More animal

I’m aspiring to produce the “uncivilised” writing we called for in the Dark Mountain manifesto back in 2009. I think that's more about style and execution than subject matter. If your writing becomes too controlled, not chaotic enough, then you’ve lost one of the fundamental elements of what it means to be an animal in the world. The idea is to write like a mountain hare—or like a mountain. What would it be like to attempt to write from the animal in you, and from the land around you, rather than from the rational, well behaved, civilized person that you are trained to be? Our writing is too civilized now. It’s too rational and realist, too middle class and urban. The kind of stuff that we lay out in mainstream culture as the height of great literature is not saying anything about the state of the world. It’s not saying anything about crumbling civilizations or climate change or extinction, or the complexity of being human in the midst of all that. It’s fake. I’m trying not to be fake,- Paul Kingsnorth

What does this say about the music we are producing in this society? If anything it is far too controlled and not chaotic enough, however every now and again musical styles such as punk, grunge, and in the 50s rock ‘n’ roll appeared out of nowhere to turn the musical establishment upside down. It reintroduced the animal into the music that is most definitely needed today. Okay lots of music on the fringes have this animal characteristic but this certainly does not appear within the mainstream currently, maybe that is about to change.

Much of the animal nature comes from the landscape, a sort of ancestral viewpoint, the blues changed its home a number of times and changed its name. From the London streets songs to the Mississippi and Chicago and then back again to London each time manipulating its identity but retaining its animal nature.

The challenge for us as teachers is to keep hold of this essence, both of the music and of the person as they are learning. The challenge for us as performers is to keep the raw essence when we create so that it is retained as we edit and record or write it down.

We need to re-introduce that danger and risk into the work that we do, however doing normally a job does produce a series of restrictions which are matrix like. Neo had to conform to the morays of his job before finally being abducted by agent Smith and his cronies. Seems like a suitable metaphor to the challenges of being an artist in the modern work that its environment presents us.

However the modern work environment is going to rapidly change in the next few years so we may have our opportunity thrust upon us to be radical and animal.

Vic 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of being immersed in music in this UK summer school