Chris, Mick and the Fine Art of Artifice

 

artifice - noun - clever devices used to trick or deceive (Google).

Let's face the music and accept that for whatever reason(s), human beings embrace the concept of deception. And now that the Internet (via social media) has opened the backstage door for endless opportunities for a little or a lot of artifice, no one is safe from scammers, or in my case, ordinary people pretending to be rock stars. 

Because I am in the music business along with just about everyone else, I have to spend time on social media just advertise my original songs and get them circulating among listeners throughout the globe. Although I am a minuscule presence on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook, I try to post at least three times a week to generate a following, which isn't easy as there are 100,000 songs released on the music streaming channels daily and 100,000 artists promoting them. Apparently as FB is the medium of choice for celebrities, more grifters use it to impersonate them than any other platform. I am lucky because the con artists who hit on me generally do not want money; they just want to take me to bed. Case in point, one man, who just happens to have the name Christopher Cross like the musician (who is actually the real imposter since his surname isn't actually Cross) tried to impersonate him in order to trick me into meeting him. Fortunately, I was onto him right from the start. Just in case this should ever happen to you (maybe on YouTube in the comments section), an authentic celebrity would never ask you when you became his or her fan. And most likely as an icebreaker, he or she would never thank you for being his or her fan. I know from experience that unless they are extreme narcissists, celebrated people tend to want to step away from themselves for a few and come across as being average. So it was clear that Chris wasn't the celebrated Chris since he made the mistake of doing what all trolls do initially: he asked, "How long have you been my fan?" (I replied, "I've never been your fan." Oh, well. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.)

Of course, it is true that there are famous types out there who do interface with fans and do use artifice (such as different names) so that they don't attract attention. I am contending with someone right now who claims to be Micheal Philip Jagger, which is Mick Jagger's full name. Even though he has the blue checkmark verifying his identity, my daughter claims that he is in no way real, mainly because eighty-year-old men don't know how to navigate FB. Sensible, smart she contends that Mick no doubt has troops of well-paid assistants assigned to connect with the public on social media. The real Mick, romantically linked to a thirty-six-year-old dancer, would not have a second to reach out to me. Which all makes sense, yet this inchoate swindler is atypical so far. Like Macbeth and most politicians after him, Micheal could just be quite good at duplicity until some day, his artifice is exposed as such, and he is uncovered and cancelled (the beauty of social media). 

On the other hand, I did read an article on the web stating that you can never truly be sure whether or not you are being hoodwinked. It is possible that the person is indeed the person he or she says he or she is. Just make sure you don't wire any money to him or her and you don't friend him or her. As far as my Micheal, I am playing his game, pretending I don't realize that he is attempting to be Mick. And I am acting as though I am the bigger celeb whose privacy is kept private. In the end, the greater pretender will win, I suppose, if there can be a winner at shenanigans. Let's put it this way, if the actual Mick should die, and Micheal keeps liking my posts, I'll have my answer. (I hope it doesn't come down to that, though, because I am Mick's fan.)

The obvious paradoxical takeaway here is that sometimes you have to be deceptive in order to expose deception. Truth doesn't come easily. 

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The Age of Atavism

 

atavism - noun - recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, approach, or activity (Google)

Author William Faulkner in Requiem for a Nun wrote "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Which is something that certainly holds true today. It seems atavism is a daily occurrence as humans tend to enjoy nostalgia, visiting and revisiting the past. 

Take for example the recent coronation of King Charles, III. According to Time, the British people gave up approximately $125 million of their tax dollars to shift their Aston Martins, Jaguars, Land Rovers, etc. into reverse so that they could experience a bit of what their proletariat predecessors had witnessed for hundreds of years. Apparently, the UK is the last country to induct their monarchs so lavishly. And with 58% of the population unwilling to take a leap of faith and shift into drive toward an authentic democracy (albeit on the lefthand side of the road), it seems that atavism is the transmission of choice. I did manage to drive a car in reverse down a thousand-foot, serpentine driveway once. It was uncomfortable, but I did get to the end of it safely :). 

Yet another example of the past in the present would be the current trend backwards in recent fiction. I am just about finished reading Bangles' Susanna Hoffs's realistic novel This Bird Has Flown, just published recently. The first-person narrator,  Jane Start, who is 33 and a jaded rock star take-off of Jane Eyre, behaves like she is 23 and thinks like she is 64 (the author's age). She has an annoying case of nostalgic Tourette's Syndrome in that she is addicted to spurting out allusions to the 1950s/1960s, something no thirty-three-year-old woman I have ever met, shy of my daughter, is capable of doing. Nor would anyone that age regardless of what kind of parents she had care to do so. (Right, Millennial ladies?) Why Hoffs would want to reference Don Ho and "Tiny Bubbles" for any reason is beyond me. Comic relief? Why didn't I laugh? Naturally, the New York Times gave Hoffs, most likely sans any undergraduate writing classes, a glowing review, which makes me think that each manuscript the major publishers send to the newspaper is accompanied by cash, something similar to payola, maybe? Payola? Oh, no! I suppose I am guilty of a trip down Memory Lane myself. Oh, the irony of it! 

Hypothetically, if William Faulkner, who wasn't a Buddhist as far as I know, were alive today, I'm sure he wouldn't have a problem with the current wave of atavism. In fact, he would probably use it to bolster the authenticity of his words. As much as we try to think we are living in the now, creating and perpetuating uniqueness, all we are doing is reinventing the past, adding our own twist to what once was. Author Christopher Booker claims that there are only seven original plot lines. If that is true, we may be in repeat mode indefinitely. Even with advanced technology (just say no to A.I.), perhaps the Age of Atavism will be sticking around for a long time to come. 

#word-to-words, #slice-of-life,  #blog, #blogging, #editorial, #reading, #vocabulary, #ReadersMagnet, #spilled thoughts, #good advice, #personal-essay, #writing community, #writing, #philosophy, #truth, #critique, #literary criticism 

Working for "Soul Cash"

 

"soul cash" - the gratification or "income" received when something is done voluntarily out of the goodness of the heart (Source: Jay, the electrician)

When it comes to everyday living, I have come to expect the unexpected. Philosophers can and will show up at the door on occasion. On Monday morning as I was frenetically trying to get organized for a recording session some fifty minutes south, I heard a knock at my front door. Upon opening it, I found a disheveled gnome of a man with wild, gun-metal gray hair and gaping, blue eyes, smiling intensely at me. I told him I had not made any appointments with any maintenance companies, but he insisted upon staying to give my full-house generator a tune-up. I figured that if I had dismissed him entirely, he might never come back, and I did need the machine serviced. So I told him he had 45 minutes and mentioned the session, which sparked commonality. Apparently, he was a composer experimenting with prog rock vibes, which is not surprising since just about everyone is these days. Always blatantly honest, I informed him that since 100,000 songs are released a day, there is no monetary success available in the music business and that I just put my original music out there for a few people who might get something out of it. "Oh, so you are in it for soul cash," he commented. "Soul cash?" I asked. "I made it up. It is when you do something out of the goodness of your heart, and the payback is greater than any monetary amount you could receive."

Wow! Soul cash! What a concept. Today, I started to take a mental inventory of all the soul cash I had received over the years and realized that it amounted to quite a bit. Which made me happy. How could it not? I am probably a millionaire when it comes to my soul-cash bank account. 

And the moral of the story?

If more people were intent on earning soul cash as opposed to authentic cash, the world just might be a better place. 

Enough said. 

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