What You Can Do

What You Can Do: Solutions, Alternatives, Simple Steps
Support actual local musicians, in any and every way that you can, buy their stuff, get them drinks (not too many!), invite them over for dinner, attend acoustic performances. Go see and hear your orchestra, go see and hear a small jazz group or a vocal choir or a chamber group. Take someone with you who would not normally go, or someone who can not afford it. Support big name artists and groups who you know are really performing. Talk or write to such artists and let them know you appreciate them keeping it real. Ask them if they are releasing anything on viynl. Urge them to consider doing so!

Go to venues where you are not tricked, tell everyone you know when you find such places. Really, often a small place that books talented artists themselves is a much better experience than the largest of arenas. Support real recording formats of actual high fidelity stereophonic music. If you have a high fidelity audio system, share the experience of listening to analog full spectrum music with others. You will be treasured for your generosity and wisdom! Even more so if you have the fortune to still be using vacuum tubes! Go to an independent record store and buy some viynl recordings and ask questions and learn how to care for and preserve them. Dust off the turntable. Get a record brush and some new styli and enjoy some music yourself and feel it. Share the feeling - intrigue friends.

Know that a pitch correction of just less than -two tenths of a per cent ( -0.19 to -0.18 down) on your turntable will correct your records to the natural A=432 tuning and you'll be amazed! Dig out the old cassette tape boom box or tape walkman and the old compilations, prerecorded and mixtapes. Consider yourself blessed if a relative passed a reel to reel tape recorder onto you, be it 1/4, 1/2 or 2 inch tape. Honestly, even listening to scratchy old shellac 78's over a Victrola has more benefits to reality than you'll ever get out of a digital representation of a sample of a piece of music.
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f you go out to a club (or better) or a festival (or better) and see that the person acting as a DJ has a computer, complain to the management or promoter. Remind them that real DJ's do not touch computers for music, at least not in polite company and certainly not in public! Tell them you did not come to try to dance to the memory of a song, nor to pretend to be entertained by a computerized juke box while some dork with their nose in a laptop does digital filter tricks on the digital samples coming out of the sound system. There is no Skill to that, there is no Art to that, it has no Moments to it, no Colour and certainly not much Depth! Remind them that Viynl Dj's are attentive to their crowds and so much better in every way and for everyone!

After all, your emotional, mental, physical and spiritual health are important! As are the benefits of actual music to everyone within hearing range of the sound system. Support local and traveling DJ's who only spin Viynl and let them know you know why it is important too! Cheer when the record skips, crackles or pops, it is one more way to know you are not being fooled again!
Go to a classic single screen movie theater, especially when they are showing actual 'Films'. Take some friends and treat them to these visual stories made from real things. Older movies are generally films, ask at the box office. The last big budget Sci -Fi movie shot entirely with film where all the special effects were done "in camera" was "Blade Runner", however there have been some in other genres shot on film recently. Ask at the box office if they have a projectionist and if the film is shown with a 'film projector' - it makes a difference!

Maintain and use a VCR, buy blank and pre - recorded tapes. Archive analog material on the blanks so you'll have a source for respite when your eyes, mind and soul tire of seeing digital pixels and hearing digital bits. You can archive analog audio on tape as well, you can compile 6 - 8 hours on some VHS tapes. Record the first play of your new viynl onto your VCR and you will always have a pristine clean print.

Keep your film camera, buy some fresh film and record some real pictures of real things and be able to do so in the moment, right when you click the shutter. Instead of posing and composing and waiting for the digital camera to complete it is image capture to see if the image is what you wanted. Sure, it is a bit more expensive to buy and develop film and yes, digital cameras can be cheaper and you can review and discard unwanted or flawed images. But that's why you can just discard them - they are just - cheap images.
If you've ever seen and looked closely at a silver print Photograph shot with a large format Camera then you already know, there is a difference. Digital cameras decrease the value of digital images, there is a lot more of them, so their worth is diluted. A photograph is 'of the moment' in a way that digital images will never be. Any decent film lab isn't going to charge you for spoiled prints that you do not want anyway. So where is the advantage?

Turn off your Television, Turn it off, what else can we tell you? Turn it off, there is nothing on that is worth even the lowering of your metabolism and reduction in cognitive abilities that comes with passive viewing. Turn it off. There is nothing on that is worth your time and is not hazardous to your senses and sensibility. Turn off your Television! It is all either a lie or it is a distraction! Turn it off. No one needs to live their life vicariously in an induced trance sponsored by corporate entities. Turn it off. There is a whole real world right outside that actually belongs to all of us. Turn it off.

If the "medium IS the message " then the message of the medium of TV is "what is on this screen is more important than you or anyone you know or anything they could be saying, feeling, or doing ". Turn it off, go outside and enjoy what you can still find of the natural and growing world. Breathe. Help some things to grow or just become absorbed with observing the beauty. Breathe. If the weather is inclement, go to a conservatory and revel in nature there. Breathe. Invite some friends over and have some conversations, read a book or write, listen to some actual music or make some. Breathe. Make some art or take time to do some cooking or baking, share and taste. Be with the ones you love, be actually present for them and listen. Breathe. Handwrite a letter to someone no longer in your vicinity. Breathe.

Keep your radio, get a better antenna. Investigate multi - band radio , there is much more than AM & FM out there. Consider getting a multi-band radio with it is own crank or shake generator and solar panel. You can hear shortwave from almost the other side of the planet. Find out what local college and university stations are in your are, as they are more likely to still be broadcasting actual viynl records. If not ask them to consider adding an 'analogous to real music' hour to their programming. You can get a low power broadcasting permit and become your own radio station and play what you want to hear and would like others to hear.

There are lots of alternatives to submitting to the corporate digital machine. There are plenty of reasons to take your music and your life back from those who cannot be bothered to care about you and yours. Why should we ever surrender something so Intrinsic to All Human Cultures and to Life itself as Music & Dancing in fact Are, to any entity that clearly only wants to make a truncated disposable product out of it for only their profit? We should not, we should take it all back for or own peaceful uses and enjoyment forever!
PEACE ! ©02010 ©02011 Cee Are & CkaS

Note this is a section from an earlier post "Regaining Your Rights"