Music and rebuilding after COVID: Some reconsideration of Song For A New Day, by Sarah Pinsker

 The CDC's new guidelines on masks and restrictions bring to mind one of the pressing issues of COVID-- artistic life.  Yes, I regularly argue that we should think in terms of numbers of lives and prioritize our moral concerns based on Vulcan logic, but if that is all we are doing, then as I think Mr. Spock would say, who the fuck cares?  One of my concerns throughout the pandemic has been what it is doing to music.  Without performance, without performance venues, music suffers.  In particular, the less-than-famous but more-than-brilliant musicians about whom I care cannot ply their trade, they cannot hone their craft, and not only is the world denied the fruits of their labors, but many are forced out of music entirely.  Badness.  Yeah, it has been kind of fun being able to relive Couch By Couchwest as musicians turn on their cameras and livestream, but music cannot continue this way.  I have written about it a few times before, but music needs a reopening.

And this has me thinking back to Sarah Pinsker's A Song For A New Day.  Some thoughts.

First, here's the basic premise.  A combination of random terrorist attacks and a disease puts everybody into their homes, in hiding.  The world goes into lockdown, and people interact only over their computers, and it goes on so long that technology develops giving us something like that VR that we keep being promised by every fucking science fiction writer since at least William Gibson.

More consequentially, gatherings of any significant number are prohibited by law.  Congregation laws.  It's actually illegal to have a concert, or any other form of real gathering.

The book follows a musician-- Luce-- in the before-times as everything gets shut down and everyone freaks the fuck out, and flashes forward, where she sets up an underground performance venue, where she comes into contact with Rosemary, who winds up working as an A&R scout for a megacorp that puts out online concerts, which is the way music gets distributed.  Everything turns into a mess, because everyone is an idiot, which is actually a nice twist.  I enjoy books in which characters are competent, but if we're honest, most people fuck things up on a regular basis, so there is something refreshing about reading a book in which realistically messed up people realistically make a mess of their lives and the lives of those around them because they don't have a clue what they are doing, but for the most part, it boils down to...

A standard array of lefty themes, and far-lefty themes, from social justice to anti-corporate,* along with some very well-written passages about music, and the experience of music.  The experience of concerts.  As Luce is described, I don't think I'd like her music.  She goes from pop-folkie one hit wonder to someone described in more punk terms, and I don't really get either the pop-folk thing or punk, but there's a scene in a barn with a concert setup where everyone applauds politely for Luce, and then pulls out their own instruments and plays a bluegrass hoedown, and I love bluegrass.  Regardless, even if punk just ain't my thing, the descriptions are well done.

There's a lot of bullshit.  Here's the most important example.  In the novel, you have a pandemic, and then once the pandemic ends, people stay in lockdown, and there's basically no political movement to end the "congregation laws."  Why not?  'Cuz, like, the corporations want it that way, and they're like, feeding you this corporate media propaganda, and wake up, sheeple!

I... wish I were exaggerating, but that's basically the premise of the book.  Businesses-- or rather, the corporate monopoly/oligopoly setup has found a way to make money in lockdown, so by feeding everyone bread-and-circuses through electronic media, everyone stays pacified, and everyone just accepts the lockdown, and there are no real political challenges, with just a few, odd, underground concerts that get shut down hard by the cops.  And the big, dramatic moment is a "wake up, sheeple" speech that Luce gives, which goes viral online.  How very childishly punk.

In pseudo-scholarly terms, this is kind of a test of "critical theory," though, right?  Not the "race" version, but the original responses to Marx.  Can this thing called "culture" be created by the powers-that-be to prevent the masses from realizing how exploited they are, and hence from rising up?  In A Song For A New Day, that's exactly what happens.

And then we have this little thing called, "reality."  And instead, long before the pandemic ends, an entire side of the political system decides they won't accept lockdown, nor even fucking masks.  But really, we're supposed to believe that our corporate overlords can suppress all conflict, and keep everyone happy in lockdown, in which they have found a way to make money?

You've noticed that the stock market has been kicking ass, right?  So, they have found a way to make money.  Earnings have been doin' fine.  Yeah, share prices have gotten ahead of earnings, in my opinion, but the idea of people accepting lockdown, after the pandemic ends?  They wouldn't even accept masks while it was/is still fucking happening.  No, Sarah.  Take your critical theory bullshit, and subject it to the harsh light of reality.

OK.  Sorry.  Had to do that.  I'm a political scientist.  Also, a pedantic jerk, but a political scientist nonetheless.

But there's stuff she got right.  She wrote very effectively about music, and musical culture.  In particular, the concept of "a scene."  When Luce is running her underground club, she is interested in trying to cultivate a scene, which is a thing.  It has to do with the specific interaction between the artists in the area and the fans, and historically, we have observed what comes when lightning strikes.

New York, in the 1940s.  Bebop.  Put Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and a few other people together...  They were bored playing big band music.  They needed to stretch.  The were getting together at places like Minton's to jam.  Audiences showed up, willing to listen to something other than what the swing bandleaders were playing.  The result of that stew was bebop.  The right artists, an audience to listen, a place to play... That story has been replicated across genres, from location to location over time so many ways that listing its iterations wouldn't make sense.  As a Gen-Xer, I may as well mention Seattle and grunge, and yeah, some of it holds up.  They all played together.

But what happens when all the clubs are shut down?  And the bands can't perform?  And the audiences have gone home?

The process of re-forming... reformation is going to be hard.

Music, of a sort, has continued during COVID.  Since autotune and the other software programs that production labels use to fabricate music are unaffected by masking and social distancing requirements, they have continued to function as though nothing has changed, cranking out variations on a theme at the rate predetermined by Moore's law.

So popular music has been unaffected by COVID, untouched by actual artists, as it is.

And, existing bands of the sort that I follow have put themselves into a holding pattern, waiting for the opportunity to tour again.

Yet what of the nascent bands?  The groups that form and re-form, and shuffle in scenes that produce new ideas?  That's how bebop came about.  Likewise, grunge, and plenty of other artistic movements.  Without the performance, and without the audience, I don't know.

Behold, the reshuffling of the decks.  I don't know what comes of this.  Sometimes a reshuffling can be energizing.  Yet it requires the audiences to come looking, and stumble upon something like organization in the chaotic fashion of drunken bar-hoppers looking for the right tavern, and I don't know how long that takes.  And there's the loss.  The loss of the artists who needed to move on, and won't come back.

After a year plus, is that too long?  Is it short enough that people find the same places?  Yet if the musicians are different, do the places hold the same character?

I don't know.  I'm throwing out questions with no way to answer except to observe.

And music.  OK, look.  There's this absolutely perfect Drive-By Truckers song, but I just posted a Drive-By Truckers song.  Anyway... "When The Scene Dies Down."  I do not claim a favorite band, even though one might assume they're my favorite based on the frequency with which I post and reference them, and sure, fine, but given their topicality, and... "When The Scene Dies Down."

But I just posted the Truckers.

So instead, here's Mike Auldridge.  "Swing Scene," from Eight String Swing.

*Recall that nearly all of science fiction, and most of literature in general, leans far left.  I'd read more for balance if I could, but there just ain't much there.