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vostoklakeI have recently come to the conclusion that I will never have success and recognition in two of the three major areas where I work - pop music and academia - because I am simply not marketable. What I do in both those fields is so totally unfashionable that no institution will ever be able to make a profit, or gain street cred, by promoting my work. So it just ain't going to happen.
There are two areas where a synth player can work in popular music - rock keyboards (as descended from the piano and organ lines of classic 60's/70's rock) and bleepy synth-pop. My problem is that I'm playing in a rock-keyboards style while performing in a bleepy synth-pop manner. I fall between two stools - part of neither tradition. The most common comment I receive on my music is that it doesn't "sound lie" anything. I ain't neo-prog, I ain't goth/industrial, and I don't sound very much like Tori Amos. So there's no way to market me. As I mentioned to Ivy a while back, too, the world of academic composition is too full of wankers to have any appeal to me.
As for my lit-crit, I've chosen to work in the classical Marxist tradition, with particular interest in women's and queer liberation. This means I manage to piss off the fashionable post-modernist establishment and their academic "Marxist" drinking buddies at the same time, which I suppose is no mean feat. But once again, I'm not in a tradition which has any political or instititutional "clout" at this point in history.
I'll never join the lionised circles of the cultural elite. I'll never get on the pop-music video channels, nor get hip nerds with lots of incfluence to write gushing articles about my "challenging" work for expensive magazines or obscure websites. I'll also never be invited to the parties where the lit-crit elite carve up the good jobs among themselves.
One could argue about whether all this means that I'm "ahead of my time", or an acquired taste that's worth the effort, or whether, on the contrary, I'm just not very good. Perhaps the mere fact that I try to work in both fields at once means I'll never be successfu in either.
It might just be that I don't 'play the game' of schmoozing and otherwise marketing myself. I've had a naive belief hat my work would speak for itself - and it also didn't help that, until the age of 25, I was so socially retarded that I couldn't have schmoozed effectively if I tried.
Perhaps it's only in the third field where I work - political activism - that I have any chance at all of really leaving my mark. Perhaps the only way I'll ever be recognized by the cultural elite is by overthrowing them.
There are two areas where a synth player can work in popular music - rock keyboards (as descended from the piano and organ lines of classic 60's/70's rock) and bleepy synth-pop. My problem is that I'm playing in a rock-keyboards style while performing in a bleepy synth-pop manner. I fall between two stools - part of neither tradition. The most common comment I receive on my music is that it doesn't "sound lie" anything. I ain't neo-prog, I ain't goth/industrial, and I don't sound very much like Tori Amos. So there's no way to market me. As I mentioned to Ivy a while back, too, the world of academic composition is too full of wankers to have any appeal to me.
As for my lit-crit, I've chosen to work in the classical Marxist tradition, with particular interest in women's and queer liberation. This means I manage to piss off the fashionable post-modernist establishment and their academic "Marxist" drinking buddies at the same time, which I suppose is no mean feat. But once again, I'm not in a tradition which has any political or instititutional "clout" at this point in history.
I'll never join the lionised circles of the cultural elite. I'll never get on the pop-music video channels, nor get hip nerds with lots of incfluence to write gushing articles about my "challenging" work for expensive magazines or obscure websites. I'll also never be invited to the parties where the lit-crit elite carve up the good jobs among themselves.
One could argue about whether all this means that I'm "ahead of my time", or an acquired taste that's worth the effort, or whether, on the contrary, I'm just not very good. Perhaps the mere fact that I try to work in both fields at once means I'll never be successfu in either.
It might just be that I don't 'play the game' of schmoozing and otherwise marketing myself. I've had a naive belief hat my work would speak for itself - and it also didn't help that, until the age of 25, I was so socially retarded that I couldn't have schmoozed effectively if I tried.
Perhaps it's only in the third field where I work - political activism - that I have any chance at all of really leaving my mark. Perhaps the only way I'll ever be recognized by the cultural elite is by overthrowing them.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-24 02:06 pm (UTC)mmm, pointy gold ziggurat...
Date: 2004-04-25 11:01 pm (UTC)Seems to me there are a heck of a lot of ponds, and little chance of getting to the ocean from them... Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of a meritocracy and that it stands for anything worthwhile is strictly for the prep schools, but if you're going to do one better than that, you have to ignore these sorts of judgements. Whose ruler are you measuring yourself up against? (excuse me if you're not a guy, I just made the old sexist assumption that polar bears are boys)
Just live up to your own standards. New Zealand is the land of poppy-choppers and loads of unconventional New Zealanders know it... but who really cares about that? My solution for you is; make a subculture. It can be a subculture of one, if you're really that unique. Before you change the world, change your world.
Okay, no more fundie talk. Forgive me, laputain. You can smack me with GF's permission for being grumpy to your friend.
Vorteil + Urteil = Vorurteil. nicht wahr?
Re: mmm, pointy gold ziggurat...
Date: 2004-04-26 01:08 am (UTC)But anyway, I'd really have to disagree with you on the "build your own subculture" thing. That's a recipe for elitism and intellectual inbreeding. Believe me, I know - I've been in more subcultures than you've had hot dinners. Mainfisch and I used to belong to one called Penguinea, which... well, it didn't end well.
No matter what your good buddy Baudrillard might say, the only ethical choice for an "intellectual" in these decadent times, IMHO, is to make a serious commitment to changing the system for everyone.