There’s the progress
We have found a way to talk around the problem
Building towers
Foresight isn’t anything at all
REM – Fall On Me
We’re living in a moment when really, whatever concerns our future seems really written in the sky.
I don’t know a jack shit. I have no idea of what and how and why plunged us in this so-called pandemic situation.
I’m not here to discuss medicine.
I’m not a negationist.
I’m here to notice how much all of us, the ones who work in arts, music, movies, literature, are the ones who are experiencing the greatest disruption in our lives.
It’s not just a matter of economics, even if I’m tired of seeing pop up ads for shitty online call center or copywriting jobs for casino sites, as it’s our only escape to final misery.
We’ve been lucky enough, or hard enough, to pursue and obtain what many people stop dreaming about at the end of teenager years.
We escaped routine. The 9 to 5 job, the pub, the TV.
Paying for it, for sure, with no solid finances, no solid families in many cases.
But we had joy. Strong memories. Our family is friends with a common vision in every corner of the world. Corners that we probably touched, after 800km in a van, landing with a plane, carrying guitar cases and cymbals.
We are used to travel, to spend night after night in different cities.
We end nights sharing glasses and fags with almost strangers.
And hugs too, laughs and sometimes tears.
Weird as it is, it’s what made (makes) our lives special.
What we’re missing.
What I think makes other envious, and judgemental.
Try to make ends meet, you’re a slave to money then you die.
The Verve, Bittersweet Symphony
Somewhat, we escaped our society, creating our own world. Our bubble.
Peter Pan. That’s fine. Life is not sacrifice, jobs shouldn’t be a pain you suffer until it’s weekend, and time to spend your money at the Mall.
Or online. This is what we seem supposed to do now.
Pay for surrogates of experiences online. Courses, food delivery, movies that we’ll never see, music we’ll never listen properly to.
Ok. I’m here to tell you. To gather consciousness.
We’re the right ones.
We don’t have to pay our happy years of happy work and travels and you know what, as we had enough from life and now it’s fair we pay more than the 9 to 5 receptionist.
He doesn’t have to pay too.
The boy at the call center, he doesn’t have to pay. The waitress paid on black books, she doesn’t have to pay.
We are the right ones.
Their life is senseless, and unfair.
They deserve better too.
It’s time to speak loud our identity.
We’re not pariahs, we’re an example, a model, we’re prophets.
It’s time to use music, arts, words, anything creative humans can produce, to reach people, and make them understand that they have same right too.
To travel, to experience, to get knowledge, to connect.
In the future. The future we must create.
A future where a virus don’t put at risk production, so economy, so more lives.
I don’t want to grow old looking as a crazy lady, telling tales to kids about when it was safe to explore cities at night, to hold strangers, and get lost in the moshpit at a big music festival.
Like that guy in the Brave New World.
So no, I’m not a negationist.
But I see the cultural challange here.
The prejudices. The envy.
This is what we must change.
I’ll write about and post music too, of course.
It’s better than one thousand words, quite often.
Stay safe and take care.
Monique M.
Ask The Sky 