A response to reading Jeremy Eichler's "Reading between the grooves of classical vinyl's improbable return"

When my kids were young and we lived on Main St. in Amherst, I used to walk them up the hill in a stroller until they fell asleep and then I would peruse the record bins at the Salvation Army that used to be in Amherst Center and Mystery Train. While I could sometimes splurge on an album from Mystery Train (like an early mono pressing of The Times They Are A Changing), for the most part I was a bottom feeder and bought the cheapest albums which were the free jazz at Mystery Train and the classical music at the Salvation Army where you could get 4 records for $5. Because of my childhood I knew the names of virtuoso classical soloists and the major composers, and I knew the major orchestras, but sometimes I also picked up a record because of the cover (the beautiful photograph of cellist Jacqueline du Pré) or the particular design of the gatefold album. What I couldn’t do in the moldy, wet cardboard smelling corner of the Salvation Army store was match the sound, the actual composition to the object I was holding in my hand, so I would walk home with these incipient surprises to be uncovered as the kids played on the floor and I cooked, or did laundry, or fell asleep on the couch. Those were also the days when I first pieced together my stereo system with parts scavenged mostly from the Amherst dump where retiring professors would empty out their offices and leave behind old analog dial Kenwood receivers, and Acoustic Research and KLH speakers. I pieced together a turntable using the chassis of an old Thorens turntable that I stiffened using a thick sheet of MDF on the bottom and put on a new acrylic tone arm mount and new-er tonearm (the one object from post 1980 in my system). Also, because so many of my records were from the Salvation Army they were often mildewed or so moldy you could see a green haze over the record. So I made myself a record cleaner. I salvaged a cheap turntable from the dump, cut a slot in a piece of PVC pipe and coated it with velvet, then connected the PVC pipe to a small wet vac, and using a recipe I found for a record cleaning solution from distilled water and soap, I washed and sucked all my new records clean, placed the record in a new clean sleeve, put it back into the record jacket and dropped the whole thing into a protective plastic sleeve. I’m pretty sure the word “geek” or “dork” is running through your head right now. So after the record was clean, I would put it on the Thorens, and while the kids played and I also build Lego spaceships, or read picture books, or prepared a snack, I would listen to an early Boston Symphony Orchestra recording conducted by Charles Munch playing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony No. 6 and suddenly I could remember the piece and I was eight or nine years old running through the gardens at Tanglewood back before they filled in all the fountains with dirt. My friend Robert Patterson (son of a cellist) and I would set traps in the topiary maze imagining some obnoxious tourist walking through the maze holding a glass of wine when suddenly a sprung branch would whip out and foil his sophisticated designs (we never did get to witness the fruits of our efforts). But, all the while that we played, there was the sound track of the orchestra. The start and stop and repeats of rehearsals, but also the full performances with the roars and cheers from a lawn and shed full of people more audibly attentive than I was. I am always grateful to have grown up with that core experience with music (even as I rebelled against the rigor of learning violin or piano). As an adult, as a young parent, I was able to relive my childhood by listening to the music that was ever present in my childhood. And in turn, as I revisited my subconscious auditory memory, my children were being imprinted with another generation of transmission so that today, my son Simon talks about hearing Cecil Taylor in Jazz History class and being the only one who raises his hand to identify the player, recognizing him, almost intuitively, from his childhood (I could only play Cecil Taylor when my ex was out of the house to maintain household harmony). Simon is, like his grandfather, driven by his love of classical music. I, of course, educated him on all the classic formative music of my musical influences (Duane Allman, Clapton, Hendrix, J.J. Cale, Roy Buchanan, and later The Clash, Dinosaur Jr., etc.), and in grade school he played in a band (switching off between drums, guitar, and keyboards) that played Beatles, Rolling Stones, and other classic covers. And while his musical curiosity still drives him to explore music with a braver outlook than his father (he sometimes listens to Bollywood music while going for a run), he always returns to the music I used to play from his childhood. The Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, Mozart. The music of his grandfather. The music of summer lawns. The music passed down from father to son, and then father to son.

What Can We Learn From Artists?

I’ve been trying to experiment with how I might graphically demonstrate what I’ve started to learn through the Rethinking the Creative Economy Project. The data is clearly not complete, and to be comprehensive, or as comprehensive as possible, I would need include many more data points and categories, but as an introduction to the concept of what artists do to create the quality of life they seek, this is a kind of theoretical start.

Throughout the interviews I’ve conducted or read so far, everyone expresses some form of creating or managing their own quality of life. This takes the form of access to the natural world, ideal live/work space(s), access to safe housing, food security, the ability to care for family members, and creative expression. All of these categories are complementary in that often one impacts another, however, they are also distinct in their specific benefits and challenges.

Each of the categories of basic needs is crucial to the individual’s wellbeing. Housing, food security, family care, health care, and creative expression require an input to produce the needed effect. For example, U.S. currency paid to a landlord enables the artist or artisan to live in an apartment or rent studio space. This currency is generated through employment at one or more jobs, or is generated through the selling of art or crafts. Alternate exchanges can also be created that generate the same impact, for example, bartering one’s services in exchange for rent or a portion of rent (landscaping, building maintenance, artwork, etc.). But most often, the input of U.S. currency is utilized for paying for these basic needs, and to generate currency most artists turn to traditional wage paying jobs, often from multiple sources.

The challenge with a traditional wage paying job is that one has to balance the time it takes to generate enough income to pay for these basic needs with the time necessary for creative expression. What appears to be different from the general population (we don’t have a control group yet), or at least evident within our pool of interviewees, is that creative expression is prioritized as importantly (and in some cases more importantly) as the other categories of housing, food, family, and health. Whereas some people might find that creative expression is something that can be sacrificed and reduced so that more of their time can be spent on a traditional wage earning job, artists and artisans try to hold certain aspects of creative expression and the time needed to engage in that process as sacred.

What appears to be a trend among our interviewees is that artists and artisans prioritize their day/night/week differently. There is a recognition among artists and artisans that creative expression reaps the greatest impact on their quality of life, and that when creative expression is sacrificed for other things, the quality of life as a whole is impacted negatively.

There are several preliminary ideas that are emerging from this analysis. First, when the time and resources necessary for creative expression are prioritized, compromises are then made in areas that non-artists and artisans typically do not compromise. For example, part-time jobs, or multiple part-time jobs, and self-employment enable greater flexibility in scheduling a week that enables multiple pursuits. Choices in housing are valued differently with a focus on aesthetics and utility (studio/work space). Food security can be a challenge, but it has not emerged as a primary challenge in our interviewee pool, however many of our artists and artisans also farm on small or medium scales to supplement their other food sources. Many of the artists and artisans are involved in parenting, caring for elders, caring for partners, and much of this is enabled by having a flexible schedule rather than a rigid traditional workweek. Healthcare is a major issue for many artists and artisans as many are dealing with long-term medical conditions, chronic pain, in addition to the various health issues that arise in the course of life. However, there is a strong thread of non-traditional healing practices, a reliance on coverage when possible, and a real recognition that without state or employer provided coverage, the healthcare crisis is insurmountable. So here too, artists and artisans make compromises. They forgo dental work, engage in as much self care when possible, and utilize community health clinics. A patchwork of solutions, some quite sufficient, others quite deficient, are utilized to care for themselves and their families.

The reprioritization of value for housing, food security, family care, healthcare, and creative expression is a pendulum that can swing in either direction. When things are going well and are functioning in proportional balance, the pendulum swings towards increased quality of life. And when there is a crisis for family care, health, housing, food, these things then require, most commonly, additional U.S. currency, which necessitates picking up an additional job, working longer hours, or increases in selling art, craft, or personal items. When this occurs, the quality of life drops dramatically, particularly when the category that is diminished is creative expression. When multiple crises occur, an injury predicates the loss of a job, which reduces available healthcare, and subsequently housing stability is threatened, much of the benefits to creative expression are lost as the individual scrambles to try and patch together a safety net.

The goal for many of our artists and artisans is to figure out how to reduce the amount of indirect time it takes to generate stability for housing, healthcare, food, and family care. What I mean by indirect time is that, when an individual is employed at a department store, they are working to sell items and serve customers that are not connected in any direct way to their apartment or the dental work they need. The employment is necessary so that these things can be paid for with currency. However, the work that an individual does for an employer is inherently inefficient in a capitalist system because the employer is seeking to generate profit. That means, the value of any employee’s work is greater (and sometimes far greater) than the hourly wage that employee earns. Imagine if the sales generated at a Walmart were divided equally among all the workers in proportion to the hours worked in the day. The workers would bring home a substantially different looking paycheck. So, in an effort to alter that equation, many artists and artisans are engaged in self-employment, utilizing technology to work at home or provide consulting services, giving community lessons, and doing commissions or work for hire.

Another way to reduce the amount of time necessary to provide stability and security for food, housing, healthcare, and family care, is to utilize cooperative models. In the most basic sense, if one person goes to the grocery store for three people, that is two less trips that need to be made, more time in the day for the other people, and less fuel utilized for the trip. Similarly, when one person rents a one-bedroom apartment, the choices are very limited within a lower price range. When two people rent an apartment, the same contribution of funds from each individual provides for a much broader and possibly more pleasing variety of options. Similarly, when multiple people share responsibility for bills, tasks, chores, there is a division of labor that can enable a greater amount of time that can be dedicated to creative expression, and there are greater resources to be tapped if there is a crisis. There is a potential for cooperative structures to reduce the amount of time required for basic needs stability without reducing the quality (and perhaps even increasing the quality) of that stability.

By reducing the amount of time needed to generate stability in the basic needs of housing, food, healthcare, and family care, artists and artisans are better able to utilize their time engaged in creative expression. This is enabled by a focus on sustainability rather than constant growth. It is a prioritization of quality of life as defined by the individual rather than dictated by a government statistic, marketing firms, or the Joneses. It is also an ontological shift, one that artists and artisans make on a subconscious level quite often, but to make these practices overt and intentional is a greater leap that my require assistance, guidance, and planning. When these overt ontological shifts are put into practice in formal ways, we need to learn how to recognize and highlight their successes as much, if not more than the mainstream recognition and appreciation for capitalist processes.

Is This What the End of Capitalism (as we know it) Looks Like?

In J.K. Gibson-Graham’s seminal book, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) (1996), they concretize what many people were already beginning to understand intuitively. Capitalism had breached what might be thought of as an ethical wall, and leapt into a self-consuming runaway cascade of reactions, the aftereffects we are feeling today. In England, for the last four days there have been riots, which started in Tottenham, peopled mainly by disaffected youth. While the ignition point for the unrest was the unfortunate shooting death of a civilian by police forces, it has evolved into a guttural expression of those who have not, against those they perceive to have too much. Department stores are ransacked by youth, like Louis James, 19, who in the New York Times, said, “No one has ever given me a chance; I am just angry at how the whole system works” (Thomas and Somaiya, 8/9/11). He managed to nab a $195.00 sweater. Neither J.K. Gibson-Graham, nor I promote violent destruction of property, the burning of buildings, and harming of other human beings as a form of economic reform, but it certainly seems like a foreseeable byproduct of the lack of reform.

In the U.S., Verizon is faced with a union strike as it tries to reduce benefits, even as the company enjoys strong profits with a “net income of $6.9 billion in the first six months of this year” (Greenhouse, “Sharp Rift in a Strike at Verizon,” NYT, 8/7/11). In fact, many corporations are enjoying record profits, generating “14 percent of the national income in 2010, the highest proportion ever recorded” (Norris, “As Corporate Profits Rise, Workers’ Income Declines,” NYT, 8/5/11). At Verizon, workers are seeking to stop the management of a company by investor greed and a mantra focused around infinite growth (of profit). In Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter has instituted a curfew to curtail flash mobs with threat of fines and the possible imposition of child neglect charges for parents (“Philadelphia orders curfew after flash-mob attacks,” BBC, 8/9/11). Amidst the record profit taking by corporate America, congress is stymied on how to provide needed social services when so much is owed to other countries and the wealthy do not want to pay.

What this global dissent says to me (even encompassing the spring uprisings in North Africa and South West Asia where people rose up against different, but similar tyrannies) is that the balance is shifting to where there are ever increasing numbers of people who can not afford appropriate medical care, can not repair rotted teeth, struggle to pay for college, for rent, for food, are increasingly characterized as lawless others, and they are becoming aware of the existing inequalities. While some classes of people have full dental benefits with their employment, oftentimes, those very same people are trying to deny the most basic of benefits to their employees or voters. As the imbalance increases, and it does because while the mantra of growth is infinite, the Earth is a planet of finite resources, and more and more people begin to recognize this inequity, we see its impact in increasing and increasingly unpredictable ways, with increased crime, more conflict between workers and employers, and more disaffected youth.

Interestingly, the disaffected youth who are rioting in England, seem to intuitively know who their oppressor is. They are targeting department stores, the material goods of a consumer society produced by corporations who steal from the workers, and sell back to them, the very goods they are producing. A recent rash of burglaries in Western Massachusetts has targeted ATM machines. Even the Tea Party is motivated by this same disaffected anger at inequity. They certainly seem confused and radicalized, but I can understand where that confusion and simmering anger stems from.

What Gibson-Graham did in their book, was deconstruct the obfuscating lens of corporate language and financial media, and validate that what people feel and experience is also a valid truth, one that needs to be listened to and incorporated into a broader concept of what economy could entail. There are many ways in which this can happen, on the individual level through conversation and personal interactions, from teacher to student and vice versa, on the level of factory takeovers by workers in Argentina, by large scale protests, and so on. Politicians are no longer in touch with the American experience and are too beholden to corporate America. If we actually want to fix the system, create change to benefit the people, then we need to discover ways to help the politicians see what their policies engender. Change does not necessarily have to be traumatic, and successes do occur. Look at the recent change of track for automobile and truck companies on the issue of raised fuel economy. Such a concession would have been impossible to imagine a mere five years ago. Yet, the corporations have recognized the value of natural resources, protecting the environment, the dangers of carbon gases, the value of catering to people and the planet. So perhaps there is hope. There may be a day yet, where Americans are no longer seen as plunderers of the planet, to paraphrase the late Ray Anderson, Founder and CEO of Interface, and we become its stewards.

My Testimony to The Joint Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Cultural Development

The Joint Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Cultural Development
1878, An Act Establishing the Massachusetts Cultural Trust Fund
filed by Senator Stan Rosenberg

Here is a link to the bill's text:< http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/senate/186/st01pdf/ST01878.PDF
>




The Massachusetts Cultural Council continues to be one of the most important sources of funding in Franklin County to stimulate economic activity in the arts. Make no mistake about it, artists and artisans are core to the future of how the region transforms and evolves.

As we reassess how we define a healthy economy, we must also reexamine how we place value on the core elements we require for the quality of life that we desire in our cities and towns. How do we adopt practices that develop the skills and expertise that our residents already have? How do we build on the economic activities that enhance a sense of community, that value creative agency and innovation, and that stimulate the interconnected nature of relationships in the towns, counties, the state, and the world?

The Massachusetts Cultural Council is the manifestation of the values the state has for the future. It is a reflection, not only on a commitment to the arts and humanities, but for why the arts and humanities are crucial aspects of our communities. The arts and humanities are about inquiry and exploration, the pursuit of meaning, and the synthesis of the individual with the environment. The objective of funding for the arts and humanities is not unchecked growth, or the generation of profit, but the expansion of successful practices, the exploration of how we can learn to create the world we seek to inhabit, and the generation of value.

The contributions the Massachusetts Cultural Council has made to the Fostering Art and Culture Project has allowed Greenfield Community College to focus on the creative economy with a similar kind of intensity that the health and business sectors receive. The Fostering Art and Culture Project strives to build collaborative, mutually beneficial relationships among parallel creative economy constituents: artists and artisans, local and countywide organizations, and local government. In addition, the Fostering Art and Culture Project seeks to educate across economic sectors about the interconnected nature of the arts, agriculture, and traditional business and industry, and how a community can actively foster a diverse range of economic practices to create the kind of balance that generates an increase in the quality of life.

The Massachusetts Cultural Council’s funding has enabled Fostering Art and Culture to offer business classes for artists and artisans, workshops on marketing, public forums about the connection of the creative economy and business, a summit about the creative economy on local, state, national, and international scales, and the development of marketing plans for the county.

An increase in the standard of living does not equate an increase in the quality of life for people. What increases quality of life is the ability to become active participants in determining one’s future, is the ability to engage in the generation of meaning (or value), and it is the ability to express one’s self creatively. An investment in the Massachusetts Cultural Trust Fund, is an investment into how the citizens of the future will look back in history and see our state, the stories we write, the art we create, the activities we pursue, the innovations we stimulate, and the questions we ask.

Carrot Mob

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Defining Economy

Humanities Division

Humanities Division

Shared via AddThis