Artistic Entitlement

Despite having exactly one Facebook friend, for whatever reason I still get on the 'ol FB about once a week to see whatever is trending and look at the things posted from groups and pages that I got too lazy to 'unlike' during the great purge. One of these is the Denver Music scene group, which I obviously joined before moving. Someone posted this article about why musicians shouldn't get paid. Here's my thoughts on the matter.

I'm not going reiterate too much of it here, so maybe just read it yourself? It takes like 3 minutes. Honestly, I was expecting a well thought out article. I was all like "Why SHOULDN'T I make money?!" since I'm a glutton for that sort of thing. But unfortunately the article appears to have been written by a bitter 16 year old.

Perhaps it really isn't worth writing this, but I'm gonna assume that it is, because as misguided as this human is, some of his points were at least worth acknowledging, even if he explained it rather poorly.

So, heres why he's (sorta)right:

"We're already rich"

        I had this thought placed in my brain a while back while watching interviews of Aaron Weiss from mewithoutYou on youtube. Obviously if you live in this country chances are things aren't so bad in the grand scheme of things. And the constant gripe of artists is that we're poor and no one compensates us fairly for the amount of work we do. Ironically it feeds the whole "starving artist" label. It's certainly partially true that the amount of compensation we get for our work is pretty bogus overall. Most of us have to work part-time or even full-time jobs to supplement our creative ambitions, as well as our "regular" lives. But in one of those interviews I remember Aaron talking about how he would start his cycles of self pity in his less than ideal financial state, while forgetting that he has thousands of dollars in equipment in his possession and a notoriously supportive fan base. 

That's part of the reason WHY we're poor. Because we're spending all our money on music gear. But the fact that we can even do that is pretty damn awesome. I think it's way too easy to get caught up in the starving artist scene while we write songs about it on a $1900 guitar. I spent $1400 on a synth last summer on a whim. ON A WHIM. Admittedly I had been wanting to buy it for like 2 years, and didn't really have any immediate plans at the time to do so. But I listened to Wye Oak's new album, freaked out, went home and ordered a synth within a matter of an hour. So ya, we don't get compensated, but we choose this life. And we choose it because it's awesome. So shut your pie hole and work hard. Good art rises to the top eventually, in some way or another. Though your view of "the top" might be rather skewed at the base of a mountain.

Also, please call me out when I do this. I'm certainly not immune.

"No one deserves anything"

        He's right. We don't. At least not on a big scale. As any proper youngest child born to an American family, I was born with a wealth of entitlement, only fueled further by my artistic ambitions. Last summer I remember being so bummed that everything wasn't going the way I wanted, that my creative needs weren't being met, and that everything I did was futile. I wrote a post about it on here. It's about fire. I haven't gone back and read it but I bet it's pretty whiny and entitled to a certain degree. I then proceeded to write a song about it, and at the end of the song I accidentally called myself out:

"What is it you think you need?

What is it you really seek?

Giving til you're empty

But you aren't owed anything"

That was kind of a freeing thing to write. It began a very productive process of reevaluating why I do music. Indeed the urge has always been to be heard. To be known on some level or another, whether or not fame was a factor. But those innocent needs are easily muddled by basically everything else. Whether it was want for money, bigger shows, bandmates, fame, all that jazz. But letting go of that stuff and just focusing on creating good things has been so healthy and so much more enjoyable to me than it ever has been before. It's not always easy, and I still get in slumps of self pity and whiny-ness, but I try not to linger there too long. It's not worth it and nothing gets done.

Anyways, I could talk about this for a while. So leave your thoughts, or lets go get coffee, or send me hate mail! I haven't gotten that before, so it could be fun. I'll probably end up doing a post on why he is so terribly wrong, but maybe it's better left alone.

Gabriel

An Important Thing: Moanin'

My blog is super bland looking. I realized my old layout was super mid to late 2000's style one day and I wiped it all. Then I remembered I REALLY hate customizing and all that shit so it's just a blank white thing for now and you can make it look cool if it bothers you.

I like to pretend I'm mysterious and deep when I name my blogs. It's the "artist" in me or whatever. The name of this blog is "The Morning Roars". I named it thus when I began blogging sort of(but not really) regularly at a time in my life where I was dealing with depression head on every day. And mornings were always the worst. Night and sleep meant relief. The morning was a beast roaring me to consciousness, to the endless overwhelming light of day that crushed me. The morning roars. I wrote an album with called that. I don't know if anyone will ever hear it.

I mainly just needed to get that out of my brain. So there.

On to this post. A thing I've often whined about to those around me is the general eventlessness I fell my life has. It never lives up to my expectations and things seem quite boring overall. While I still see it as fairly valid(whether or not it's true), I have noticed that I've neglected some important markers. I think I never saw them as markers cause the effects took so long to kick in. So this is an acknowledgment of one of those events.

In my first winter in Minnesota I got black out depressed. Or rather my depression reached some new depth. Or whatever. It was awful. Everything in that several months is rather hazy in my memory. But there was a breaking point of that terrible time. A sudden crack in the dense darkness that eventually widened to wherever I am today.

In the spring of that year I went to Bethel's jazz band concert as I had a few friends performing. A rare instance of me leaving the house for anything other than work or groceries. The very first song that my friend's jazz band played was a song called "Moanin'". And it woke me up. All dreary heavy thought was blown away by a baritone sax solo that shot into the center of my chest. I laughed for the first time in a long time, I was giggling like a maniac actually. For like 8 minutes. It was pure joy. I felt so absurdly good I just wanted to scream out in the auditorium. I barely refrained. Of course everything wasn't fixed, but for an evening, I felt light. I felt euphoric. I felt like my ribcage was about to explode from some chemical reaction in my chest. I damn near cried.

Music is the best. It can make you feel the worst things and the best things. It's amazing. I don't understand how sound can affect us so much, but I'm glad it does. It's why I make music.

So. Here's the song that woke me up. Fuckin' Moanin'.

Gabriel