Civilization: a lament

I miss civilization. I miss it badly. I mean this truly. I miss book stores. I miss newspapers that actually covered the local scene. 
I miss the way it used to be, when a person who had some good ideas and could articulate them, could also, with a little bit of luck, make a modest but real living out of those inner resources.  

I look around and see good books going unread, symphony orchestras dying, politics and education reduced to programs of economic pragmatism. I see students abandoning the humanities like passengers from a derelict and sinking ship. I wonder where it's all going. I don't think it's going anywhere good. 

Has anyone noticed that when Disney made the last Star Wars movie, they used a free-lance orchestra to record the soundtrack, instead of the London Philharmonic, as it had always been? Has anyone asked whether this was done for any reason other than a little more profit for Disney to pocket? After all, why pay for the ideal, when you can get something that sounds like the ideal, but for a whole lot less?

Or has anyone noticed that YouTube remunerates a video maker at the rate of .2 cents per view, if he or she does everything right? So have you got a song or a creative act that has attracted one hundred thousand views? Congratulations, you might make two hundred dollars!

Does anyone remark that there used to be all sorts of jobs connected with culture that have pretty much completely disappeared? Record store and book store clerks, local reviewers, journalists with actual permanent positions at the local paper. Editors. Chautauqua lecturers. Competent church organists. Piano teachers to be found living practically every few blocks in a lively city. 

And no, these have NOT been replaced by something better or even anything close to as good for as many people, in terms of making a living. No, what we have today, courtesy of the digital revolution and certain near universal expectations about "access" is an economy of intellectual inflation, in which everyone engaged in the creation of art and ideas is expected to give away their work for free, or next to free. Call it the aggregated cultural economy. Call it way less paid work available for way less pay.

I spoke to a theater producer not so long ago, who divulged his clever plans for his next production, which was to be a musical: he would use a canned soundtrack, so he wouldn't have to pay pit musicians. He'd also import actors from Chicago, underemployed ringers who, being desperate for exposure, would "donate back" large portions of what he "paid" them once the production was done. Hmm.

The production, I'm told, was artistically speaking quite successful. The singers kept good time with the track. Good little robots (workers), following the machine.

I miss the idea that there really is a meritocracy of mind, and a general human need to cultivate excellence in thought, and to encourage the thoughtful, soulful depiction of the human experience. I miss the idea that the public ought to support that activity, not so much with public funding, though that's sometimes useful, but with their attendance. Their caring about it. Their straightforward live consumption of the stuff.

Maybe this has been historically rarer than I would like to believe. We all know about artists and writers who lived in disappointment and died penniless. Still, I also think that those stories prevent us from seeing that there have also been times when great or even decent artists were richly or at least adequately remunerated, and also times when ordinary people made a decent living simply handing on the cultural legacy. Those times seem to be gone, and I really, really miss them.

HB