Is the only way to find yourself as a
musician now is to throw caution to the wind and do what musicians did in the
past and get out there and hustle or do magic?
This is a little bit of a thought
experiment where we look at the prospect of the media control gradually killing
music. We thought it was the record companies that were controlling us but
actually it was bigger than that it was social.
When I started in music I was told that
it was a ridiculous idea to think that one could make money as a musician but
now we have courses on it as if there is a career path, no, it does not have a
career path; it is more like the entrepreneur or gambler, the risk taker,
the chancer. How do you teach that in college? Here is how you write a hit
song! Rubbish, you might be able to analyse the hit song and do something like
that but what about the anomalies of which there are many in music and art
they not only break the rules but they are so frequent that they are the rule.
So let us look at this another way for a
change; look at the trader the person looking for the idea the trade that will
make the money. For this we will look into the world of chaos magic, the
strange world of the crazy, the impossible (in scientific terms) but the growing
realm of the magician.
The West accounts for about let us say 6%
of the world population and in this part of the world who apparently believe in
the rational, logical modern way of seeing things and then there is the rest of
the world where the majority of the population believe in the other world
whether that is the mystical, spiritual or magical.
Now the view point in that non-western world
is the reality of this world can be changed radically by some form of
intervention that bends or breaks the way the world works. So for our thought
experiment let us say that the majority of the world actually thinks like this and
it is us who are out of step.
Now let us ask a simple question, are we
as artists limited by rational thinking? I would say that we are. It is in the
word ration after all we do not say let us think abundantly. I would also ask,
are people practical and functional people in other countries? And the answer
to that is yes whether you agree or not with their beliefs. So why do they
believe in something that does not work?
I would suggest that it does, whether it
is real or not. What holds us in the west is what believe is possible. If we
believe it is not we are casting a spell on ourselves? If we believe it is true
then the possibility and probability changes if that is the case and that is
why we need to hustle because we want to nudge probability in our direction and
that is one of the ideas of chaos magic that you want to look for the small
victories that encourage strange synchronicities like the call that you sensed
was coming, the person that you meet by chance, this may be the real things of
‘magical thinking’ instead of what we normally think of which is winning the
lottery.
We as artists need those breaks just like
the gambler and the entrepreneur so think radically look for opportunity do
something strange that courts that possibility, try something that you believe
in or something that you could believe in, for instance if you have a favourite
artist living or dead ask them in a ritualistic way to help. You can even try
someone that is a character in a song like Ziggy Stardust, it worked for Bowie!
if you do not believe that Bowie was
into magic then think again, if you like the Vikings call on their deities
maybe use runes to draw an intention make a weird symbol that implies a meaning
similar to the symbols that Led Zeppelin used on the fourth album or the one
that Prince used you know the one that he had as a guitar.
If you want to go deeper have a look at
the Sergeant Pepper album and check out the people in the collage, find the
mystics and magicians in there and read up on them
Ladies and gentlemen I give you the
circus of the unreal, let us leave the desert of the real behind and let us
create by changing our minds………….
Vic
www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of playing in a band
