"If the first part of a tsunami to reach the coast is a trough, rather than a wave crest, the water along the shoreline is dragged back dramatically, exposing parts of the shore that are normally underwater and stranding many marine creatures."
From SMS Tsunami Warning
“And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters,
shall be heard no more at all in thee;"
Revelation 18:22
Have you noticed the artless tsunami? Surely you must have. All the real artists receding out to sea, singers and guitar players and songwriters and drummers dragged into the depths by the undertow created by a culture of entitlement that demands the fruits of artists' labors for free? Surely the sucking sound of auto-tuned money pop and yet another generation of fake rappers who think The Chronic was the first album ever made, and who refer to the music industry as "the game" while synching the rhyming couplets from their Jr. High love notes to yet another tired "beat drop" hasn't been lost on you.
Or maybe it has. I'm certainly not paying attention to it.
I have never watched the Grammys. Never once in my life has anybody who has ever had anything to do with it affected my perception of the world, to my knowledge. Obviously, there are going to be real artists involved, from time to time. This year, 90s luminaries like Beck, Björk, and The Black Keys were nominated for awards, though to be fair, I've never listened to The Black Keys, and probably never will. I just recognize the name, and am relieved to see it. Also, apparently Willie Nelson and Ozzy Osbourne were up for awards, which means you don't have to be a diversity hire to get in the room. But holy smokes. The Grammy people can't find anybody younger to replace them with?
They can't. New artists have been priced out. Sucked out to sea. Turned into junkies and killed by their handlers. Trotted out onstage in a stupor and turned into a cautionary tale. For not playing "the game," presumably.
Not only did she write her own songs, Amy Winehouse worked in a genre mix that was unusual, and resisted the attempts by the company to "mold her into a big triangle shape." There ya go.
In my opinion, she was the last.
I'm not going to bother debating whether or not Beyonce, Lizzo, and Harry Styles are real artists. I have my doubts, but for argument's sake, let's say they are. There's one thing that nobody can deny:
Whatever the validity of their work, it is obviously outshined, undermined, and swept out to sea by an artless tsunami of straight-up Satanism. I wasn't even aware the Grammys were going on until I saw the news stories about this performance. I started in the middle of this video and got through about 2 seconds of it. As a songwriter and musician let me say, THE SATANIC SIDESHOW IS THE EASY PART. The flames and blasphemy suck, and are indeed unwatchable, but the music is like a plate of concrete pancakes drizzled with undiluted High-Fructose Corn Syrup; completely impossible to eat, and undigestible to any but the most infernal, demonic guts. For a generation that prides itself on the power of its own cringe, you'd think music like this wouldn't last an hour. But this is the best "Pop Duo or Group Performance" of the year. If it wasn't for the sucking sound of all the drowning songwriters and musicians being dragged out to sea (which is apparently deafening in more ways than one), I would never believe it.
Why does pop music need SATAN, anyway? Yeah, yeah, I know. But as an art form, really... What does SATAN have to do with any of it?
Everything, apparently. The silver lining is that all kinds of discerning people who might never have come to Jesus Christ otherwise, will now see the reason for doing so. In decades past, the need for repentance wasn't so obvious. The control freaks had talented people with self-respect who wanted control over their own careers to contend with. Not a bunch of people who worship at the altar of their own fake, corporate-approved identities, popularity, and surely money.
Whatever the case, the eye is like a strange balloon that mounts toward infinity. Whether y'all got the culture you paid for or not, and whether it's a waste of time repeating that warning 1,000 more times to no effect whatsoever, is no longer important (see: every other article on this and my old Wordpress blog). The tsunami has crashed into the shore, and has decimated whatever remained of a once-vibrant and interesting culture. Now is perhaps the time to count the blessing of finding a buoy to cling to at all, while floating in the Spanish waves, way out to sea.
If nothing else, those of us who might otherwise be trapped like Amy Winehouse in a system of oppressive, apparently-Satanic control, can now count ourselves extremely blessed to be away from the worst of the destruction. A songwriter friend said to me recently that if we lived long enough, our music might actually come back in vogue. The statement startled me. Am I supposed to be thinking about that? I have my moments, times when a scheme to get the attention of the public will occur to me, but before long it strikes me as, frankly, completely untenable. There is obvious wrongness in all of it. For the most part I've completely abandoned the sinking, willfully-deaf ship of Western culture. I tried for years to get them to listen, but finally, I took the hint. They didn't want to listen. There are some true people scattered through the mire, but mostly it feels over. They wanted free music, and to stroke their egos and power-trip over the guy sleeping in the parking lot.
And they got it. Maybe someday it will change, but I'm not holding my breath. A culture of corporate devils prancing around some flames to prefabricated beats isn't what I wanted, and I wouldn't have written it this way, but I took the hint a long time ago. The entitled, dismissive people got the culture they paid for. Whether they like it, believe it, or not.
Truly, there is no reason to stay.
“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying,
Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins,
and that ye receive not of her plagues.”
Revelation 18:4
