The Castle of the Conventional
Week 25
As the beast rose ever so slowly from the magma and the epoch-thick soot, I began to notice glimmers of light ever so subtle in their escape from the rock walls. The lights were far too bright to be diamonds hidden in the walls of this hell, and yet pronounced enough to get my attention. For goodness sakes there had to be a least a billion of these lights now becoming more and more present. I snuck on all fours to look below the ledge I had wandered onto, and lo and behold, the lights travelled as far as my basic eyes could see all the way downwards into the ancient depths and all the way upwards into the heavens. I jokingly laughed to myself that the lights that were creepingly becoming brighter looked like the flashlight feature of the iPhone. As the walls began to crumble all around me and the bodies of the empty began to wander sleepily from their graves, they were all holding their iPhones…ready to record something?…with their flashlights turned on. I had to stifle my laughter. I wasn’t really trying to make my presence known. The cylindrical cave got brighter and brighter by the second while the billions took to their seats.
“GOOD EVENING MY LOVES!” the beast shouted from it’s fiery throne. “IT’S GOOD THAT YOU HAVE ALL JOINED US THIS EVENING FOR A VERY SPECIAL TREAT!”
There were hysterical fits of jubilation rippling through the mass of flesh that reminded me of the seizures of Santeria rituals. My eyes were peeled to the faces distorting in order to release a proper scream of approval. Eyes were protruding so far from the skull, that some ended up needing to crawl along the rock to pick up their dislodged organs. And the applause! The thundering of palms smashing together in honor of a rising television screen being hoisted above this beloved creature’s head was astounding and too much for my ears. To accompany the rise of the screen, the announcer decided to play some music. This recording sounded as if every song I had ever heard in a bar, or my car, or a venue, or on the radio, or from a recommendation by a friend blended together seamlessly as though it were only one song. There were at least 60 million songs melded together into one. This audible sensation made me realize that throughout the history of music all of the levels were the same, the format was the same, the instrumentation was the same, the production was the same, the mix was the same, the master was the same, the artist was the same, the label was the same, the audience was the same, the intention was the same, the end result was all the same, the dreams were the same, the money was the same, the investments were the same, the collaborations were the same, the collaborators were the same, the instruments were all the same, the lyrics were the same, the poetry was the same, the symbols were the same, the mythology was the same, the voices sounded the same, the timbre was the same, the languages were all of the same, and the frequencies were all the same, the effects were all the same, the rooms that the songs were recorded in were all the same, the engineers were the same, the furniture and traditions of the studios were all the same, the physical product was always the same, the marketing was the same, the imaging was the same, all humans involved were the same, all humans listening and consuming were the same, and the song that I heard I had totally without a doubt heard before. Somehow this beast and his team of audio technicians managed to highlight how conventional and mediocre Music was! “Wow,” I thought, “I never want to listen to music ever again.”
“well you’re going to have to. there is only one way to make music,” a slug upon my right side cackled. I realized then and there that this was no natural setting. I had found my Self in The Castle of Convention. I had found my Self among the Conventional.
“LET US ALL REWATCH THE REELS OF HISTORY AND THEN LET US GET ON WITH THE CEREMONY!!!” the demon proclaimed from his fiery seat. Each slug took out a notebook and began attentively taking notes with their eyes peeled recounting each conventional and absurd “moment” from the “history” of “humankind.”
As soon as the television began its triumphant call of propagandist idiocy, I fell asleep in a nook amongst the rock with an enormous smile upon my face. I knew exactly how I was going to defeat these goons.
