The Famous You
In mid-December Time Magazine declared "You" to be the "Person of the Year," and featured a mirror on the cover of the magazine. In the accompanying editorial, Lev Grossman described the issue as being "...the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes." In an earlier article on the cover of the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times for December 10, entitled "2006, Brought To You By You," Jon Pareles talks about how "All that free-flowing self-expression presents a grandly promising anarchy..." Both these publications are praising what is being called "Web 2.0." This doesn't refer to a new software release, but a whole new flowering of personally created art and its self-distribution via the internet.
I agree totally with Time and The Times, that an awe inspiring new age for the arts is being born which, as Abe uploaded in Gettysburg years ago, is definitely "...of the people, by the people, and for the people."
In the mid sixties I worked the late shift at a photofinishing outfit, and would spend my twilight break going through the towering stacks of snapshots tossed into the dumpster in back. I can still remember the smell of fading fixer as I pocketed populist photo gems, some of which I still have somewhere. Though I have been to my share of professional photography shows and have looked through the big books in the library, those hours spent pawing through the photo trash were golden. Back before that, in the late 50s, in Junior high school, as a hobby I collected hundreds of notes which had been passed between students. (One of my favorites was one kid penciling to another, complete with diagram, the meaning of the phrase "gag a maggot off a gut-wagon.") These notes have since been lost in the family attics, but I clearly remember the aura of magic currency they had, just like the photo jewels of my later summer job.
I'm sure the impulses that led to gathering these treasured piles also brought me so enthusiastically into the world of folk music. More and more I realize that I'm genuinely a folk art freak, so this new arts populism of the Internet is my cup of tea, and I marvel at the new technology now available to further it.
The ironies of such a new people's art movement blossoming in the midst of this corporate and retail monoculture are too obvious to miss. The big outfits are scrambling awkwardly to find ways to capitalize on it, resulting in such weirdness as $99 acoustic guitars being sold at Bed Bath & Beyond. In any given strip-mall landscape there are now more scrapbooking and craft supply stores than even toy stores. As is pointed out in the New York Times article, Google just paid 1.65 BILLION DOLLARS for what is sarcastically referred to as a "...flood of... snarkily edited film clips, homemade video diaries, amateur music videos and shots of people singing along with their stereos" which make up YouTube. It'll be fun to continue watching Big Box America co-opt and make a profit from this new movement. Already such financially successful but peculiar monstrosities as TV's American Idol have come along, making pseudo-amateurism trendy, weirdizing the down-home idea of a talent show by awarding the least amateurish amateur the biggest prize. Come to think of it, all talent shows are like this to an extent.
I believe that's one advantage the "open mic" concept of folk music has over standard talent shows: There's usually no Big Prize. And it's an advantage also enjoyed by the YouTubes of the web: they aren't competitions, really. Though, as is pointed out by The Times, since there are literally millions of submissions to the various music, video, photography, and written word sites, devices have evolved which in various ways do rate the submissions. On YouTube (and similar sites), this amounts to viewers being able to judge a selection. Selections then can be sorted by the viewer according to -- among other things -- viewer rating, times viewed, or most discussed (since comments are also welcome), as well as most recent. You can also flag a submission as being inappropriate, which attaches a warning and renders the selection available only to members.
One of my favorite Gyro Gearloose comic strips depicted Gyro the inventor trying to invent the perfect picnic. It went something like this: Let's go on a picnic! First problem, ants. Build a platform with skinny slippery legs so the ants can't climb it. Second problem, rain. Build a canopy over the platform. Third problem, flying bugs: put up screen walls. Fourth problem, wind. Put up solid walls. In the last frame, Gyro realizes he is now sitting sadly in a little house, no longer on a picnic.
So there's always the possibility that as time goes on, what with more devious schemes of sorting and censorship, corporate shenanigans from the top, popular machinations from the bottom, and legal pressures from all sides, this grand new aid to self-expression could lose some of its charm. There will be sneaky product placements, copyright infringements, scams, frauds, insidious political manipulations, and so forth. But for once in my normally glass-half-empty outlook, I'm really optimistic. This is a revolution; a peoples' art revolution! And, it is WORLDWIDE! Borderless.
It also reminds me of something I've talked about before. When you see other people being enthusiastic about self-expression, you begin to think of your own life as art-worthy, sort of like a personal movie featuring You. And this provides you with whole new perspectives, even before you've uploaded anything.
I know this Whither Zither wasn't all about folk music, but I think folk music enthusiasts should be proud that in many ways we are ahead of the curve here, as longtime promoters of the value of self-expression. And as you might imagine, folk music -- by any definition -- is well represented all over Web 2.0.
Ography:
New York Times, December 10, 2006
Time Magazine, December 25, 2006
Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
YouTube.com, Flickr.com, Google.com