*I highly recommend you listen to this one.
“Without art there is no modern world, just a barbaric one. If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?” - Ai Wei Wei
PAST
I don’t know the exact point, but I know it was early on. As early as the story, which is as early as us.
We crafted gifts, we called it art. It wasn’t about weightless viral messages, it was about truth. Liberation.
That’s what the ancients did. They told us, Your world is about to fall apart, it’s about to collapse. Save it, now, before it’s too late.
PRESENT
What is that rule of three - fast, cheap, good - you can only have 2. Why has good been sacrificed for cheap and fast?
"Will it sell?" they wonder. “Will it reach the socials?” they hope....
Is it a coincidence that Society rhymes with Anxiety? Or that content and to be content are the same word?
As in, I wish to be content, but to even think about being content reminds me that I am most certainly content. Because content is everything right!?
This is why Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says artists need to work harder, “it’s about creating continuous engagement and keeping a continuous dialogue.”
Continuous. Is this why I can’t sleep? Continuous. Why I wake with a stomach tied in knots? Continuous. Because I’m not making enough continuous content to be content? Content that will most certainly be forgotten by the next piece of content and the next and the next.
When they say work harder, do more, post more - they don't know how hard it is to actually birth something meaningful, to cultivate, to make, to try, to try, to try, to pitch, to arrange and rearrange, to begin again. They might understand the Bugs Bunny mathematix of paying an artist less than a penny per stream - but they don't know art.
And so, great artists chew on leather so that CEO's can save a buck, so they can make it faster and cheaper. Stuck so deep in the gospel of more they forget why they started to begin with. They have lost themselves to the bottom line.
More is the religion of right now, and it is a broken religion. Think of the great art and artists we have lost in search of more. Those displaced because they didn't have the space to create. More is taking more from our physical and mental health than it can give in return.
It’s like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. She runs and runs but she never seems to get anywhere. She tells Alice, “In my country, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
Or like an employee who walks into his boss’s office and asks for a raise, the boss says– “I can’t raise your salary but if you want to earn more money, all you need to do is work more hours. Don’t go home, don’t sleep, don’t go to brunch, don’t go see your mom on the weekends, miss the funeral, the wedding, and the birthdays, stay here, deliver product - ”
The gospel of more will tell you product is all that exists, that everything is made of it, and nothing exists outside of it. But this isn’t true, because according to physics – at everything’s core, there’s actually nothing. Even objects as solid as rocks, chairs, you and me, have nothing substantial at their core.
So here I am sweating for something that is empty at its core. And when it finally comes I don’t even know how to enjoy it because I’m onto the next. What’s the point of it all if I can’t enjoy it?
Instead of, “Have I worked hard enough to deserve rest?” May we now ask, “have I rested enough to birth my most loving and meaningful creation?”
FUTURE
I believe what many indigenous cultures believe, we're alive just as nature is alive: to be here, to be beautiful & strange.
What we really want is peace, admit it. A gut that isn’t in shambles. A calm nervous system.
Imagine if we could make art and not product. Making and sharing for the beauty of sharing. We create worlds and invite people in.
Initiating a conversation between ourselves and the people who are engaging with our spirits. This kind of collaboration is at the heart of what it is to be human, what it is to be in our time, and what it means to be part of civilization.
Who we free will be part of the future, and it will help to shape whatever future that will be.
Because, the future is not fixed. The “future” is not a destination. The future is a practice of now. A co-created set of decisions, of happenings, and loved-out-loud questions in the only moment where there is breath. Now.
We are each other’s future.
xo
*composed by Adrien Prevost
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