Set Fire to the world

What is needed to start a fire? Dry kindling and then dry wood of suitable size for certain levels of burning, starting small at first and then gradually getting bigger, up to the big logs and something to create a spark. Once alight the fire needs to be feed and watched over.

There is most definitely a sequence that happens when lighting a fire, plenty of preparation and some level of ability to light it which includes positive action. Something else worth considering is what is the fire to do? Is it to keep you warm? To cook with or something else?  This will affect the way that the fire is built and where. So let as use the metaphor and ‘set fire to the world’ or let us consider ‘Fire in the head’ which is the old term for inspiration.

What I find interesting here is that these terms actually explained very well what is required to be successful with things artistic. If the ground is not ready for the fire to be lit then you are not going to be successful. If the territory is not ready for the type of music you have then your fire will not start, there has got to be enough tinder to get started and then you need enough fuel to build the fire.

The world might be ready for you but if you do not create the spark then nothing will happen either, interestingly enough many fire lighting skills require you to blow and breathe at various stages to feed the fire which is very similar to marketing and speaking about your product and being interviewed on radio, TV and the Internet maybe you need to say something that is incendiary.

I think this is something that we miss in the way that we have been prepared by music courses and the general sort of fantasia of programs like The Voice and The X Factor that we can just go on and play or perform in some form of circus. Now for some people, in fact very few people, that might be way of succeeding but I find it interesting that the biggest artists like Adele, Ed Sheeran and Amy Winehouse did not take this pat. Adele began on the road to her success by doing Myspace then small gigs, radio and TV sometimes going out with just herself and a guitarist to do some of the early shows.

We can continue the fire metaphor as far as we want because it can also lead to burnout and most fires do need to burnout and to be rebuilt and to some extent that is exactly what Adele did in between the various albums. Maybe thinking about strategies for success in this way is better for artistic people because there is a feeling to it that makes sense. Many marketing strategies are so much ‘in your head’ being dry and expressionless that they are difficult to feel your way through where something that uses an element such a fire is much easier to envisage and taps into an intuitive level of expression.

This it does not to be world domination, it could be something simple like developing the level of teaching that you have at the moment, or moving into a new area of work or just building up the numbers of people having lessons just try it out and see how you get on. I will watch out for smoke on the horizon.

Vic www.bluescampuk.co.uk  three days of playing in a music summer school.

We have always been clever we should just stop acting dumb

 A few years ago I spent time working on some skills like flint knapping and what became clear was how clever our ancestors were. Not only could they hunt but they had the make everything required for hunting, the arrow heads, the arrow shaft, fletching, the bow, the cordage, everything; and if it did not work they starved.

It must have been the same for the musicians, same with everything, clothing, housing and fishing. We look at people in the past as superstitious and stupid, the fact is we do not have anything like the practical skills of our ancestors. Even going back to the Edwardians or the Victorians it has been estimated that the average person was far more intelligent and practical than we are, however that is not the story that we get at all.

The point here is that we are not tested by the life that we live like our forbears and therefore we get lazy when it comes to the way that we think and problem solve this leads to stress and the usual problems with the lifestyle that we have, including increased rates of depression.

For the artist and the musician we really need to break away from the formulaic approach that we are given by school, college and university. The problem is the context of compliance, in fact that word is used in everything from child protection to health care etc. now in essence that is very laudable but it has the effect of strangling the life out of things because no one wants to take risks. The risks that I am talking about are just the risk of non-conformity where you are just doing something different, as a teacher that might be not having a lesson plan that Ofsted can look at. The path to hell is paved with good intent and that is the problem here, because we are slowly destroying ourselves by making life a form of personal slavery.

I see this a lot with players who end up as machines of technique and not true artists. Think about it, none of the famous musicians were technically the best, far from it, that would have been the bedroom guitarist, who have always been there; the guy that was so screwed up he never left his bedroom but now because of YouTube he does not need to leave his bedroom to get online.

The great artists have something to say with their music and that means that they need to break rules, break the taboos, the buzz words of Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll the life style of the Dionysian cult approach to life to embrace the divine needed taboo breaking as a prerequisite.

So what is the solution for this? First of all and this is only opinion as is everything I write is, we need to realise that people had solutions for things that we do not use anymore, a form of mythic thinking which is great for creative thinking a case for revelation where you know the answer without justification. Also the understanding that we are not that clever if we are only using logic because we only need to enter a form of quantum theory to realise that form is difficult to justify and maybe nothing is real let alone an idea maybe all these things create some form of agency that makes things happen but they are not in essence real they only manifest the illusion of the real.

So do not be dumb, dream big and make something happen just like the weirdos from the past.

Vic www.bluescampuk.co.ukthree days of playing in a band