Cliché away

If I were a lusty artist (I suppose am) reading Susan, I'd wonder, 'why is she dwelling on the uniqueness thing? We all know cliché is the death of art.' Do we? I'm now 189 pages into Hakuri Murakami’s Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, relishing every syllable. I am intrigued by the mind/gut capable of this writing. One Susan enters the wonderland, a different Susan shall exit at the end.

I want a listener to exit my performance a changed beast, her inner world rewired. I doubt this happens often with mass entertainment, even the live version. You would think, with all the high technology applied to arena spectacles, a ticket holder might expect some inner rewiring in exchange for her investment. Does she get it? Rarely, I think. The arena's mega light-sound extravaganza ricochets off the balustrades like a fistful of change in a tin bucket. Stimulation can be bought; the leisure class has cash to spare. Imagination -- you spend a lifetime cultivating this.

Here's hope for original music: digital distribution side steps the profit interests that hawk cliché to the masses. Artists, who measure satisfaction in persons touched, and seekers, who risk their comfortable assumptions, have a better chance of finding each other when the profiteers move aside. Record companies are nervous. Their industry thrives on a culture of bland thrills. Our industry, yours and mine perhaps, rescues 'livelihood' from cliché's drowsy empire.