I get distracted a lot by dystopian fear.
Maybe it’s time I stopped envisioning the metaverse as an escapist reeling tape of dopamine and TikTok dances on virtual animated billboards ignored by thot-slot-machine-addicted avatars. All the while the sky turns red in the real world, birds fall and the dawn chorus stops.
On the tube I’ve been thinking about augmented reality headsets or glasses that create virtual green spaces to block out the nastiness of commuting. And I’m thinking wow, humans are screwed if we keep running away from everything that’s uncomfortable.
But we’ve made these urban worlds and social platforms that make us uncomfortable (we paved paradise and built a museum of it in another urbanised world on the internet).
But just describing that dark world isn’t the answer. In fact, I wonder if some of these classic dystopian sci-fi novels have had adverse effect and inspired these worlds into reality.
If we’ve made things bad, surely there is hope for us to build a different kind of [real] world. I guess I am still politically progressive in that way, despite fighting a new nihilism.
I have come so far with music industry, and love making it so much, I must stay in that lane. I wonder what I can do through music that can make the world better, kinder and safer for more people. I don’t mean the cliché “music makes people feel good” thing, or the “helping people make music lets them be their authentic selves and bring more joy to the world” thing, or the Michael Jackson Earth Song angle either.
I mean thinking about complex problems and how to solve them systematically. I wonder if there’s something more I can do to help solve a big world problem using the skills and progress I’ve spent 32 years developing.
Or is my mission to do something to help more people make music and that’s enough? Am I doing enough to serve people and the world?
I guess a world without music would be a dead world. I often wonder what outside would be like without birdsong – the original song.
But I know that hiding the dirt of the world, the problems, under a virtual reality, virtual currency and virtual community isn’t it. I’m picturing “metaverse co-spaces” that look like opium dens but with people laying about in VR headsets instead of on drugs, and I just want to stop the world racing into that era.
Outernet London is a perfect example of what I mean. A place that “immerses you in technology” and likely away from the people you’re with, into an orgy of selfies and VR experiences in a digital amusement arcade.
Outernet London, a billion-pound “immersive entertainment district”, “where music, film, art, gaming and retail experiences come to life in new breathtaking ways”.
Rowan Moore, The Guardian
I know there’s something about self-actualisation, creativity, sharing messages through lyrics and melody… Something about artistry, and innate human need to create – and how we’re dependent on nature to do so authentically…
Something about music communities and spending time together in the real world…
I know there’s something there about a war between art and industry keeping us locked in cycles of generations of people not being able to realise the soul within themselves because they are spending their entire lifetimes pursuing money over their unrealised potential. It’s an argument that we’re all suffering because we’re not allowed to play and love openly. Yes, it’s a form of anti-capitalism. It’s a form of psychology. It’s about being more human, not being more web3.0. Music done right is just play and love. There’s something in that that’s bigger than putting it in words. I just haven’t worked it out yet.
The music… The culture… It’s been weak for a while.
Cold war ended. Everyone got comfortable.
That was a good thing and it’s no detriment to the art that was created in the happiness.
But a new era was born. One of “digital”. The boomers of post-soviet. Plastic people. Gen Y. Millennials.
We’re on the tail-end of it. Extremely liberal “meh”, to the point that freedom actually becomes boring.
I’m not thankful for the fact we’re going into the next cycle of realism. Of true existentialism, of exploring the human condition and being so desperate that the only way to do that is through art forms. I don’t want that the happen. But I know the art will be authentic, will be about the human condition, will matter, will stand the test of time, will tell messages that echo in generations to come and stop people doing dumb shit.
Every one of these “MAD” times we get through we evolve. Kill the very few that enable these possibilities, let the rest rule the world, sing, dance, love, play. War is never the answer.
Music may be more boring without strife. But I’ll take boring music to dance, love and merry-make to over war, and interesting music to be sad to, any day (despite making the latter).