algorithmic challenges and the slow creeps of our time
the past month i’ve been all consumed by moving. literally moving: finding a new place to live, packing, and moving - because of my obsessive and compulsive personality this is all consuming. once i finished the faulkner i was reading i didn’t pick up a new book. i kept leaving my notebook at home. i kept forgetting my band duties: booking (summer shows are now booked in new jersey, burlington vt, as is EP II release show on 9/27 save the date), posting (which i already hate), promoting (playing TV eye in one week!), uploading (pre-save our next single here), directing/leading (vinyl printing, music video production, etc), emailing (apologies) etc. once i awoke from the slumber (once we signed a lease) i began again, slowly. until the compulsive and obsessive need to pack began. and then the logistics. and now i have 48 hours until that’s over. until i have to unpack and set up (which i’m sure what will follow is another compulsive need). and i really should find a way to compartmentalize so things can continue to get done. so i can continue to think and breathe outside of immediate contingencies. and so here i am: trying to be a Person again, fighting the rot, remembering how to read, think, create, and be.
i picked up the alexandra kleeman collection of short stories in order to ease my way into the return of the novel. i began listening to records in full: i extended my commute to complete listening billy woods’s new record, i returned to the absolutely perfect and timeless mitski’s puberty 2, i went on a walk to the new model/actriz.
in the midst of that i began spiraling about the release of the next single - fan favorite, and i think our best song on I’m so charming, Tony Soprano. when you release music and you’re as anal as partygirl you do things like upload, and pitch to playlists and press in a highly systematic way to actually try and make a dent in this tired, dead, industry that we call music. i looked at our profile and although we’ve somehow reached nearly 7,000 monthly listeners (WTF?) our algorithm is cooked.
spotify is not recognizing who we are and where we belong. our “similar to” artists sound simply nothing like us. we’re unintelligible to the algorithm - not that i want to be - but it scared me to put out more - vulnerable and intentional - music into a the void of dense, thick, evil system. the insult of being misunderstood is simply all consuming as a musician - which is to be a performer, a communicator, although obviously the system has been revolutionized for that to be less and less.
all that to say i came across a brilliant article by sam jennings that discussed this - the death of music. sure it’s heady and pretentious but it’s true and of course we too are found wanting (a small rock band making popular music, we too produce “The recording [as] now a means to an experience, or a self-promotional end — the audience doesn’t pay the artist, but instead pays the listener”). but the great question jennings poses remains the one i was pondering when struggling considering the algorithm:
“But the greater crisis looms: what to do when the substance of music seems to exist mostly in its disembodied use for consumers to inculcate a particular mood, or some vicarious pleasure?” AKA the abundance of recordings executed by by ‘authentic’ personalities and curated towards mood AS opposed to music as the actual performance by ‘great artists’ of sound meant to build community and culture. i think at least, that is the question.
i’ve written before about the loneliness underpinning our culture and how this boredom and internet addiction is eating away at culture and politics. this article is yet another angle. me worrying about our algorithm of course is me succumbing to these very issues. and i’m trying increasingly for us and me personally to be free, free from these demands that simultaneously suffocate and crush. the path forward is to carve through the slop straight to our community and to be present sure and sure - a complete realigning of our brains which have been hypnotized by these conditions. i guess all we can do is try.