Yesterday a friend wrote to tell me that her 9 year-old is busily loading up her iPod with some of her favourite music: Disney, Michael Jackson, Lynn Harrison!
I'm truly honoured.
(I wonder which songs will come up on "shuffle". Will Disney's "High School Musical" miraculously follow my "First Day of School"?)
I'm so glad that my music brings joy to this delightful girl--and I'm grateful it does so without all the entertainment-business machinery that surrounds my playlist companions.
After all, that machinery created "Michael Jackson", the brand, but it helped destroy Michael Jackson, the human being.
This is a good time to notice the benefits of being a lesser-known artist and to celebrate the wonders of small-scale production. It's wonderful that, in our time, we can create music that is easily reproduced and enjoyed on iPods everywhere. Imagine!
Produced on relatively small budgets, it may be "imperfect" by some standards...but it can also be meaningful, beautiful and whole. In the end, what else matters?
Alongside Michael Jackson's, our songs can live on, independent of us. Meanwhile, if we're lucky, we can create balanced lives that make sense of our various occupations. We can keep our egos in check and our expectations reasonable.
Hopefully we can accept ourselves as we are, and appreciate the miraculous days that we have.
Here's to the small "i"s on iPods everywhere...surviving just fine beside the big names.
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