Getting in Touch with Your Inner Superstar

What Arts Education Can and Should Be About

A few years ago I was sitting in my favorite restaurant, and at the table next to me, a very nice young yuppie couple was discussing an article in that day’s newspaper.  The article, written by a local classical music expert and occasional conductor, was highly critical of Leonard Bernstein.

So anyway, I sat there for quite a while, quietly munching on my blueberry pancakes, listening to the two of them discuss the various points of the article, and also listening to them wonder just exactly what to make of it.  This was particularly interesting to me, because in my distant youth, I actually had the extraordinary privilege of performing with Leonard Bernstein, and I had also enjoyed the dubious privilege of performing with the person who had written this article.

This was just too much of a wonderful “Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall” opportunity to pass by, so at one point I finally interrupted and offered to give them the inside story about who was who and what was what.  They listened with great interest as I told them the real deal.  (I took Lenny’s side, by the way.)

This story, and the delicious fun and sense of personal power I derived from this experience, is a perfect illustration of what I want to discuss here today, which is the point and purpose of arts education.

When people talk about “arts education,” the discussion tends to center around developing young brains.  It actually takes on a fairly individual development mechanical/physical tone.  There is talk of developing this or that frontal lobe of the brain, and there is tremendous emphasis on how musical training enhances math skills.

While I suppose that is an important element of arts education, to me, it kind of sort of misses the point. 

In my humble opinion, two most important aspects (and benefits) of arts education are these:

First of all, the arts serve to define what it means to be a human being.  Chemistry class can define us in one dimension, biology class can define us in another dimension, but the arts encompass theories and definitions regarding our highest aspirations, in terms of our emotions and spirituality.  (Spend two days walking around Rome, and your idea of the perfect human form will change radically from our American comic book buns of steel view to something much more calm and realistic.) 

Where the art of music is concerned, well, popular music, for the most part, focuses heavily on issues of romance.  This is certainly a very high priority in life, but it is certainly not the only dimension of emotional/spiritual existence.  To discuss and share ideas and concepts beyond issues of teen romance, we need to have a vocabulary beyond 12-bar blues with which to express these ideas.  Poetry is one certainly, but music and visual arts are perhaps the most useful. 

I think we can all agree that it is better for the economy if the general public is literate.  While most people define literacy solely as the ability to read and write English, understanding the language of the painter, the vocabulary of the composer, the grammar of the film editor... these are all forms of literacy that are key to perceiving and understanding our environment, and taking advantage of the lessons learned from masters of previous generations– also not being led astray by those who know how to use these tools for questionable purposes.

The second important point for arts education has to do with interpersonal communication and connection.  What defines us as a culture and as a society is how we deal with each other.  And far too much of standard “education” is about development of individual skills, and thinking of everyone else in your environment as a competitor.  I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to say that there are some people who go through an entire academic experience learning only skills of how to deal with people in positions of authority.  What I mean by that is, their whole world revolves around doing what the teacher wants them to do.  (I realize there are some who try to teach “team skills,” but at the end of the day, your SAT score is yours and yours alone, and no team of kids ever applies to college.)

Because the arts are a vocabulary of human interaction and connection, not only are they the best way to define who we truly are; artistic experiences, most notably performing, are a tremendous way to develop interpersonal communication skills, especially with those outside your familiar local hierarchy. 

Just one example of this is partner dancing.  There was a time (back in the 30's) when every single teenager in America knew how to partner dance.  This was usually swing dancing.  (It is interesting to note that one of the many ways the Nazis dealt with art was by essentially outlawing swing dancing.) 

I took up swing dancing late in life, and I never cease to be amazed at what degree of communication is possible on the dance floor with a total stranger.  I never would have known that this kind of immediate interpersonal communication was possible if I had not learned how to dance. 

The current rather embarrassing spectacles of people screaming and yelling in town hall meetings is a perfect example of a lack of arts education.  When people are afraid of not being heard or respected, they get upset.  If you watch the first half of “The Miracle Worker,” you’ll see a perfect example of how someone will behave when they feel frustrated in their ability to communicate with other human beings.  It is truly sad, and even tragic, as I watch so many examples of people who have never learned any performance/communication skills try to express their concerns in a public forum.  Their lack of artistic training, in terms of calmly and effectively communicating to a group, is not only frustrating for them, it is a genuine danger to democracy. 

Freedom of speech means nothing if you have no vocabulary with which to express yourself.  Part of the skill of communication is an understanding of who is on the other end of the wire, and having common reference points with them.  This is key to sensible public discourse and civil society.  This is what arts education can and should be about.

© Justin Locke 

Putting your music on Itunes via Cdbaby

(Chris Anderson, of Boston's Mix One Studios, asked me to re-post this for folks who are interested in publishing their musical recordings . . . so here it is!  Note the CD Baby website has changed just this week and is actually not quite yet up and running . . . I truly hope that in making their web site prettier they did not lessen its ease of use-- jl)

If you have ever considered putting your own music out for digital distribution on Itunes, well, I did it, it was relatively simple, and here is a report on the process.

While I don’t consider myself to be a composer, I did arrange some music a few years ago.  I executed it via MIDI on my little soundcard, so I owned it outright.  These arrangements were supposed to go with a kid show I intended to publish (J.S. Bach, Superstar), but for one reason or another the project got sidetracked, and these nifty little pop arrangements of Bach’s greatest hits were relegated to my Ipod. 

Then one day I had lunch with Chris Anderson at Mix One Studios (Boston) . . . He had engineered one of the projects I had to sell.  I gave him one of my books and he gave me an idea: “Why don’t you put your music on Itunes?” He said.  “Duh,” I replied– “CAN YOU DO THAT?”

Well I sent Itunes an email that said “Will you sell my music?”  A week later they wrote back and said, “You must go through an intermediary.”  They included a list of such intermediaries, and eenie meenie miney moe, I picked one called Cdbaby.com (note, music producer sales go thru Cdbaby.NET)

Well, let me tell you, I do a fair amount of e-commerce, dealing with the websites of Amazon, Café Press, Paypal, Typepad, Ebay, etc etc, ...and never in my life have I seen a web interface as well designed as Cdbaby’s. 

Putting one’s music up for sale on Cdbaby is a lengthy and somewhat complex multi-step process, and yet they make it so unbelievably easy, I was utterly amazed.  There is a list of “to-do’s,” and what I really loved about it was each item was marked either “Urgent- do now” or “optional.”  There were little added explanation links on each step, and it was impossible to get link lost (i.e. unable to navigate back to main page where forms were being filled out.)  The way they did it, it was like having an expert consultant sitting next you telling you how to do it. 

Okay, a brief overview of the process:

First, obviously, you need to sign up for an account,
you fill in various fields about yourself and your album and your bank account,
They explain the fee/payment structure (which I found to be very reasonable)
They pay WEEKLY– amazing
you have to pay a setup fee (note, this is the ONE complaint I have about the site, it implies $35 will get all your music on there forever, when in fact it’s $55 per album– I had 2 albums, so I forked over $110)
You need to specify how long the excerpts of your music will be– since I had a lot of short pieces of music in each album, this took some figuring out, but just time, not hard)
Then you must snailmail a physical CD of your music to them in Oregon,

and e mail them the cover art of your CD. 

Things are not instantaneous, all in all I think there was a wait of a couple of weeks, and once your music is processed by them, you still have to do a final setup but that was simple and they sent an email telling me when to do it.  After that last email, the site was up 48 hours later. 

AND HERE IT IS:

   
Suite from "J.S. Bach, Superstar-- www.cdbaby.com/cd/justinlocke

I have another album in process . . . more on that later . . .

Note they also have a tracking page where you can see how many hits you had on your page and exactly how much money is in your account. 

Phone help is also very good, real people answer after one round of auto answering. 

One of the reasons I did this was I did NOT want to deal with selling physical CD’s, and while they recommend having hardcopies, I opted out, no problem. 

My big complaint about almost of all the other e-commerce sites I mention above is that, you will go down one path, but once you have written a post or posted an item for sale, and you want to do something like change the font or set a different shipping price– well, this next logical step in the process is often buried in some other distant used-only-once-maybe branch of the menu tree, usually under “profile.”  Example: Even as I write, I am struggling with typepad trying to change the font size of this post.  Last week I was going nuts trying to do a unique shipping fee in paypal, and even though I set the fee amount in the little window, it just wouldn’t take, and it kept using my default shipping fees. After four hours of frustration I finally figured out that I had to “ENABLE changes from my default shipping fee” in my PROFILE.  YEESH. 

No such problems in Cdbaby.  It was a long and actually very complex process, and yet I never once got lost or frustrated, except for the confusion that many of their customers have over the advertised $35 fee really being $55.  A little bit of a bait and switch, but I am willing to forgive that given the fabulous ease of their site. 

One note, Cdbaby sells entire albums, not single songs, but not a problem.  As part of the setup you set permissions for digital distribution, and I am told that my music will be on Itunes, Rhapsody, and six other music retailers shortly.  I can’t wait.   

www.cdbaby.com/cd/justinlocke

Do You Manage like a Conductor or like a Composer?

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing some sort of improvised back yard version of baseball?  Before the game started, everyone had to have a discussion of what was in bounds was out of bounds.  The apple tree was first base, an old shoe was second base, and on it went.  Once all of those basic guidelines were established, the game could begin in earnest.

We often think of athletic team coaches or symphony conductors as the epitome of management, but to me, that is a lesser level of management.  The real managers of any situation are the people who, like those kids in the back yard, determine the basic rules for everyone to play by. 

To give an example of this level of management in the realm of professional sports, in the NFL, they have what is known as the “Rules Committee.”  These folks get together once a year and decide what the rules of the game shall be.  "You must do this on each play, you cannot do this on any play, this is out of bounds," and so on.  They change various rules every year, for the purposes of making the game more exciting, safer for the players, etc.  

There are, of course, other levels of managers in the sports world, ones that are much more visible.

You have coaches, who come up with strategies to make best use of resources within the framework of the game; that’s one kind of manager.

You have quarterbacks, who have to implement those strategies and occasionally improvise on the spot; that is another kind of manager.

Then you have the referees, who keep precise track of the clock and tell you when you’re doing things wrong; that’s yet another kind of manager.

And then you have cheerleaders, who generally just exhort excitement and maximum effort, that is yet another kind of manager.

In the symphonic world, conductors are seen as the epitome of management in action, but again, they aren’t the real managers.  The real manager in a symphony concert is . . . the composer.

Like the NFL rules committee, composers lay out every single thing that the musicians are to do.  It’s very precise, and playing anything else is clearly seen as being out of bounds.  Even then, there is huge leeway in terms of how the players, as coaches, quarterbacks and defensive ends, can “play” within that very precise framework.  And the better the job the composer did of laying out the framework, the more fun everyone has.  

Conductors, alas, are really in the realm of head coach, referee, and cheerleader.  Important roles, certainly, but nowhere near what the composer does.  If you don’t believe me, go to a symphony concert and take note of how often any of the players take their eyes off the sheet music to look at the conductor.  It happens, but only occasionally– mostly to know when to start and when to stop. 

So my question to you, dear reader, is, what level of manager are you?  Do you lay down very clear rules that everyone can understand, do you clearly define the object of the game, do you define the boundaries, and then do you step back and let everyone play to the best of their abilities?

Or are you skipping that step, and instead just sending in all the plays yourself, cheering from the sidelines, and constantly changing the rules ? 

If the rules are not clear, or if they are constantly violated by you, well, it’s fun for a while.  But eventually there are cries of foul and no fair, everyone takes their spirit of play and goes home. Structure equals safety and freedom.  Without it, it’s just not fun anymore. 

The same things that make backyard baseball fun– which include specific, collectively agreed-to rules, and the fair enforcement of same– are what make any work situation fun as well. 

As I look back on it, three of the most successful and fun conductors I played for – Leonard Bernstein, John Williams, and Henry Mancini– were all composers.  Why am I not surprised. 

In your managing, I urge you to be a composer.  Make clear rules and step back and let everyone else play.  The real control is in the rules committee, not on each individual play.  Anything else is out of bounds, and no fair. 

© Justin Locke 

Who do you have to tell you the bad news?

I spend a fair amount of time reading books and blogs about management.  Make no mistake, I get a lot out of what I read.  But I will say, there’s an awful lot of emphasis on high-minded strategy, and not a whole lot of practical advice about the day-to-day challenges on a very personal eye to eye, gut feeling to gut feeling level.  So, since conductors and orchestras are always used as a metaphor for the manager to the managed relationship, I thought I would share my unique access to the core data and tell you what actually happens in orchestral management, as seen by one bass player.

One of the biggest problems and pitfalls that afflicted conductors more than any other I think, was their inability to perceive themselves realistically.  The reason this is such a problem is that, if you are the person in power, and you don’t perceive yourself honestly and truthfully, there is no one in your organization, and probably no one even outside either, who can tell you the truth.  Since you are so powerful, and you are the arbiter of who gets the wealth, everyone who talks to you is going to be constrained either by cultural protocol or personal economic interest to not tell you the whole truth. 

And so, a tremendous amount of weight gets put on a conductor to be highly skilled in terms of their perceptions.  But let’s face it, there are some things about ourselves that we really don’t want to always look at.  There is so much pressure on the person in charge, that they don’t always have the time or the interest of the energy to take a good long look at themselves and see what perhaps needs fixing.  And so, disaster lurks.

To illustrate, I have numerous stories like the following, but this perhaps is the best one:

I was playing a concert in Boston somewhere with a guy who had a doctorate in music performance, he was on the faculty of a major local university, and the rehearsal was going along just fine, until we came upon a section of this piece that was written in 5/8 time.   Meters of 5/8 or 7/8 are always a little dicey to count, as they are a little bit like someone trying to walk with one leg shorter than the other. But this guy treated the 5/8 like it was 6/8.  He stretched out the four and the five to make it feel right to him.   So it ended up sounding like one to three fooouuur   fiiiiive   one two three fooouur fiiiive   

YIKES

This was a choral piece, and the choir had learned it all wrong, and the conductor kept yelling at us folks in the orchestra for doing it correctly and making it fall apart.  So we all just bit the bullet, held back the screaming inner laughter, and played this piece in public for an audience in a totally incorrect manner.  There was absolutely no incentive on the part of anyone in that freelance orchestra to enlighten this guy.  Telling a person of higher status with power to hire and fire that they have screwed royally up is not very likely to gain points, and you run a major risk of becoming someone that that powerful person never wants to ever see again.  So you keep your mouth shut, as that is the best way to keep the checks coming. 

There are, of course, endless coaches and consultants out there who will come in for a fee and give you all sorts of the latest wonderful high minded advice.  But if you want to save yourself some time and trouble and expense, you might want to think about somehow creating a venue where the guy on the loading dock can tell you exactly what he thinks of your latest memo about strategic alliances and leveraging social media, without risking losing his job.  Everyone in your company knows things about your company that you need to know.  The question is, is there a way for them to impart this knowledge to you without fear of reprisal, and . . .  are you listening? 

© Justin Locke

The Future of Management by Gary Hamel

So I was reading Jamie Notter's Blog, and he talked about a book by Gary Hamel titled The Future of Management. The book cites a sturdy where 85% of workers are giving less than their full commitment, and the possible reasons were:

1. Too much management, too little freedom
2. Too much hierarchy, not enough community
3. Too much exhortation, too little purpose.

I thought this was fabulous, because it perfectly summed up 99% of the conductors I played for when I was a professional musician.  So here is a bass player’s take on how to manage better:

1. Too much management, too little freedom

Power is delicious, but what’s the point of having it if you can’t exercise it?  People who have risen through the ranks by being endlessly obedient have, in their minds anyway, earned the right to enjoy some obedience from subordinates.  Most people think of positions of power, i.e. management, as a place where one can finally indulge in the deliciousness of having some control, not a position where one must constantly appreciate and facilitate the work of others.  But the best conductors I played for consistently delegated as much power and authority as they possibly could.  And they kept an open mind about what we did with that power and authority.  As long as the audience was happy, they were too.

2. Too much hierarchy, not enough community

Let’s be clear here, hierarchy is key to all primate societies, including ours.  The idea that you can get rid of hierarchy is kind of like thinking communism will work.  People like to know their status and rank, and earning higher rank is a very rewarding element of belonging to any social group, including one’s workplace.  The conflict between hierarchy and community comes when people become overly anxious about losing status or rank in the hierarchy.  A big part of the power of a manager is the ability to demote, or promote others who are now below you to positions above you.  For most people, if stepping outside of a very narrow prescribed path is likely to cause a loss of status within the group, then such innovative behavior is essentially prohibited.  So instead of getting rid of hierarchy, it’s really important to solidify the predictability and consistency of hierarchy, especially for those who are eager to do unusual things.  Otherwise, confusion over what behavior gets rewarded will result in caution and the least amount of effort from everyone.  This was something I always noticed an orchestra culture... if someone was promoted up in the pecking order of a given section, and everyone generally felt that this was not deserved, this not only destroyed teamwork amongst that section, it also rippled out to everyone else in the orchestra, as it suddenly became unclear as to what was approved of and what was disapproved of behavior. Caution becomes the word of the day. 

3. Too much exhortation, too little purpose.

There’s nothing like a conductor working up a big sweat, and one of those little beads of sweat flying through the air and landing on your 300-year-old Amati violin’s finish. (This inevitably begs the question:  "is this really necessary?")

When experiencing the immediate anxiety, stress, and excitement of a performance, it’s easy to lose track of the big picture.  If things are not going well, it’s easy to think that greater swinging of the arms will improve things.  But here is a classic case of a Principle of Applied Stupidity: the more work a manager does, the less work the managees will do, and vice versa.  More information from management is that much more stuff that has to be complied with and conform to.  So there’s that much less opportunity for team problem-solving.  The more management you put into a situation, the more passive the managees become. 

All too often, conductors I played for really didn’t know what they were actually trying to accomplish.  They were eagerly imitating icons of management (i.e., other conductors) that they admired, and their true purpose was to imitate and display to all loyalty to those icons.  Their focus was always pointed up to people above them, not down to the people they were supposed to be helping. 

The devotion that many musician show to long dead composers is nothing short of amazing.  It is so great, that most of them lose track of the purpose of the exercise, which is connection with, and entertainment of, their customers. 

(c) Justin Locke

Orchestra Conductors and Some Common Mythologies of Leadership

One of the most commonly asked questions I get when I give a presentation to an outside-the-music-business audience is, “what exactly does the conductor do??”  The mythology of conductors, which has been fertilized for eons by orchestral press offices, is actually a problem, as I think it sends the wrong message.  People often refer to conductors as a metaphor for corporate leadership, but this is primarily done by non-musicians.  The common myth of the maestro as overbearing dictator/leader is a popular one, partly I think because it appeals to a fantasy of absolute power, but it has little to do with how the best conductors operate.

Consistently, the best conductors I played for were all about perception– of both the players (i.e., employees) and the audience (i.e., customers).  It’s way beyond the stereotypical role of pointing out wrong notes and exhorting generally greater effort.  Anyone can point out deviations from past performances.  This is not leadership; shaming peoples missteps does not lead to the highest levels of performance.  Intimidation and fear just puts everyone in C.Y.A. mode. 

Effective management of the players is about many things, but one of the most important (and mostly invisible) elements is about perceiving what the players are capable of doing, and drawing that highest potential out of them. 

The great conductors look at you like they expect the moon, but they also look at you like they honestly believe that you can deliver it.  They also know from their own performance experience just how hard it is to do, so they appreciate the effort.  It is that, far more than the waving of a white stick, that will inspire a group of seen-it-all professionals.  Whenever I played in an orchestra, I was always painfully aware of just how cognizant and appreciative the conductor was of what I was contributing to the proceeding, and I, along with everyone else on stage, adjusted the energy and intensity of my performance accordingly.  Come on, what’s the point of cutting down a tree in the forest of there’s no one there to hear it? 

Where audiences are concerned, again, perceptions are key (this is somewhat similar to recognizing buyer personas, but on a grander scale).  It’s about perceiving the audience’s desires and emotions, and creating a sense of connection and communication.  Conducting is half managing, and half marketing.

I was watching this video of David Meerman Scott, and one of the things he says that struck me was that most hotel websites just talk about the hotel, and don’t display perception of the many different customers/ buyer personas:   



The same sort of thing often happened to me with conductors.  Instead of perceiving the players, they saw themselves as the center of attention, and would actually often utter the horrifically taboo phrase “watch me,” [read: "look at our many features"] as though our purpose in life was to pay attention to them instead of playing the gazillion nasty notes in the part.   Whenever a conductor said that to a professional orchestra, they immediately got the most perfunctory playing you can imagine. 

Here is what a player or an audience member or your customers would say to you if only they could: “ If you have no interest in knowing more about me and what I want, I have no interest in knowing more about you and what you want.”  This applies to bass players, and it also applies to leadership, management, and marketing too. 

© Justin Locke   


 

Listing in the International Musician

Well I was sitting here wondering why, in the midst of a recession and January etc., I was getting so many orders for Real Men Don't Rehearse . . .  At long last I was informed, it's listed in the Feb edition of the International Musician on page 11 . . .  I am no longer in the union so if any union members out there have a scanner I would love to see it!  

You can read excerpts, see a video of me telling stories (well worth a visit), and order the book on my website, justinlocke.com. 

Barnes and Noble just ordered a bunch of copies, also it is available at Union Music (San Francisco), Shattinger's in St Louis, Beethoven & CO in Tallahassee, Senseney Music in Wichita, West Music in Iowa, Spectrum Music and Johnson Strings in MA, and Patelson's in NYC.

  

Dealing with Gatekeepers

The topic for today’s blog on originality is "gatekeepers."

Gatekeepers affect just about every aspect of your life. Everything you see in a store was selected by a "gatekeeper," that is to say, someone that you may have never met has purchased wholesale items because they have analyzed you and they put out stuff that they think you will buy.

Gatekeepers are not only key to the chain of retail sales. There are gatekeepers for higher education (admissions committee), and of course gatekeepers abound in the world of the arts and literature.  If you want to do anything truly original at a professional level, you must have some skill in dealing with gatekeepers. Unfortunately, these skills are rarely if ever taught.

I am starting to think that I could write a whole book on the science of  the psychology of gatekeepers, but this being a blog I will try to keep it short. I will stick to areas with which I have some actual experience, i.e., speaking and writing and the classical music industry.

In the music world, you don’t really notice gatekeepers at the beginning, as any kid whose parents are willing to pony up money for a student clarinet and a series of lessons "gets in." In the amateur/civic realm, gatekeeping is largely just a vague collection of policies and political issues... it doesn’t get really interesting until you start to get to the professional gatekeepers.

The real gatekeepers are, of course, the big-time talent agencies and professional performing organizations. Suddenly, gate keeping gets very very serious. Anybody can pick up a clarinet and play it, but if you want to get paid real money to play the clarinet, somewhere, a gatekeeper has to pick you over all of your competitors.

Just before getting to the professional realm of something artistic, there enters in a new player, and since they have no name, I will name them "vanity gatekeepers." You see these people everywhere if you have ever made an attempt to do something artistic. As an author, every time I copyright something, I get a flurry of envelopes in the mail of people offering me an easy "in" to the world of publishing. They never guarantee anything in terms of actual sales. Everything is couched in "nurturing excellence," "this will help you move closer to your goal," "make your work the best it can be," "we will submit your manuscript to 500 agents (or search engines or what ever)"...  Their optimism about everyman's chance to write a bestselling novel is just wonderful.  Sort of.  Sadly, all their coaching tends to turn you into a not very unique entity, as you become what they think will sell, not what you are. 

If you have enough money, you can create a fantasy world where people are editing and critiquing your books, your manuscript is being submitted agents right and left, and your headshot and bio are being sent to every television and radio station in the country. As a speaker, I am endlessly dunned with e-mails from various pay-for-our-service outfits that offer endless seminars and DVD’s and weekend retreats and advice on how to become, not just an adequate or pretty good speaker, but a million-dollar speaker.

I have no objection to people offering educational or coaching services per se, but at a certain point, given that the ultimate real market is a very finite one, the implied promise of success that these people offer smells a little funny to me.

What vanity gatekeepers are really about is avoidance of rejection. Unlike actual gatekeepers who are largely unfindable, and when you find them they slam the door in your face because they just don’t need any more people than they already have right now, vanity gatekeepers will keep your hope alive. For a fee of course.

I confess, when my only gig for a week is a speaking appearance at the Eaglejaw Junction senior center, these grandiose visions of success offered in these vanity gatekeeper e-mails make me feel somewhat small and inadequate in comparison. But then I simply remind myself that I’m actually hustling up genuine gigs, and I’m actually selling my books, and most of all, money is coming in, not going out. And that is really the test.

Finding and romancing real-life gatekeepers is a devilishly tricky operation. Vanity gatekeepers imply that they can make this process simple, direct, and immediate. While there may be an instance here or there when that actually happens, such events, if they ever happen at all, are statistically insignificant. (One of my favorite disclaimers: "results not typical.")

Speaking about the music business for a moment, I occasionally hire orchestras for recording gigs (see "the heart of an orchestra contractor," right column) ... and the first time I did that it was the first time I found myself in the role of a serious gatekeeper. And I was amazed at how inept most musicians were at dealing with me.

It seems to me that any legitimate training program for arts professionals should include a serious amount of thought and information about dealing with gatekeepers. But unfortunately, there’s so much money in vanity gatekeeping that they have actually taken over most of that business, and they will probably continue to crowd out the hard-core information, as the real truth, that in reality, you probably won’t make it in this business... is bad for their business of selling (mostly false) hope.

If you really want to succeed, the real story is an old one and a simple one: you just keep at it. You just persist. You polish your craft and you improve. And the more you persist and the more you improve, the greater you have a chance of getting a "break." Real gatekeepers, for the most part, are all full up with all the talent they need, but every once in while somebody dies or moves out of town or retires, and none of their relatives want the job, and that magical looking glass into professional whatever-ing opens just for a moment. At that moment, that gatekeeper needs you desperately, and you need to understand that they are a customer, and since they are paying you, the environment and the rules and the etiquette and protocol are completely different.

Actually, your average real-life gatekeeper leads a life of quiet desperation, because they are usually working for someone else and they are under immense pressure to deliver a quality product, and really good quality anything is so hard to find.  But it is also important to note that they are all very different unique people-- some will hate you no matter what, others will see your ability and give you a shot.

Gatekeepers can often seem very frightening and unapproachable, but they are human and they are vulnerable (and oh how I wish someone had taught me that when I was a student.) If you understand what they need, and don’t look to them as surrogate parents whose job is to recognize your otherwise unappreciated genius, you will succeed where others, with those beautiful press kits that cost $500, have no chance.

© Justin Locke

Bad guys aren't always all bad

I think it was a Niccolo Machiavelli who first said, "no man is entirely good or entirely evil." And if I have not said this to you before, Machiavelli’s Discourses is one of the best management books ever written.

Anyway, I am starting to notice more and more that we live in a totally pure-good versus pure evil intellectual environment these days. Just in this past election, it was painfully obvious that whoever you were voting for, the attitude of almost everyone was, my candidate is a flawless angel, and your candidate is a demon from the depths of hell. As Bertrand Russell once said, "when both sides believe this, logically speaking, both cannot be true statements. So one of them is correct, or none of them is correct." (By the way, his "Unpopular Essays" is one of my favorite books of all time... one of those true classics that no one ever reads anymore I guess.)

Rather than being a political discussion, however, this is really more of an artistic discussion. As a storyteller, I know all too well the drama that is implied in the conflict between good and evil. But what has happened with the non stop highly simplified good versus evil stories that we are offered now on a regular basis (in movies and in political campaigns), the bad guys are 100% bad, and the good guys are 100% good. This is fine for those who need to crank out a lot of cheap readily effective entertainment, but the net result is we have a largely emotionally illiterate population that cannot accept the idea of gray shades of rightness or wrongness.

What I am discovering more and more in my discussions with people about just about any topic you care to name is that there is always a major emotional investment in one side of the argument or another.  This is a sure indication that people are not entirely certain of their position-- the emotional energy comes from their inner doubt.  everyhing needs to be couched in pure ideas of heaven or hell.  unfortunately, most of life lies somewhere between the two. 

One of the skills required of debate teams is the ability to advocate for one side of an issue and then completely flip around and be an advocate for the other side. As a society we are losing that objectivity. And it is a responsibility of people in the arts education world to address this. It is our job and no one else’s to calmly articulate what it means to be a human being.

For example, for a "bad guy" character to really be of any real artistic merit (i.e., be somewhat reflective of the truth), the bad guy has to be a mix of good and evil. Classic examples: Othello and MacBeth both started out as really good guys, but circumstances and human frailty led them to do some not so nice things. One of my favorite "bad guys" is Captain Hook – he sings, he dances, he just happens to be a pirate. Another one of my favorite "bad guys" is one of my own creation, the wolf in "Peter VS. the Wolf." While his total guilt and evil are assumed at the start, as the show goes on it becomes more and more difficult to tell whether he is evil, or a victim of a vicious conspiracy. And one of the reasons he is such an appealing bad guys because he has such a complicated combination of good and evil within himself.

But people who are producing horror movies or vying for political power have no time for such niceties. They know that most people are eager to believe in the presence of a totally evil demon that exists wholly outside of themselves. And until we can, both individually and as a society, start accepting the fact that we are not perfect, we will forever be suckers for people who have figured out how to use that fantasy desire to manipulate us.  Part of our own inherent "evil" (in that it is a lie born of fear) is our childlike need to believe that we are morally superior 24 hours a day, and the people who disagree with us are the devil incarnate. 

If you disagree with me, well, you are obviously morally bankrupt. 

© Justin Locke

www.justinlocke.com

Issues of copyright

Being a writer, playwright, and occasional media producer, I of course have to deal with issues of copyright on a fairly regular basis.

Just to bring you up to speed on the most important basics of copyright issues:

1) when what you create is put into a "fixed" form, you own copyright in it immediately. In other words, talking to yourself as you walk down the street is not copyrighted, but if you’re running a little voice recorder of yourself, it is. Or, if you write it down afterwards, it is copyrighted... assuming of course it’s your own original work.

2) you do not have to register the "work" with the Library of Congress to have copyright. However, as I understand it, it’s a lot easier to sue people for infringement damages if you do.

3) ownership of copyright can only be assigned or transferred to another party if the creator signs a piece of paper saying so. This can take one of many forms.  For example, your contract with your employer may include what is called a "work for hire" clause, which says that anything you create in the course of your employment is owned by your employer, not you. You can also have a work for hire contract with someone for a single creation.

4) duration of copyright: as of about 10 to 12 years ago, duration of copyright is life plus 90 years. And this last item is the topic of today’s blog.

A little bit of history (FYI, copyright law varies from country to country, and I am not a lawyer, so please don’t take any of this vague information too literally, I’m not really checking the numbers all that carefully): it used to be that copyright only existed in pieces that actually had the copyright symbol on them. So you didn’t own copyright in a letter/ essay that you wrote unless you actually actively claimed that by affixing the copyright symbol. Also, copyrights used to run from the date of creation of the work (not the death of the author/creator), for about 30 some years, and then if you wanted to extend that you had to file papers with the government to extend the length of the copyright. That too, has all changed.

The reason this has all changed is because one Sonny Bono (of Sonny and Cher) got elected to Congress and actively pushed the new copyright law, extending it to life of the creator plus 90 years.

There are some obvious benefits to this new law to certain entities. The most notable beneficiaries are movie studios and music producers, a.k.a. "media conglomerates." For example, the Disney company was once looking at some of its biggest long-time moneymakers, i.e., the original full-length feature cartoons created back in the 1930s, going into public domain. Not anymore. They can continue to sell them to their hearts' content until something like 2023 least. And the other obvious beneficiaries are the heirs of famous writers and composers and songwriters, assuming those writers, composers and songwriters did not work under a "work for hire agreement" for a large media conglomerate.

I am all for people making money off of intellectual property. I do it myself. However, for purposes of creating an ever more informed citizenry, here is the other side of all this that you’ll never hear:

Just a personal note, my intellectual properties that I’ve created over the years are tremendously near and dear to my heart. And it is my sincere hope and wish and desire that some of my plays will be performed after I am dead. I also hope that people will read my books long after I’m dead. But here’s the problem: With such long copyright periods, I have no idea who is going to be managing my intellectual properties 86 years after I’m dead. I mean, I can assign ownership to a brother or sister or cousin or niece or nephew, and have some idea of their character and I can at least some hope that they will do what I want done with these properties. But assuming I stay in good health, the most any of them will live past me is, what, maybe 50 years? So there’s another 40 years of some unborn total stranger being in charge of the things most dear to my heart.

While it will no doubt pain my unborn great grand nephew to hear it, there is a part of me that wishes that the copyright length didn’t go quite so long. To me, performances of my works and people reading my books are kind of like my idea of a great memorial. And if the person in charge of these properties is a lazy greedy irresponsible jerk (not that there any lazy greedy irresponsible jerks anywhere in my family tree), well, that might not be a good thing.  (of course, I could just declare it all to be in public domain . . .  I'll get back to you on that). 

OK, that’s my problem. But here is how this might affect you someday: let’s suppose you have an aunt Sarah who died three years ago. Her will and estate has been probated, or worse, she didn’t even have a will, and her property /estate has been distributed, etc. etc. Well, lo and behold, a distant cousin rummaging through an attic came across that same aunt Sarah’s memoir of being a little girl in Paris during the Nazi occupation. You show this to a literary agent, and they get all excited and say, hey maybe we could get this published and maybe sell it to a movie studio as well.

Well guess what: you will have to contact every single potential heir of your aunt Sarah in order to make this deal go, and every single one of you will have to sign off on the deal. And if your family is anything like mine, you know this is not an easy task.

So here is the real problem that happens to so many "obscure works": if you cannot come to an agreement with your relatives about how to sell this memoir, no one will be able to touch it or do anything with it for almost 90 years. While it certainly makes sense for Bambi to remain under copyright, as there are people who can make money selling it, obscure works that no one is really buying also remain protected and untouchable. In vaults all over Southern California, there are many lousy, but historically significant, movies made by small fly-by-night producers and studios back in the 30s that cannot be shown because it’s too much of a headache to find all the potential copyright owners. So we cannot look at them, even for scholarly or historical purposes, for fear of lawsuits.

So, all this copyright protection means an awful lot of stuff that might survive in a marginal way, if using it were free, will simply get lost or trashed. 90 years is a long time to hold on to something that you can’t sell or do anything with. Film dissolves into dust, diaries get moldy or eaten by bugs, etc.

It’s also kind of interesting to note that almost all of the big Disney productions are based on public domain folktales, and "Fantasia" was based on mostly public domain music (note, if today's laws had been in place 100 years ago, the nutcracker ballet would have been under copyright until 1983).  What would Disney have done if the story of "Snow White" had been under copyright when he wanted to make it? Not to mention Cinderella and Pinocchio.  If that very well known collectively owned story had not been freely available for creative enhancement, if instead there were many legal and financial issues in getting the "rights," all the wealth created by that production might not have been made.     

I don’t say this to rag on Disney. But it is important to understand in the whole concept of copyright, that yes, a creator should have exclusive right to exploit his or her work for a limited period of time. But in exchange for that governmental legal protection offered by society to the artist/creator, at some point that work becomes collectively owned by all of us. Not because we want to do "redistribution of wealth," but because once it goes in the public domain we can take it and build upon it and do something new, just as Disney once built something new on public domain folktales himself. That freedom of new creation creates far more wealth than just reselling something that was made 80-120 years ago.

As things stand right now, because of the 90 year copyright law, nothing, and I mean nothing, will go into the public domain for another 15 years.

Personally, I don't think it’s such a good idea to enrich the great great grandchildren of a few very talented people at the expense of everyone else. Of course, my great grandparents weren’t very talented. If they had been, I would probably have a very different point of view. But in the larger picture, by giving such huge longevity to copyright ownership (and there’s no reason to believe that it won't be extended again by congress 10 years from now), this risks encouraging the growth of media oligarchies. And if they are making plenty of money off the old stuff, they are going to be that much less inclined to create new stuff.

Just my opinion.

note another blog entry on this that offered a solution:

http://newmusicstrategies.com/2008/07/19/how-long-should-music-copyright-be/

© for the rest of my life plus 90 years, which with luck will be the year 2135, so nobody can touch this, reprint it, or do anything with it until then without specific legal permission from me or my many distant relatives whose address and phone are unknown . . . --  Justin Locke

www.justinlocke.com