[Nettime-bold] Re: now I understand the museum thing

[baseekins@netscape.net]

> I was just thinking about what I said, that it is worth to pour our genius
> into our daily lives and daily jobs
> and realised after I sent the message that there is a problem there
> They do not let the genius flow into daily lives and daily jobs, cause they
> force individuals
> to be be sterlile or conformists to participate in society. That's a
> problem. Because they segregate the
> genius onto limelit stages where people can perform their acts and be
> applauded - if society has decided that
> they are to gain consensus and worked that approval into their system - but
> if a genius wants to perform
> their act as part of their daily lives then they are derided, bufoons like.
> Yes, major distortion there.

This is well stated. I thought of the same thing while I was watching VH1's 100 greatest superstars in the history of the United States Empire (or something like that). They got to Eric Clapton, right up near the top. I've always hated Eric Clapton, except when I was about 13, when I liked him because the cool older kids I washed dishes with liked him, and I wanted them to think I was cool, too, so they would give me drugs and alcohol. But watching him on VH1, I realized, I don't exactly hate Eric Clapton himself, and the fact is, he can play the guitar really well, much better than I'll ever learn to play it. What I hate is the way VH1, fm radio, and all the associated media people all talk about him as if he is the greatest guitar player ever. I would be willing to bet that between 1919 and 1970, there were probably five thousand Blues guitar players in Mississippi alone who were at least as good as Eric Clapton, and most of them probably had to fit playing the guitar into t!
!
welve hour long days working as share croppers. But in order for Capitalism to keep chugging along, selling a lot of useless crap that nobody wants and needs, there have to be channels like Vh1, and in order for there to be channels like VH1, there has to be a hierarchy of "musical genius," in which Eric Clapton, because he is tall and moody looking, and he fucked George Harrison's wife, etcetera needs to be elevated to Godlike status, while the also really good guitar player I saw the other night in a bar, who was kind of chubby and balding and probably a nerd has to play open-mic, and everybody sort of snickers at him, precisely because he is not Clapton. Even that guy himself probably feels secretly ashamed that he isn't Clapton.  
 
> 
> Sure, but its not just museums. I saw this posting going around saying
> bohicott museums and it did not
> make much sense as such. 

No, of course it's not just museums, although I think museums are at the vanguard of helping corrupt corporate elites launder their consciousnesses.


> Brian is that you? 

Nope, my name is Briggs Seekins, poet, critic, sometime academic and constant social gadfly. 
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