FINAL NIGHT OF EUROPE TOUR
I don’t like it when "human nature" gets blamed for evils that are actually the fault of very specific rich and powerful people or very specific economic political or aesthetic systems that are neither inevitable nor universal but really just a handful among infinite possibilities that humans could try or have tried through the millennia
The human species is neither a virus nor a cancer nor inherently evil but is having its potential for evil drastically increased by a stupid economic system that’s imposed on it by its richest members plus whatever Lindsay Grahams and Kamala Harrises they can bribe which creates a structural incentive for behavior that is greedy violent unfair exploitative dehumanizing and ultimately self-annihilating
One thing humans seem to do more than any other species that’s evolved on our planet is to be creative which is why those who think capitalism is natural and inevitable and its greed and violence the only behaviors of which humans are capable should get out more or could read a book about anthropology archaeology or world history
Humans have created infinite ways of organizing themselves over the hundreds of thousands of years they have walked the earth and to suggest that one experimental economic system that popped up in Europe 500 years ago and is now destroying the planet is the only system any of us could ever conceive of is obviously an affront to common sense and a symptom of white supremacist propaganda
To even suggest that the only reason any member of our species has ever sung or created music was to generate content in hopes of going viral on the internet is to be willfully obtuse and spit in the face of any person of reason or any person who does in fact create music
The fact that American music and particularly Black American music has become the lingua franca of global commercial music does not mean that there is such a thing as “universal” music or “better” or “worse” music and one of the many things that my teacher Pauline Oliveros taught us was that across the globe and over the millennia music has been put to a wider variety of uses than any one person could ever imagine
Dancing worship thinking expression problem-solving instinct community-building sonic-pleasure mating battle communication experimentation transcendence synchronization self-esteem exercise intellectual-pleasure catharsis friend-making memory-aid math physics culture-differentiation secret-code gifts ancestral-memory and child-rearing are just a random sampling of the perfectly valid non-capitalist reasons that music exists and has existed for millennia that I could think of in 60 seconds
From when we are children we humans do seem to need to make things and just because not everyone grows up to be an artist doesn't disqualify creativity from a list of basic human needs anymore than the fact that not everyone grows up to be a parent disqualifies childcare from a list of basic human needs
A definition of music which equates quality with instant supernormal sensory gratification and addictive hooks is not proof of some universal feature of human nature but an example of the same capitalist imperatives that caused the proliferation of sugary breakfast cereals that appeared in the 1950s
The definition of musical "satisfaction" which emphasizes rising tension climax and resolution is both based upon and meant to service celebrate and falsely universalize male sexual pleasure and is a product of patriarchy
Anthony Braxton has taught us that just because a musical creation or musical community has not become useful to capitalists or powerful institutions does not mean that this musical creation or musical community does not exist or serves no purpose or is an inherent failure
Big Tech billionaires have tricked musicians and listeners into believing that their own for-profit platforms are the only valid or viable outlet for musical expression and that infinite choice for the listener and infinite exploitation for the musician is the model that we all obviously want
The romantic archetype of the heroic artist genius suffering in poverty and isolation is of course very useful to the capitalist who is compelled to extract as much of our labor and income and creativity as they can get away with before you can’t tolerate it anymore and start to withhold these things from the capitalist
The capitalist does not actually see the artist as a heroic genius suffering in isolation but as a temporary profit stream meant to tide them over until they finish transferring all of their investments into something more profitable which is weaponry
A process is already well underway in which Big Tech platforms advertised as outlets for artistic expression such as Spotify Amazon Google YouTube Apple Instagram and Facebook are becoming purposely addictive fronts for war profiteering and arms dealing
So much money has now been invested in AI that those in Big Tech know that there are only four ways it will ever make a profit 1. for virtually every human need to be provided by a computer 2. for virtually every worker and creator to be replaced by a computer 3. for virtually all creative accomplishments in recorded history to be stolen and plagiarized by computer 4. for virtually all warfare to be fought by computer and to make sure that warfare never ends but escalates forever
We recommend discontinuing the use of the major tech platforms wherever possible since using them funds wars genocide slavery ICE AI-weapons AI-data-centers income-inequality or some combination of these insane experiments which directly threaten human survival
More importantly my hot take on the new Rolling Stones album is that while it continues the half-century tradition of Mick trying to sound young and Keith trying to sound old it expresses these anxieties with a more clearly billionaire point of view than before
Mick and Keith fitfully attempt to distance themselves from their fellow billionaires with which the global population is so rightly disgusted while also engaging in the Big Tech affirmations and expressions of the pre-apocalyptic party-while-you-still-can mindset that epitomize today’s billionaire class
Likewise the astronomical production budget is utilized sometimes to faithfully communicate the feeling of being right in front of the band for example Keith and Ronnie’s guitars and Steve Jordan’s rack tom and sometimes to turn perfectly good acoustic sounds into digitally burnished meta-entities that do not resemble their acoustic counterpart for example Steve Jordan’s snare and what sounds like quite a bit of cutting and pasting