TOO MANY?—Part Two

The Internet seems to me to have been inevitable. If it hadn’t been the internet it would have been something else.

The old methods of getting your work out to people, or connecting with people, just can’t hold up when there’s so many more people.

The way I see it, the mentality—spread by the growing use of the internet—to display, or share, one’s personality or artistic creations, or thoughts or etc. is not just a result of the democratization of distribution that the internet at least appears to represent and support, but also a result of there being so many more people in the world that therefore there's so much more work being created and ideas being generated.

So the world’s standards of “success” can’t matter as much, when there are thousands of small audiences for thousands more “artists.”

This may not be the best example, but it seems relevant to me that Sunday’s New York Times has an article on Parker Posey—the independent film world’s biggest female star in many ways—and it is written as if there’s a strong possibility people—especially Hollywood people, but even the rest of us—might see her as a “failure” because she isn’t as widely known or as financially rewarded as, say, Sandra Bullock!

I don't know about you, but I don’t care about what level of attention she gets from the mass media (the only reason they have an article on her in the Times is because she has two new movies coming out, and though “independent” they’re still multi-million dollar movies distributed the usual Hollywood ways).

What I care about is “the work”—how her performance resonates in the story of the film and comes across to me, watching it.

It stands to reason that if there is, at least, one-and-a-half times as many people in this country as when Posey first appeared in films, there’s also that many more actresses with great talent. But there is only room at the top for the usual handful, the ones that the corporations that run the film industry believe can bring in audiences in the millions and the profits that go with that.

Meanwhile, there's the need for the increased amount of talent to express itself and for audiences to have more choices since there's so many more of us. So, it isn’t like there’s too many people trying to make movies or be in them, there’s probably just the right amount given the size of the population, but the old means of reaching audiences for them is no longer relevant. Ergo YouTube.

It feels to me like a shift back to the old “cutting edge” scene kind of relationship between audience and performer or artist and appreciator or writer and reader etc.

E. g., Two Fridays ago, I went to a concert in the library in Canaan. Connecticut.

It was my daughter’s idea. I was staying at her place not far from Canaan. With us was her four-year-old daughter—my granddaughter—and my nine-year-old son, my daughter’s youngest sibling.

There were maybe twenty people in a little room stuffed with stuffed animals and birds. A mix of types (both stuffed and among the audience) from loner-bearded-longhaired-aging hippie, or warm-hearted-but-intimidating-looking-heavily-tattooed lesbian with an another less flamboyant woman, to straight-looking white couples with their shy children, etc.

What struck me most, though, was that the singer/songwriter appearing amidst all this, with her electric guitar and electric “banjotar”—Janet Robin—performed such an intensely energetic and forcefully entertaining show to such a small roomful of disparate people.

She was great. A delightful surprise to me, though my daughter suspected I’d dig her, which is why she wanted me to join her. My daughter knew Robin a little in California decades ago, and they recognized each other last time Robin came to town for a similar concert.

But what impressed itself on my mind was how back in the mid to late 20th Century, a gig like that would be way down the list of possibilities for a musician, let alone songwriter, as talented as Robin.

It reminded me more of the typical poetry reading gig, especially the library setting (although the stuffed-creatures room was a bit of an anomaly). But rather than seeing it as a sign of lack of success, Robin saw it as a great opportunity and gave a show that expressed her joy and gratitude to be in a small venue where everyone in the folding seats was there for just one reason, to listen to her.

She had recently performed in one of the major clubs in the area, The Helsinki in Great Barrington. But there, where the admission is high and the bar is busy and people have other agendas than just music appreciation, like finding their next date or scoring with the one they’re on, Robin felt it was fun, but not as satisfying as the little library gig.

And she was right from my perspective. People in the audience responded to her chatter between songs, asking questions or answering hers, or commenting on what she was saying (e.g. when she mentioned there not having been a lot of female guitar virtuosos in the old days, I mentioned Memphis Minnie, who happened to be a favorite of my daughter’s mother, long deceased, and Robin responded to my comment by saying “We’ll get to her later” because, as fate would have it, the only song she performs that wasn’t written by her, is one of Memphis Minnie’s!).

My point here isn’t that the show was great, but that it corresponded perfectly with my own theories about “success” in the arts and otherwise. I never much catered to the typical standards the world seemed to hold in judging “success”—my thing was always how contented I was, how much time I had, and have, to do my writing and reading and other artistic pursuits (even if it’s only catching up with new movies and music).

The “arts” saved my life, particularly poetry, so, they were always the main religion in my personal experience. But even I got caught up over the years, particularly in my 30s and 40s, with the world’s concept of success, and tried hard, or as hard as my preferences and sense of well-being could tolerate, to have that kind of success.

But eventually I settled back into my original belief that what mattered was the work, and doing it, and if anyone noticed and not only appreciated it but “got” it, that was a bonus.

So when others would assess someone’s artistic “career” based on audience size, or financial success, or amount of media attention, I would disagree and try to get them to see, that whatever that was about, it often had nothing to do with the quality of the work and more to do with politics and financial considerations and groupthink etc.

Now, the 21st century seems to be swinging my way. And the reason is, as I see it, population growth.

If the mass media and mass venues can only support a few “top acts” that can bring in the necessary audience to generate the millions needed to make a profit, but the population continues to grow exponentially, then naturally there is, and will be, a need for many more small, more intimate venues, based more on word of mouth (often via the internet) than mass media attention.

Just like the good old days. Only with more or less new ways. Like, as Robin mentioned, “house concerts” where a performer will come to your home, if you guarantee a certain size audience paying enough to make it worthwhile, like sometimes as little as thirty dollars, to hear and see and experience someone who’s work you dig up close in the intimacy of a home.

I know this has been going on for ages with rich people, hiring chamber orchestras or jazz combos to liven up their parties. But in those cases, it was the elitism of wealth, and the performers were paid for by the party giver, like the wealthy Beverly Hills matrons who get Usher to perform at their son’s bar mitzvah.

And poorer folks, including musicians, would throw “rent parties” during The Great Depression where musicians would perform and people would donate in a passed hat and hopefully the rent would be made.

Or similar scenes in the 1970s in the downtown lofts of what became known as “Tribeca” where dancers and performance artists and composers etc. would use their own lofts for performances and concerts and us locals would show up and throw some money in a hat, or pay a small fee at the door, so they could make their rent.

But what Robin was talking about is a more recent phenomenon, where a small group of people, individually contribute a small amount to have someone less expensive but just as good or better than a “star” come to their home for a private concert or reading or performance.

Man that appeals to me. I always felt enormously uncomfortable at the few mass audience events I went to back in the ‘80s, even when the seats were complimentary and up front (the exception being the few times I knew someone in the band well enough to be backstage, watching from the wings, that could be pretty exciting).

But someone’s home, with a small audience of friends, digging some talent that is willing to work under those circumstances for not a lot of money but because the venue is so intimate it fosters such attentive audiences that it’s rewarding in and of itself, let alone whatever money can be made.