Songs as Gifts Simultaneously Received and Given (Don't go to SXSW®)

Dear musicians... Let me be plain, don't go to SXSW®. Mass consumer spectacle isn't very musical. Artists climbing over each other to get 50 shows so they can be "discovered" doesn't have much to do with truth or beauty. Stay home and record a song. Go into the mountains, the desert, to the top of a building, and receive one. Play a show in the town right next to yours that you've never actually been to.

Say no to vampires. So no to mediocrity. You make music and there is no one who doesn’t love music, this makes you one of the most powerful people in the world. Tastes may vary widely, but music is a universal good. You create the most important human export.

The Ainu (Japan’s native population) believe that songs are Man’s gift back to the Universe. As the top of the food chain we do very little to give back, so the Ainu played epic music at every meal and many times throughout each day to honor the beings, and land that sustained their lives. When they played the spirits gathered to drink the song, to bathe in the music.

Every primary culture I have ever studied believed that songs were received, sometimes smuggled back from another plane, usually the world of spirits. Or given to them from some non-physical beings, or some ineffable place. These songs were generally semi-secret songs that gave the singer power and specialized knowledge. So a song is a gift that is simultaneously given and received. That sounds right to me.

Let’s take a few (thousand) steps back and return to the sacred. Not the kind of sacred that is static, reserved or dogmatic. The sacred that is ecstatic, powerful, creative/destructive, funny, wise, overwhelming, honest, entheogenic (God manifesting), hallucinogenic (vision manifesting), and/or psychedelic (mind manifesting). Don’t fill your head or environment with simulacra songs, turn off the car radio, try to tune out the music in the market. And stop giving your songs to parasites. Play only where creation is welcome, where the sacred particles of music can do their good work, swirl for the spirits, and dance for our own.