I Don't Want An Audience
I say this because it’s true. I am not just looking for an “audience”. I am not looking to enter into a relationship in which I perform, and you pay to sit and watch before going home and falling asleep, ready to forget the entire experience by morning. I want to build a community. I want to build a community in which I bring my talents to a round table, and the people who come to listen to me bring a part of themselves as well. I want to empower people to embrace the most authentic expressions of themselves, and to bring that authenticity to everything they do. I want to encourage people to be passionate, sensitive, and empathetic. And I want the people of the community to empower me, too. I’m looking for something we can share.
To me, “audience” is an industry term referring to a group of people that can be monetized. A group of strangers that occasionally meet in a room to listen to a performer. But I want to share in something bigger than any one person. I want to experience a real connection to the human spirit that got us all here. We have forgotten what it means to be human. In pursuit of endless economic growth, expanding the personal wealth of a few at the expense of the many, we have developed a type of antagonistic individualism that would have already lead us to extinction if we had the same mentality 100,000 years ago.
We have commodified every aspect of our lives, to the point where every single fucking hobby you pick up will be expected to make you money. And if you say you don’t care about making a pile of money, you’ll be called a fool. A “wasted talent”. Why can’t the weavers weave? Why can’t the singers sing? Or the sculptors sculpt? Why does every single goddamn thing we’re good at have to be corrupted in the interest of a massive profit?
I am so sick of having people having to create “side hustles” to be able to justify loving something. To justify making something. And I’m tired of the ways in which people who are trying to make an honest income as artists are completely dismissed. It’s a fantastic paradox that society has created - if you want to pick up a creative hobby, you should find a way to make it profitable. But you also don’t really deserve for that creativity to become your main source of income. You have to get a real job. And I’m really bothered by people who pretend with their words that this isn’t the case.
Because you are not allowed to truly dedicate yourself to a creative pursuit if you aren’t willing to commodify your very being and sell yourself to survive. We are simply not allowed to do it. Why? Because we have effectively decided that if something doesn’t generate a profit, it is of little value. Its use-value is entirely discarded, the focus shifted entirely to the accumulation of exchange-value. We don’t place value on intangible benefits like building a cohesive community, or enriching each other’s emotional intelligence and sense of self-worth. These appear to be meaningless if there is no money involved.
We are told, in many systems of faith, to love our neighbor, and it is glaringly clear that we as a society have not one iota of an idea what that means. And that’s what I crave. To look a stranger in the eyes and see my neighbor, and know that they see me the same. A neighbor. A friend. So, I don’t want an audience, if all it means is I make some cash, sell some t-shirts, and get some streaming numbers on Spotify. I need more than that. And this brings up a complicated part of this life that I really need to talk about. The struggle of the working artist. Recognizing a need to connect with other humans, wanting more than anything to have the time and freedom to truly dedicate yourself to your craft. But constantly, fucking constantly, being faced with the reality that you have to prostitute yourself for money if you really want to be able to create. If you want to eat, be clothed, and have reliable shelter, you have to commodify a part of you that is totally incompatible with a system that is only based on profit.
It is the reason we are seeing musicians branch into areas that musicians thirty years ago never would have thought existed. It’s why musicians now have to also be podcasters, professional Instagrammers, BLOGGERS, and a number of other roles besides “musician” in order to make a living. Because what musicians do as musicians isn’t enough, and because a lot of people don’t realize what it is that musicians are really doing.
We are ripping ourselves open. Making a bloody, stinking mess of the nuances of our souls, and then arranging what we observe in a way that sounds pretty. In a way that other human beings can connect to. Then, we spend years. Years. Playing whatever shitty gig that the neighborhood sandwich shops will give us. We stand in the corner, screaming into a battered microphone that’s been soaked in the beer-stained breath of a thousand open mic nights, pouring out our hearts to an audience of one guy who has headphones on. Maybe as we progress in our careers, we can start to sell tickets to our shows. We bring our meditations, our observations, and our insecurities, and we stand on a stage and pray that somebody that’s listening can understand what we’re saying. We pray that somebody connects. That somebody hears us. Being a musician is not easy. It is hard, it is cathartic, and it is not to be undervalued. And while I’m at it, I would just like to point out that the word “musician” can be substituted for “painter” or “writer” or any other word referring to a person brave enough to hold themselves under a microscope in order to extract a small part of the human experience so that the rest of humanity has something that makes them say “this is why I don’t feel alone”.
But, clearly, so many people still think that working artists are undeserving of basic financial stability. People don’t realize that being an artist is a skilled trade. There are musicians at every level. Some have large audiences, some build small communities. Some artists do everything right, and build massive communities. We end up with groups like Radiohead when passionate people seek to build communities rather than collect an audience. To distill everything I’ve said: the contributions to society that artists make are undervalued, and this is manifested differently depending on whether an artist is a hobbyist or a professional. That’s essentially what I’m trying to point out. And I can already hear people’s responses to this. (There’s the anxiety again.) I can hear people telling me to stop whining. I can hear people trying to argue about why I’m wrong about my own experience.
But I think that deep down, people can recognize this truth: we are isolated. But people don’t want to hear that. Because to hear it, and accept it, would mean that we have to try to change. And a lot of people really don’t like change. A lot of people don’t even like it when you critique small aspects of our society. Some folks have even come up with a brilliantly insightful term for thoughtful critique. Are you ready? It’s hilarious. They call it “bitching”. That’s right. Some folks hear critique, even mild critique, and their response is to say “just stop bitching.” What a brilliant way to encourage thoughtfulness, to encourage people to push society to do better.
I really believe that we can be better. And I want something better than just a passive audience. I want a community. And look, I certainly hope I don’t come across as too aggressive. I just feel very strongly about these things, and it’s not often that I find somebody that is actually willing to listen to me. So that’s what I’m looking for. A community. A real social connection with you. And I know that writing and playing music are the ways that I can reach you. If you feel isolated, alienated, or marginalized - I see you. I feel you. I want to know you.
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