The Swagger of Participation
August 1st, 2007
I know the chic thing to do these days involves fervent attacks upon people who self-promote.
As creative endeavors give rise to their own social networking community, one notices the ways in which people use the networks as little more than free advertising in which the folks involved trumpet their own artistic brilliance and lovability. Yet I do not take umbrage when, for example, someone seeks to befriend my myspace page just to show me they exist. Instead, I rather enjoy meeting people who are out there trying to show their ways of doing things.
In the Creative Commons circles in which I run, free netlabel release means that a lot of the “buy my product” drawback to self-promotion is removed from the process. Yet I can and do buy product from indie artists regularly, and I can and do donate to sites and buy caps and such. Beyond all the pedestrian greengrocer capitalism of self-promotion (not that I mind greens, grocers, pedestrians or capitalism) there is a real potential in a sharing culture
for for the building of niche groups–circlets of like-minded people. I have listeners from around the world–I listen to artists from around the world. We all self-promote, certainly, to expand our base. But it’s really more about an exchange of ideas–a sharing culture than about a need for you to see me as your rock star, and for the metaphoric “you” to be my Yoko Ono.
I call this fun self-promotion the “swagger of participation”–the insistent “I am here”. We all have our creativity we lift like kites in the wind, hoping to avoid needless tree assault.
Some folks get very purist about their work. I am amused when obscure works with Creative Commons licenses forbid derivative works, as if being remixed were a trial rather than a promotional advantage. I am also amused when folks take themselves too seriously. This singer fears her work might be compromised if she is not remixed in x, y or z way. That performer
fears that the world ends if the label does not use k, l, or m method of doing a release.
Lately, I find myself confronting a different fear in the face–the fear of doing things I don’t do well. I create music best on the fringes of ambient, although I am not truly a “purely” ambient artist by many of the definitions applicable. I remix a little more broadly than that.
Yet lately, I’ve been working on actual songs for a site that promotes song creation competitions, songfight.org. I am not at all a pop-song writer. My songs always come out off-kilter. Yet I enjoy even harsh negative reviews at that site, as I place into the ether my own weirdbient takes on songwriting.
I do not aspire to be King/Goffin. Yet it’s fun to learn, and to do, and to participate in a shared experience.
I like to remix because I like to take sounds by others and incorporate them into my own vision. I recently took a songfight melody (which had not inspired much praise), a slow keyboard chill, and re-imagined it as a robotic lounge song. The resulting remix “Seeking Human Love in a Robotic World”, is anything but ambient. But it’s fun.
Seeking Human Love in a Robotic World.
I’m grateful to ccmixter.org, which got me into the habit of creating such remixes, with varying degrees of success, and with tolerating even my most abstruse early noise mash-ups.
I don’t have a lot of swagger as a musician. I am a Creative Commons explorer, and not a cutting edge pioneer of sound. But I like to know that I can get “in the game”, even if sometimes I am not batting at the top of the batting order. I also like that despite it all, there is a “weirdbient” sound that is “my” sound, as surely as my face is my face and my voice is my voice.
I would love to meet more spoken word artists to blend my sounds with their words. I like this form of mutual swagger–this “here we are, disparate and joined, come share our ideas”. The swagger of participation, the slightest hint of greasepaint, the sounds of shared free music. I like that. That’s NSI.
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