Downloading is more than fun -- if a singer-songwriter shouts her encouragement, which far more do than don't.
Madonna, in a different way, recently made one of my unrealised schemes for an iMix a little easier by agreeing, "All right then, I'll stop playing hard to get for the iTMS."
Unless chance or a search engine brought you here, you followed front-page 'Streams of Raised Consciousness' from Vanessa Carlton and Lauren Kendall to find thoughts those left for the orchard.
Obviously, to speak of an "economy of the soul" begs unanswerable questions about contradictions in terms!
Yet a proper piece on ethical, musical and economic considerations sorely needs doing one day, but not before I've fully digested and made up my own mind about a title in my booklist for ages, with others in the same minefield:
- 'Pirates of the Digital Millennium' by John Gantz is indispensable reading;
- 'Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity' by Siva Vaidhyanathan brings a vital global perspective;
- and Lawrence Lessig (his blog) is a pioneering name that will have escaped nobody seriously into promoting creative work, particularly music.
Until I've done my own homework, it suffices for musicians and music-lovers alike to note the general trend on this site, the links put here with good reason and an occasional remark simply to leave it up to readers to decide what they do with the music.
Lauren Kendall, simply by virtue of spelling out how she would like you to behave, is clearly tongue-in-cheek, as often on her Holy Cackle site. She's indeed encouraging you "to steal", but we all know the "you can buy it later", so gently put with a smiley is the other very important side of that coin.
The way so many of these people give of themselves is no excuse to rip them off. On the contrary, such sharing makes for a world we can always hope for even in this one, that Utopia some of us always believe in where a gift is a manifestation of richness and possessions are a burden, not a wealth.
They simply set the example.
I'm a self-proclaimed "anarchist" in the true sense of that word and the older I get the surer of it I become. The very frequent misuse of the term I sub out of every bloody story where a journalist tries to slip it under my editorial nose, saying "anarchy" when they mean "chaos", gets up that nose!
They argue: "It says so in the dictionary."
It does -- but only because lazy misapprehensions mean a word that neutrally defines a "lack of government and law" -- as a manifest Utopia in an ideal society where healthy people are sufficiently mature to coexist needing neither -- has slipped into common parlance, thus dictionary-makers have to acknowledge it and thereby impoverish the language!
Somalia is not a state in "anarchy" since it's lacked a working central government since 1991. Somalia's a country in fucking chaos, run by a bunch of mediaeval-style warlords with nasty modern weapons to the general satisfaction of nobody but themselves. The truth is it's also so chaotic that not many Somalis are unduly impressed when Washington insists it's probably a "terrorist" hotbed. They believe that's mostly laughable bullshit, to be blunt.
Normally such political statements are no matter for this log, but then Somalia is hardly among the African nations renowned for its musical qualities. Nor can it be until the world decides to do something about those warlords, which won't be in the near future because it's not a place with anything anybody wealthy wants to steal.
I don't condone theft, but I do download music, copy and even give it away -- on an understanding I share with Lauren. Music I give is explicitly shared only with those inclined to explore and repay, each in their own way. This site is about people who use music as part of a message they complete with words to make a whole that's beyond both: at its best, I call that "soul-food".
Soul-food is neither a commodity nor a luxury, let me stress again.
Why do we listen to them?
You've all got your own answers.
There may be almost as many such answers as there are musicians and listeners I feel sometimes, but I'd suspect a main one is that we live in a far from ideal world where some people are far too selfish, frightened, greedy and short-sighted to want ideals to work. That creates tensions.
There's no music without tensions, relationships or time. Each is a quality inherent to the "human condition" since -- short of mystical experience -- we're always stuck with all three.
However they make music and whatever their politics (Vanessa's clear about hers -- she got pictured campaigning for Kerry), the nigh on miraculous magic I find among the singer-songwriters whose voices make this place lies in the ability each has creatively to tap that condition of ours, and sing us the sad, ridiculous, hilarious, sublime, stupid and marvellous in it, each with their truths to address and enrich our own.
In so doing, they take us both into ourselves and out of ourselves. Where we find ourselves then is where my own writing stops.
My words always shall stop where the music begins.
4:12:11 AM 
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