[inspired by a conversation with Professor Michael Veal, during which he proposed a theory of the death of contemporary music at the hands of its own industry...]
/meant as a spoken-word piece/
Dearly beloved,
we regret to announce today
the loss of a great mother,
a much-loved lover,
both a teacher and friend to all;
our own
dear
Music.
She died at the end of a long and strenuous struggle with an undetermined condition,
plagued by ambition and unabated individuality,
a pathology of apathy and ignorance;
it crept up on her,
slowly eating away at her core until
her hollow shell collapsed
as it gasped for air,
strangled by the need and greed of an industry where what is fair
is never enough.
Once welcomed and nurtured in communities,
her originality was imprisoned in an ipodic industry,
squeezed and suffocated into headphones and sound-bytes
and shuffles and repeats
until her heart was forgotten
and it beat slower
and slower
and slower.
And as she struggled to find the strength to hold together
her family,
her humanity,
they replaced her graceful limbs with prosthetic technology
trusting artificiality where they couldn't understand reality--
They fed her to the next generation
true beauty coated in plastic mechanizations,
manufactured pleasurebytes
like parasites
radioed across the sky,
and orchestra repertories, leftover from past generations
and indecipherable 'originality', like an elite contagion,
and exoticized cultural exhibitions...
Music
became a stranger,
foreign,
historical,
commercial,
racist, sexist, nationalist, and violent,
coerced into a prostitution for which she wept,
a slave to someone else's fear.
And she might as well have been dead--
for they forgot what her voice sounded like,
or how to wonder at her face
or how to hear her melodies amidst the clattering and crashing and commotion
of an attention-starved world,
overdosing on addictive, hormone-inducing sound...
One, five, six, four,
They flattened her like unseen wallpaper,
trampled on her like linoleum floors,
and in the few hollow corners where she found herself safe,
tenderly cared for, as a dying plant,
someone watching was reveling in the wonder of new life growing out of old conversations,
even as the cold wind creeping against the window pane
made us all shudder,
and wonder
where was the sunlight where she could grow to next?
And what hands would care for
her frail body,
greying as it neared final rest?
It wasted away,
just skin and bones, worn by years,
and the abuse of unrequited love and compassion.
Her loved ones began to lose their way,
they compared themselves to each other,
arguing over the gifts they'd been given,
as young children argue about 'fairness' at Christmas...
and hate and jealousy crept through the walls,
like destructive cracks in a slow demolition;
and autotune engineered away their self-esteem,
and they were rendered voiceless
unable to trust themselves to hit the right notes
or have the grace to listen to what they sing.
She leaves behind a few scattered children,
and the gifts she's given,
nurtured by friendships that meet late at night
behind closed doors
and off lonely highways,
flourishing in harmony and laughter
finding perfection in flawed dissonance
and joy in a process of learning
to grow.
There will be no funeral.
In lieu of flowers, there is no cause to donate to.
Only one lonely man,
sitting on a wooden crate
as he plays his acoustic guitar into the noisy street,
will sing her a eulogy into the wind,
making rhythm between guitar and car engine,
strings and birds and electricity lines
that harmonize
to his rusty cry of grief.
But everyone will pass him by,
leaving him unnoticed,
with their ipods turned up full blast
oblivious
to the death
of music.
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