There’s a big boat out there with a lot of folks in it. It’s the SS Mediocre and there a lot of passengers: creators, outlets and consumers who gladly use their boarding pass to party at the “Pirate’s Cove” with Isaac all day and night as they tout, tweet, post, program, publish the muck of the muck that has muckety mucked eyes ears and careers for here to whoknowswhere and back again. Abandon ship. Abandon ship! Please!!! S.O.S.!
You’re not going to hear any “Back in my day…” nonsense from me today that has its own problems and I dare say that there’s a fair number of passengers solely holding up the “Old School” as the standard and the problem with that is two fold:
1. It’s revisionist because everything “old” ain’t good and
2. If we remain only interested in the past and create a museum culture around that it we will remove any hope of connecting the present in any meaningful way to alter the present course of mediocrity.
Mediocre: You know the stuff of only moderate quality; not very good. Not good writing, reporting, performing, editing, and on and on and on. Great technology. Mediocre content. Pretty box, nothing inside.
Not hating. There’s great out here, it’s just not on the boat that makes entirely too much noise. There’s not a lot of great(heck this post/blog could be mediocre by the standards of some)but the great beckons it’s what you hold on to and it’s what you wish all these passengers on the Mediocre would strive for. I don’t want to see your first draft and you shouldn’t either.
Soo… Mr. Big Mouth what are you going to do about it?
Well, we have to start slow and sure…
Ivan Orr is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, performer, and writer. A native of Charlottesville, Virginia Ivan was involved with the forming and nascent days of The Music Resource Center as its first Program Director. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Music, Ivan currently resides in Richmond, VA where he maintains an active performance and production schedule while serving as the Music Editor for Grown Folks Music, a position he has held since 2010.
