Surviving in a World Without Time
Or a counterculture (Two newsletters that inspired me last week)
The revolution will be… sent to your inbox?
Although we are likely experiencing an apocalypse of sorts, we’re also living in a golden age of content.
Not quite the best trade-off, but, hey, I guess we’ll take what we can get
I guess I’d also add “newsletters” that tweet.
The pillaging of creative and content-based industries has begotten us a Golden Age of Newsletters.
There are so many well-written and interesting newsletters being published every week that I get “newsletter FOMO” (it’s slight but it’s there).
Newsletters have been having a moment for almost a decade now.
Nowadays, everybody has a Substack (send me yours/drop it in the comments).
The Guardian published this piece in August about the trend of well-known musicians launching newsletters with paid subscriptions.
Jeff Tweedy, Kevin Morby, Tegan and Sara, Perfume Genius, Patti Smith, the list goes on and on.
For ex-newspaper journalists and famous musicians alike the story is the same: “the old way doesn’t pay anymore”.
Journalists found it more lucrative, stable, and meaningful to take their audience with them after newspapers have been imploding for the last two decades. Here’s a recent piece by Matt Stoller, about how Google is still eating the news industry, and is creating a monopoly on journalism in the U.S.
Australia recently enacted legislation to save its newspapers from Google and Facebook, which benefitted big newspapers and journalists to the tune of $140 million.
Now if only the U.S. could:
Do the same here.
Do something to give back earning power to other creators and artists.
Exhibit B: musicians.
Similar to journalists and newspapers, musicians have also been robbed by the two-headed hydra of private equity and tech, with the absolute dominance of streaming.
Here’s a recent post by @laMemeYoung, aka Max Alper, an independent music educator and musician.
Before Spotify, musicians could at least generate income by receiving 30-cents on the dollar from iTunes.
Since Spotify? Bubkus.
The average stream generates $0.006 to as little as $0.00318 per stream. You’d need millions of streams per month to generate an income. Only the biggest stars make any money from streaming on Spotify.
Two Things We Lack
I’m certainly not the first person to talk about the ravaging of creative and “content-based” industries by big tech and private equity.
And anyways, that’s not even the topic of this newsletter.
The topic of this newsletter is related to the “desertification of culture and progressive thought in the United States”(my term), but that topic will take tens or maybe hundreds of posts to adequately examine.
Inshallah.
No, what I want to talk about in this post are two ideas that are a result of this aforementioned cultural desertification.
These two ideas come from two Substack posts that I read recently:
“14 Signs That You Are Living in a Society Without a Counterculture”, by Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker (free to read)
“We’re All in a Time Famine”, by Jesse Meadows, at Sluggish (paid, but first part is free)
It’s weird-I’d actually written a note to myself earlier this week about “the death of subculture”, but I like Gioia’s phrasing better.
He posits that we’re living in a time where America lacks a counterculture. This feels true to me.
Here’s the first three bullet points defining a society that lacks a counterculture. I encourage you to read his post for the rest:
A sense of sameness pervades the creative world
The dominant themes feel static and repetitive, not dynamic and impactful
Imitation of the conventional is rewarded
It even feels this way in New York City. Everywhere I go-a local open mic, Washington Square Park, local bars-there’s an air of defeat. It feels like we’re not under occupation yet, (but it’s coming).
Gioia is a music writer. He elevates the term “music appreciation” to that of a lifelong pursuit. I found his writing last month but apparently he’s published 11 books on the subjects of music and culture.
He’s apparently been writing about music for most of his adult life. He’s 64.
I feel a great loss with how I’ve seen things change as a 36 year-old, with the Brooklyn-zation and same-ification of cities and public space. I think it might hurt even more to be someone like Gioia, who lived through the 60’s and beyond, and has witnessed even more change.
Recently, he wrote about this piece, “How Short Will Songs Get?”.
Reminds me of the Minutemen. Specifically, their six-minute Paranoid Time EP.
It is worth wondering about, though.
The length of the modern pop song is also a good metaphor for this neoliberal hell we’re living in.
How much higher can the rent go?
How many more Civil Rights can our government take away?
How many more jobs am I going to have to work to afford my basic survival needs?
Enter “Time Blindness”
Unless you’re a boomer, a software engineer, or a product manager making big tech dollars, you probably have to work a lot.
You might even have multiple jobs.
Working a lot leaves less time for other things. Namely, the enjoyment of life.
That’s essentially what Time Blindness is about.
Time Blindness is “the inability to gauge the passing of time so it’s hard to actively manage it”.
Reminds me of this song(they wrote this in 2012! Just listen).
If you have ADHD, you may experience a greater degree of Time Blindness, as Meadows’ podcast explains.
In another article, Meadows explores the topic that the ADHD diagnosis might cease to exist if we weren’t coerced into spending most of our waking hours at work.
It seems that the faster time moves, the harder it is to gauge it.
Through a combination of “never-logged-off” connectedness, and more hours spent working than ever, time blindness is at an all-time high.
We’re living in a Time Famine.
Do I sound bitter?
Yeah, I am, a little bit yeah.
New York has always been kinda breakneck, but I suspect it feels like this in a lot of places: that there simply isn’t enough time.
So what do we do?
This newsletter’s stated goal is to be about “surviving capitalism”. However, I can really only say what my hopes and dreams are, at the moment.
I have a strong desire to leave New York(winter is coming)
I have a dream to buy some land and live on it with friends
It may take some time to buy some rural land, so in the meantime I may look for “co-living” opportunities like this one offered by CabinDAO.
I enjoyed living at The Abode of the Message, a Sufi retreat center in Upstate NY. I loved cooking with the other residents, meeting guests that were staying there for some spiritual retreat, swimming in the pond, sauna nights.
Here’s a taste of what it was like:
I’d probably still live there if the administration at the time did not choose to evict all 25ish residents.
Looking back it was definitely one of the great karasses of my life, so far.
I heard the place recently got sold.
I actually wrote a lil song about it recently.
Thanks for Reading
I think I might turn on the option to buy a subscription in the next newsletter or two.
For now, you can just leave me a music link in the comments if you want.
Tell me what you’re listening to!
-Alex