Making the future, Dissent and Art.

When I play blues harmonica and sing songs in a blues idiom, traddie music people sometimes say "but you're a fiddle player".  I play traddie fiddle or melodeon and other people will say "but you're a Blues Harp player and singer".  As for my minimalist electronica persona "The Indigenous Brothers" nobody has ever heard of that.

I've stopped being surprised at the notion that you can only confine yourself to a particular field like music or even worse to a particular genre within the field.

Let's look at two of the most creative people I know; Sheila MacFarlane and Freddie Wilkinson.

Sheila is a visual artist who is well known for her print work but she also paints and sings.  Sheila turned me on to a lot of good traditional blues and traddie singers back in the day and also opened my eyes to a lot of visual stuff that would otherwise have passed me by.

Freddie Wilkinson's musical interests are many and varied.  I have played with him in a number of settings from straight-ahead ceilidh band Iron Broo to the free improvisation duo Skirlin Burster as well as ethno-techno cult band PottedHeid.  In addition to his musical outputs Fred also is an active citizen journalist.  As well as performing he makes innovative instruments.

These two friends of mine might not be known to you.  That is your loss.  They might not be the most recognisable names in their chosen multiple fields.  I'm sure they couldn't care less.

Engaging in creative activity is not a pursuit likely to bring recognition or wealth.  I await a TV show called "Scotland's Got Art" with no great optimism.  Even if there was one, it would surely just reinforce the categorisation which is unkind to people with wide interests and tastes.

All around us people are creating great work and rubbish work and mediocre work.  They are creating this in their bedrooms and studios and pubs and clubs and in spaces that no-one has ever thought about as cultural space before.  They are doing this from the greatest imperative of all, because they need to.

These are exciting times (to invoke the old Chinese curse).  We are looking at a great cultural shift. Strangely enough in the last recession during the Thatcher time, with mass unemployment community arts flourished.

Musicians and artists and actors honed their skills during the enforced idleness that came from unemployment.  I know I did.   If it hadn't been for the Thatcher time I would never have persevered with music I am sure.

These are different times. Being unemployed these days is a full time job in itself. In order to avoid being sanctioned, claimants are faced with hours of applications for non-existent jobs.  It's a cruel process to subject people to.  Cruel and pointless.

The regime deprives people of the opportunity to create and imagine, simply by denying them the time and the means. That is probably the greatest indictment of present times one can think of.

The converse is that creating works of art is an act of resistance. That also holds true.  Not just the art of resistance in the simplistic "agit-prop" style but fundamentally dissident.

Creating always posits the act of resistance by defying the drive to simply consume in favour of making and remaking the new.  The process of creating, be it good bad or indifferent defies our fate and makes the future instead of predicting it.

Creating a new country is a possibility in the near future, let's make it good art.