the fact all the musicians I knew were either signing on or had to keep a day job to support their artistic calling. DJs were lucky to get twenty quid from a gig, often paying to play when organizing their own events, independently and paying to release their music with little hope of commercial success, exclusive dubplate culture among DJ’s was not for profit. Those who were fortunate to get signed with an advance, equal to the money earned from a regular 9-5 job, were not viable in their home town and enticed to the largest city nearby, or London. In the 1990s I witnessed successful people moving away from their nests to larger cities where the action, the work and the money are at. This sad fact seems wrong-headed and would be unnecessary if local support were provided. The consolidation of industries under the neoliberal surge in the 1990s is responsible for driving creative talent away from where it is currently required most, home. 

If big tech and government and the music industry wanted to solve this they’d create a local infrastructure to support/fund creative arts, business with the same effort and pride with which they support the international finance sector, the arms manufacture sector. Yes, artists and creative industries need the money to pay rent and eat and survive, yet at the same time, we could all benefit from a new relationship between the arts and commerce, where the state and its corporate backers come together to support a decentralized and rotational network of independent artists, capable of being seen and heard equally with market giants like Ed Sheeran…without having to resort to Apple Google Facebook Amazon and Spotify for all their distribution and licensing. 

Most but not all artists and creatives I know are left-leaning, it comes with the territory of open sincere exploration and experiment, the opposite of absolute conclusive conservatism. I get the sense that the current hard-right conservative government in the UK enjoys bashing the left and creative arts culture, an excuse to underfund, look away and inflict intentional suffering. This is nothing new since the 1960s and 1970s the Tories have attacked the liberal arts, working-class creative culture and generally they supported massive corporate takeovers and consolidation of the music business industry (Labour too), up to its current domination by the five big tech companies and two or three major labels.

Every artist I know has questioned and fought for independence, probably with more passion in the early days, “we’re never gonna’ sell-out or play that pants commercial shit” type attitudes. Then they get married, have a family and play in a Ted Nuget cover band at retirement homes. I’m not judging, but there remains an underground, experimental, abstract…in it for the sheer exhilaration of making it new every time, authenticity in great art and artists. The attitude and life of Thelonious Monk as opposed to Jeff Bezos, to make a stark contrast. 

I’ve two suggestions, start-up local “Job Seeker Records” imprints, modelled as if you were funded by the state. (See Scarfolk Council for examples)  Demonstrate how much future creativity lies dormant and untapped. My second suggestion is more on a personal level, try to support people in their early artistic endeavours and experiments, encourage the following of one’s intuition in combination with healthy research, study and practice. As many great musicians and artists repeat, music is a therapy for them, the process is part of the journey, the destination unknown and when the voyage is over when you find yourself with your creation, is only a part of the creative process. To campaign for keeping governments, the recording industry and finance rotational and decentralized should not be exclusive with leftwing politics, but the progressive movement toward an equal humane society of self-owning ones, united in a common process of sharing resources, intelligence, imagination and beneficial tools worldwide.

The Covid-19 Pandemic has brought us all into a world that musicians have been familiar with for decades, the recession of bands, labels and funding, tours, independent venues, and markets due to consolidation by big tech and the major labels. IF…artists had thriving and viable systems based on the Bandcamp model for example, in conjunction with grants and support from the multiple billions in profits generated by the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and their shareholders, they could thrive and create freely without having to worry about paying rent, eating and/or paying medical bills and health expenses. These would be first world benefits of living in Great Britain, America, and some of the other richest most technologically advanced societies on earth, and most importantly the artistic productions would be subsidized to become freely available for everybody on earth!

Yes, art and music should be FREE, FREEDOM! But only with the support and subsidy provided by the state and corporations taking the cream off the top and giving very little back. Universal Basic Income would already cover the immediate challenges to most of the people I’m concerned about here, it has a similar result, not starving and having the means for self-therapy that can be shared with others, a win-win in any caring society. This new vision I’m riffing on (dreaming about) would also benefit a nation’s identity and status on the world stage, bringing altruism, equality and balance to a nation’s entertainment-media ecology. Instead of the Euro-Vision song contest, we need something more like the Eurovision–who supported the most artists to create the most songs, which in turn created the most shared revenue and employment for that nation–competition? 

Local bands and local folk music, experimental non-commercial music must have an equal footing in the mediasphere with Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga and Kanye West. The audience can still choose to tune into whatever they wish, but they feel warm in their hearts that the creative arts are open and seductive as a viable career for some, a form of therapy and community for others. Either way, it is subsidized, so no need to second guess. To trust that taxes and all working communities everywhere are happy to support the arts in equal measure with the rest of the economy, ballooning with finance, arms manufacture and pharmaceutical trade. Those who claim that funding the military and army and navy is more important than the arts do not understand or do not want to understand the current battlespace of disinformation warfare. Art and creative industries like gaming have been hijacked from creative artists and weaponized to support populist hard-right movements, see Pepe the frog, Trump 2016 and the Vote Leave campaigns for appropriation of art in service of anything but support for artists. 

Imagine if Banksy were foreign secretary, Stephen Fry Prime Minister, Brian Cox and Roger Penrose as education ministers, Jamie Oliver as Health minister, Gary Lineker as minister for sport, James O’ Brien as minister for communications. Why not? They’re arguable the best at managing those domains. 

How have people ended up voting for the dullest most blatant liars and cheats, while going further than not supporting artists and creatives, attacking them and joining the hard right in stereotyping them as the enemy in their vulture culture warfare.    

I’d like to continue this thought with the hope of refining some points and counter-arguments.

–Steve Fly (29/10/2020)
https://www.patreon.com/stevefly

https://www.musicweek.com/opinion/read/viewpoint-mark-davyd-on-the-battle-to-reopen-every-venue-safely/081590

Open Source Party: decentralized non-vote philosophy.

Open Source Party: decentralized non-vote philosophy.

My thoughts (2010) on Politics and the democratic VOTE cannot be split from my other thoughts about life and community. Sorry, narrow mindedness never has appealed. My philosophy concerns holism, a unity where art and music are powerful and important, equal to Law and politics in popular culture, and have an equal representation in my thought patterns and writing adventures into the political paradigm generally.

I do not resonate with any political party from the UK, or anywhere else in the world, well...perhaps the Pirate party are a close approximation to my 'open sauce party' ideas, but also have many differences. I will not vote for any political party in the UK. Why should i forfeit individual intelligence for the groupthink of political packs with nothing in common with my ideals and way of life?

What would I do? Well, first I would dissolve myself, like an indigestion tablet, so that what we conceive of as governmental power is literally dissolved into the community. Rather than printed on a small number of so called representatives identity cards so that they can distribute the wealth and information. Very generally i would support and push the model where all people are collective stewards of the places that we live, and responsible the the environment and the people around them.

The idea of dissolving the Government into the community and making everyman women and child a co-operative shareholder in the great natural store of wealth we create by our collective labours, reflects a trend emerging, to my mind, where things generally begin to diversify, preserving a significant amount of Novelty. Things change at a seemingly faster and faster rate. How quick are you on the update?

The great design scientist R. Buckminster Fuller proposed a workable and detailed version of these kinds of ‘decentralization’ power structures, and his models and innovations reflect an all-around-the-world system of decentralized, co-operative ‘desovereignized’ communal tribes, sharing resources and ideas openly. Trending toward taking power away from centralized control systems, in favour of decentralized interconnected global systems, spherical systems of global thinking on behalf of all humanity, all around the globe peoples.

One look at any of the UK political parties illustrates to me how they wish us to stop, distrub and hinder critical thinking. Trust them, vote for them, and turn over power to them, why on earth? Why, when most of us are connected to each other and the outer world, and no longer require the control mechanisms imposed on us by the state/government/council? oh, the terrorists, we need them for security, you say? well no, from where i am sitting try bringing all the troops home and pulling out all your foreign business operations abroad, come home, spend the saved money and time working to help save the environment and the social well being of millions of people at home. As long as you play global cop buddy to the USA you will be threatened by terrorism. Bring the troops home, decommission the subs, bury the nukes or fire them into the sun.

The global news media and the global spy networks and their governments manufacture consent, or they manufacture ‘reasons why’ we need them to survive; i.e to protect us from the terrorists, the dope pushers and the criminals as defined by their criminal ‘terror and drug’ networks, the the hired lawyers and cops, those in charge who manufacture a labyrinth of irrational, contradictory and somewhat strategic booby-traps. Arsonist and fireman, serial killer and president, child abuser and priest. Safety in having control of both sides of any polarized argument and snubbing out any third way, demoralizing critical thinking. With us or against us. Tick box 1 or box 1.1. 

My big vision here for a decentralized, dissolved and evolved community of self representative and truly ‘global citizens’, defines the new us, or the new we, as self-owning stewards of their own birth right as human beings, and passengers upon spaceship Earth. This displays a first bit of frosting or reasoning for choosing not to vote in their game of death, as I view it. My insight is based upon my experiences and ongoing study into politics, language, history, psychology and poetry in Britain, America and Europe. I write this to inspire new thinking and questioning of authority, do we require the protection and advice of our governments? I know nothing of banking in practice, for example, but if I could round up ten of my friends I might find myself capable of banking within a short period of time, combined with the power of global Internet and analytics almost anybody with a sufficient network of like minded individuals, can take up some positions previously monopolized by a certain elitist class structure.

If the existing mechanisms and channels of global trade, telecommunications and teaching were ‘open sourced’ to the community, via new contractual binding agreements specifically tailored for the particular ‘group’ or tribe of people. And if this group were in turn attenuated by a globally connected village bulletin board with no particular moderator, but moderated by the network of individuals connected, you can have a locally and globally interdependent model. This may sound pretty overly optimistic stuff to some people, total anarchy and revolution to others, from my perspective I'm simply stating the impact of an expanding universe and exponentially expanding information paradox. There will be more of everything, shrinking technology, greater processing speeds, ecological meltdown, births and deaths, breakthroughs and set-backs.

People with good information want to be free, can define what it means to be free and have a crack at what to do with that freedom, how to preserve it. No individual human beings will stop the process of memes, bits, genes and atoms differentiating themselves, fusing and finding new means to connectivity. To me, the universe is an information and novelty conserving engine, one huge ongoing initiation with no beginning middle or end, a waking eternity. But something we dress up with all sorts of dogma and naive realism, identity, certainty, linearity and historicity. The open sauce party represents a pan-psychic gathering.

 I deduce that the old religion-dogmatic paradigm of centralized power and control has run its course and lies dead, slumped at the starting line, the gun about to go off, we are seeing the last dying breath of the old guard shooting its last bit of patriotic sperm in the middle beast process. Politically, i think we are recycling the ideas and dogma found in the dark ages, from before the hermetic renaissance and the age of reason.

We seem to be operating on a mass ‘Ghengis Khan’ economic model, slash and burn and bomb and kill model, the Bush Blair Cameron Obama model... combined with a crusading ‘Knights Templar’ militaristic model, and a Machiavellian political model, all of which appear to me as representative of the old paradigm. Might makes right, violence, bullying, extortion, revenge and bluff, these are the pirate tactics of their game, as i see it, and you can see for yourself and hear these type of models put forward by government spokes critters, political mouth-spooks, CEOs of large corporate media and some military strategists, today.

Open Source ‘minarchy’ cuts out the major causes of war and aggression, of poverty and death by limiting government to a kind of night watchmen that only intervenes in some cases concerning life and liberty. Once more I hope to describe a general theory here, ultimately this leads to you and your friends and community writing your own constitution, and operating your own local business enterprise and sharing resources and any profits with others. Adopting transparency.

The most important attribute to this kind of decentralized government model is feedback. Feedback helps us to define standards and lets us compare and revise our collective models and data. Feedback between small independent communities seems a critical function for their survival, and it is this feedback, used intelligently that I think will provide the ‘security, advice, and guidance’ currently forced upon us by our governments. I do not need to further my argument that governments force their democracy on people. Freedom from the greedy banks, from the revolving doors between business and government, freedom from the military bullies and freedom from the government are a part a parcel of the meaning to ‘freedom’.

But in this new model freedom is old paradigm and shall be replaced with the principle of ‘novelty’. Freedom to be different and to do new things, freedom to evolve and conserve novelty. Freedom must not be confused with any static state. Freedom concerns a process and changing and moving potential that defies definition.

Thanks for reading my thousand words in defense of not voting for any political party in 2010 (2014/2018/2022). I hope you at least think for yourself and familiarize yourself, with yourself. If you do choose to vote, vote for the candidate you have met.