No New Music

I'm not yet middle-aged nor in danger of a destructive midlife crisis, yet there are few people thereabouts my own age that don't seem to be so lucky in this respect. I'm talking about the already jaded claims every generation jeers about, in that jaded, grizzled tone: there's no new music/movies/books/ideas etc.

I can't say for certain this isn't true. Every book is a different combination of the same 26 letters. Every movie had a clear beginning, middle and end. Tropes are used over and over. People really haven't changed much since that last big crawl over the evolutionary hump. Music theory has already proven that certain chords and formats always make the most popular music.

So what's the point?

The point is that people are too overly focused on the elements of egotism, formula, and inflexible taste to really look at the magic of creation. It's not the fame and fortune that keeps people from creating when their work is likely to just be a saturated influence of all the things that have already been done. Yet, lately, I've been digging around YouTube and I'm seeing some pretty inspiring channels. A voice coach that dissects professional artists and covers without trashing anyone. A girl who takes the songs of one artist to do it in the style of another. A digital painter that teaches you to paint skin without a step by step format because art is still personal. A brilliant watercolor painter who was ridiculed for his style in art school but blows me away with his work.

I won't keep you in suspense, so I'll post these channels now:

Sam Johnson

Ali Spagnola

Istebrak 

Laovaan

I might link those when I jump on my laptop later, but as I usually blog on a tablet, the switching around is tedious...

What really stands out for me is that, whether you want to or not, it's really hard not to feel the pull of both their obvious skills and passion for what they do. I'm not really the sort that is drawn to artists for their public image, and that's never more true than my more recent fascination with Billie Eilish. I don't care for her videos or cultivated 'rebel' look. P!nk was similarly the edgy pop star that didn't fit as the pretty little industry princess. Yet when I'm listening to music, I care less about whatever image they cultivate for themselves and wholly about what their work creates in me. In both cases, these women speak to me because they create moving music. The same goes for Alanis Morissette, who in her advent days, did a lot of weird twitchy grunge girl videos. Undeniably, her music overpowered any visual accompaniment.

Who did it first? Well, who really cares? Historically, when things had to have been 'new' at some point, were they ever really new at all or was the combination and delivery just really resonate with experiences or innate feelings we always had as humans? The first humans were already creating, even when survival was supposedly all we had time for. The crude cave paintings were often renderings of actual animals, but then you see the hints of pure imagination. Imagine how crazy the fellow cavepeople thought their friend who was painting SIX legged buffalo!

So, yes, some artists are awe-inspiring in their ability to reproduce things we actually see with painstaking accuracy with tools most of us can only manage to use to scrawl out a chicken scratch signature. Some artists wow in the abstract or fantastical categories. Some start movements or never end up trending until they aren't alive to experience it.

But when you find yourself jaded by the thought that nothing is 'new', remember to look for the people who are caught in the whirlwind of inspiration. Look for that mix of humility, enthusiasm, and obsession and listen to the way they are looking at the things you gloss over. Stop giving everything seconds or minutes of the time it takes to look at a finished product and start analyzing the hours and months that go into the work.

Appreciation is becoming lost in the flood of consumption. It can happen to any of us and it can be fixed. Rather than being the crab at the bottom of the tank, yanking everything back down, catch the flow and ride along at the top. Be vulnerable to experience change. 

I definitely doesn't mean you have to catch every trend. Nothing on this earth could make me appreciate mumble rap. But there's still innovation and connection out there. Shed some of the salt and moss gathering on your skin and look for it.

New to Me

While it's almost impossible to make an idea wholly original, most of us actually aren't looking for that anyway. In the many books I've read, the many words I've filtered through me, there are a lot fewer moments of profound change in my thinking or mood by comparison. I pore through entertainment of all types rarely expecting a revelation anymore--sometimes I'm just banking on a nostalgic high.

I didn't get into Game of Thrones for being original. For all of its taboo topics, it wasn't even shocking. If anything, it took all the parts that people were already writing about throughout human history and stopped letting powerful prudes cut them out. It's not some morally depraved trickery on the part of modern times but at some point, we stopped seeing sense in protecting grown-ass adults from controversial topics. They are still rated and able to be kept from children with the ease of technology but they aren't stricken from consumption by people who have every right to make that decision for themselves. 

GoT, however, was still original in a sense that today's trends are not. It's not a remake of a story already done, sometimes in the exact same media as before, ten or more years later. The characters and names and specific plots are not suspiciously or even blatantly mimicking something else.

My own stories? After not looking at them for a few years, those are new to me too. I rarely ever replay a game, reread a book, or rewatch a movie... Or rather, I don't ever plan to. The tendency I have is to think of something I once consumed and, if I can't think of it right away, it only builds this insane need to re-experience it when I can remember.

This can go badly. While I haven't yet cringed at my published stories, I've certainly murdered the magic of nostalgia by attempting to revive it. Instead of always insisting I relive it, sometimes I do look for something similar.

With a caveat. I will almost always ignore any attempt by authors, reviewers, etc. to compare it to a popular title. It's one thing to list inspirations in a bio but I am naturally suspicious of anyone who uses the popularity of something else to sell a story. In my experience, the ways it is 'like' something are not at all the ways I have hoped it was. The problem with telling me your work is like Stephen King is that the man is prolific and his own work isn't like the rest of his work. J.K. Rowling? If you mean it's set in a magic school, I've already read (and not finished) about 50 stinkers with that theme. I'm interested in knowing if it's a light or heavy read and, as for the nostalgia? 

Marketing doesn't nail that. It's kind of a weird set of feelings. It could be some element of a book cover, a font, a description or it could be the first book we dig out of a church sale crate. I'm not looking for a shiny bestseller, but a secret treasure. Not new, but new to me. 

And here's the thing: the next Tolkien will always be a man. We're a long way from a world that stops passing a gendered torch. That's not to say it wouldn't be flattering to be called the next Ursula Le Guin or Anne McCaffrey but those aren't household names. J.K. Rowling? (Again, she's a question; sorry, Joanne.) Go into purist fantasy circles and while, she's a token name to say 'see, a woman's successful in fantasy', she's also more deeply excluded on a list of 'serious' fantasy contenders. 

So I'm not going to navigate any genre by its bestsellers. While Netflix and Hulu are making bolder, sexier, more diverse choices (not always successfully, but gotta love them for going for it), there are many creatives struggling for a fair chance. While I'm not a fan of identity politics putting the squeeze on entertainment, it's just as true that perspectives of all kinds (and not at the expense of the white male) need to be observed.

However, some attempts are laughable. The insurgence of corny 80s style family comedies featuring people of color are terrible. They weren't good when it was white people and it's not less disturbing that these are all-black, all-Asian or all-Latin casts. It's too on-the-nose segregated in a way that backpedals on being 'woke' (and fuck that stupid term). There was a show on Hulu, I think it was called Here and Now, with a hippie white couple that adopted kids from all races and despite my initial wariness that it was going to be another on-the-nose heavy-handed toddler-lecturing hot mess, I was surprised to find a lot of cultural honesty, human fallibility and even a suspenseful fantasy element. Look it up and watch it. I'm disappointed it didn't get at least one more season.

Not every trip into diversity will be amazing. It's going to have a lot of clumsiness to start. It's not proof it's all terrible. However, diversity for the sake of diversity shouldn't be the rule either. Not all same race or same gender casts will be glaringly awkward. Some do work without a forced element of biased education or flatness. I don't care for Lena Dunham but I did enjoy what I've seen of Girls. It's not even a requirement to like the actors or anything else they've done. When I'm looking to bond with an idea, I'm not the sort to let hangups lead me. Perhaps this is why marketing is so lost on me. Not only does it not influence me, I can't commit to anything that assumes other people are that easy.

I just want people to know I'm an option. You may or may not like my work. It may remind you of something you've read. Whatever the case is, it will be new to you and original in its own way.

Bonus points if it resonates with you.