Guest post by Samuel Jones Lunsford, a musician, writer and creative force in Roanoke, Virginia's burgeoning artistic community.
Where once we shared ideas and used our individual talents co-operatively in an attempt to build an all-encompassing artistic shelter, we now fragment our complete musical selves into clique-ish segments and teams, as if in competition for untangible and invisible prizes of sporty ego.
Where once each individual held genuine interest in the creations and philosophies of all others within the collective, now the formerly united pack splinters into islands of desire, seperate towers that scramble to reach the highest point, fueled by their own jealous propulsions.
Where once the channels of unfiltered free expression and the deepest communications between each being flowed unstoppably, unhindered by the very concept of social power structures, we now transmit sporadic bursts of self-centered motions that fail to take any sort of upliftment into account beyond that of our own ego in all its distorted insecurity and paranoid aggression.
Where once we strove heroically to maximize our expressions and minimize our perceived differences of any kind, we now amplify our varying qualities and characteristics under the same judgemental microscopes with which we obsessively dissect our own selves, second-guessing each piece of our minds and bodies.
Where once we utilized our complete energies unjudgementally and a shared sense of optimism fueled an idealistic approach to life and music, we now infect each other and our selves with the very same hopeless cynicism and chronic doubt that drove us to seek sanctuary within oiur creativity in the first place.
Where once each other’s presence brought genuine ecstacy and unforced enthusiasm, now our presences clash fearfully if one is not adhering to the demands of the controller, whose unquenchable thirst for supreme power and domination poisons their well of compassion.
Where once we all worked diligently to bring ideas and support to the table, now we see how much we can take from the table until whomever put it there lashes out in anger. Then we condemn them for doing so, as if they are being unreasonable for feeling that way. It seems their ultimate happiness and true feelings are unimportant in comparison to our vicious quests for acceptance and a status we perceive as elevated – and we will take each other’s tools away, use them for our own pursuits, until they are broken and in states of disrepair, at which time we discard them, give them back to their owner for them to fix as we move on to the next person’s set of tools, never putting forth the effort to acquire our own equipment. We believe we don’t need it.
We are merely equipment to each other, parts to be taken and placed inside our own seperate machines – machines that desire, machines that won’t hesitate to destroy another’s property as they plow their own private land. We desire each other’s skills, longing selfishly to acquire the mechanical abilities of something we can’t even respect for what it is – a human being.
We abandon all mysticism, our tone of voice mutates, we consciously attempt to project images of whatever we respect – those foolish enough to respect anger and darkness will one day drown in their own. Their bodies twitch and tap endlessly, their faces contort in shock at their resolute powerlessness. Their hearts pound impatiently within a self-righteous state of toxicity. They accuse all other living beings of barging in on their own exclusive supremacy. They only see other people as potential takers and competition, for all they do is take from other people and compete with other people. They thrive on confrontation, they view themselves as the true and ultimate, they view contrasting opinions as argumentative. Their refusal to empathize, sympathize, or compromise drives them to an exiled state of aloneness where they can always be correct in all forms. They are secluded from all other living things, and it is here where the true battle rages internally, their own lack of fulfillment echoing constantly against the walls they built up around themselves.
Samuel Jones Lunsford has been a prolifically active musician and writer in Roanoke, Virginia since the early 2000's. Since 2005 he has been working with a tight-knit family of fellow musicians formerly known as The Magic Twig Community, self-producing and releasing numerous recordings created in The Mystic Fortress , their own recording studio. He currently has been uploading and sharing various music and writings he has done throughout the years on his blog. Here are a few of his most current musical projects:
