This is “the MONEY movement” of my EPIGRAM project for text & wind percussion orchestra. It is based on a little 40–step aphorism of mine:
MONEY is a movement
that always seems to be going
in the wrong direction;
DEBT is the engine.
And COMPOUND INTEREST
the seemingly inexhaustible fuel.
I think most musicians would agree with this, don’t you? In an era where just eight men own 1/2 of the planet’s material wealth, obviously, something has gone radically wrong. But it would also be wrong to simply say that it’s the evilness of Trump-like, ethically depraved robber barons & other assorted species of ruthless conmen. No. It is deeper. It is systemic. I would argue with Aristotle that any economy – – any household – – that allows for the loaning money at compound interest has sealed with a dead certainty the guarantee of its own eventual collapse. The Greeks called it “money parenting money.” Later, it was called usury, & even as late as in the 13th century of Europe — around the time of Dante –– it was still forbidden. Ah, but leave it to the Swiss and the Calvinists to find a clever toehold through the backdoor. And so, little by little, making money out of nothing, out of thin air, became not only ethically acceptable, but the norm, the very basis of runaway greed and exploitation, the stuff of Silicon Valley cocktail party talk of Ayn RAND acolytes, and reality-TV hosts turned fake presidents.
This world in which, quite literally, money is always moving in the wrong direction — think of water in a time of drought that is always flowing uphill to those who already have too much water instead of naturally flowing to those who are thirsty and need it most — this world in which money is always flowing in the wrong direction has been absolutely devastating for the ARTS, especially the performing arts like dance & progressive art music. They are by definition, of course, non-commercial. And they are also by definition, because they involve so many professional performers, very expensive to produce. So where is this support to come from? In the distant past, it was supported by the Church, then the Church became the King, and then the King became the Government, or the “all of us together” of Democracy. And, in this more recent past, this common ground — I would call it the sacred commons — was the Circle of “the We,” of us, of Culture itself.
But this has been axed to the ground by the metaphysics of what I call the secular Christian; it is a very simple and ruthless philosophy, easy to summarize in but 23 steps. Are you ready?
Money has replaced meaning;
the self-centered ‘me’ has replaced God;
pleasure has replaced ethics.
This culture ‘not of we but of me’ now rules the world, with devastating consequences. So any Music worth the name is inherently, in my view, a Music of intense spiritual protest.
