The Hidden Creators

No, I don't mean some cabal from a fun, yet possibly embellished conspiracy theory that means for you to think of the non-perps as the perps, I am talking about the seemingly endless array of artists, musicians, producers and other creative minds that have flooded the internet. It is a mind fuck out there!

If you haven't done so, I highly recommend that you pretend to be a talent agent and it is your job to find 4 bands in your area to play a show next weekend. You can find them everywhere on the" interwebs". Soundcloud is overflowing with artists, as well as sites such as Bandcamp, Reverbnation, Artopium, Youtube, and an "unsane" amount of others. This is not including all of the corporate bands you grew up with, or the galactic scale of bands that are now defunct. What does this mean?

In an economical sense, abundance.

As good as that sounds, at least in terms of sheer choice, it is not so good for those who seek careers as independent artists, musicians and the like. There is so much music out there you probably could not listen to it all in your lifetime even if you tried. When things get abundant, they lose value. In other words, musicians have more competition now and have to fight over a much smaller pie than they used to. Most people are going to go out of their way to find free ways to listen to music, anyway. I know musicians who have very little success in just giving their music away. There is just too much. Your average person doesn't have time to contend with all of that choice. To make it worse, wages haven't kept up with inflation so your average person doesn't have spending power to buy extras such as music, art, movies, etc. These are terrible and dark times for the creative and underemployed.

This trend should continue unabated for the time being. We are meeting new artists and musicians everyday. They pop up like weeds. On one hand I love it, on the other hand I feel, "sucks to be them" because the lifestyle they envisioned likely won't come close to happening.

The smarter way to make money in that industry would be to open a musical instrument store and profit off of all of those poor folks who were told to "chase their dreams". We can't have a society of rock musicians for the same reason we can't have a society of doctors or any other role. Perhaps too many of us chose, or where forced onto the artistic bandwagon. It comes off as a life of ease. I surely is not.

I see no hope of this changing in the near future. Perhaps someday we will have a money free society and the role of the artist will evolve to become something that isn't done to make a living, but to be a living.

The artist, Brandon Truster, understands these concepts well. He understands if you can never buy his artwork. He isn't so mad about it anymore. He takes solace that he created something some people enjoy. His work is pictured here. He has discontinued his work as the cost to produce the work does not even come close to generating a profit of any kind. Perhaps someday he will get back into it when the economy is done being, well, an economy?

#art #music #film #abundance #saturatedmarket #psychedelicart #spiritrealm #dreamtrees #dmt