The Art You Cannot See
When I was a child, I grew up in a hoarder home. My mother had me at 16. We lived with my grandmother and her then wife, who kept everything she ever received. I have vivid memories of two things in that house.
The first is the kitchen table. There were no chairs around the table, it was never used to eat meals. Instead it was filled to the edges with things left unused.
The second was the piano. It was old, out of tune. The wood was peeling and no one in the home knew how to play the instrument. It sat in the front of the house and I was the only one to ever touch it. Like the table, the top of the piano was a menagerie of unwanted items and dust. I would toy around on it, pressing the keys down and creating out of tune melodies that have been lost to time.
When I was 11, my mother bought me a guitar. We went to a music store and I picked it out myself. I loved that guitar. I spent hours every day building callouses on my fingers and devouring the instrument.
In high school I started a band with my best friends. We took a the microphone from the game Rock Band and taped it to the ceiling in order to record our first EP freshman year. It was terrible, but it unlocked something in me that hasn’t changed to this day: I love to write and record music.
I’m 30 years old now, a long distance away from the child playing a neglected piano or even the teen who wanted to be a rock star. I have a sustainable career in audio; writing soundtracks, making sound effects and mixing records.
The modern era seems diametrically opposed to the idea of a musician. It is art you cannot see and the internet demands your eyes. If I am to be a successful musician, I am required to be an Entertainer. A Video Editor. A Content Creator. A Jack of All Trades.
It is no longer enough to write music that connects with people. It has to appeal to their other senses as well. Social media wants you to grab people’s whole being if you want their attention.
I don’t blame people here. I blame the never ending hunger of social media and internet companies that require a never ending content mill. It needs our art to grind into mush so that they can sell advertising blocks.
Unless you’re a musician who can feed that pit, they have decided your art deserves to rot.
I miss musicians. It feels like a mirror to capitalism, those at the top get more and more and the poor artists get less and less. Draining us dry. Killing us.
We deserve to be heard.