the timboucher experience

Excellent article applying the concept of the 100-mile diet to an arts setting, bringing into focus the actual purpose of what an artist is in the first place within a specific community and context:

As songwriters who want to be successful by our culture’s standards, we tend to think that our music has to travel far in order to matter. We need to tour widely, or at least be heard beyond our local communities, via radio or the Net. We tend to believe (sometimes it’s an unconscious thing) that a non-touring local musician, especially one who hasn’t recorded his or her work, is less important than one whose product is shipped a greater distance.

But if we actually start living as environmental leaders recommend, getting more of our food closer to home, and choosing to buy and consume less, we might also start to value local artists in new ways. Local songwriters might feel more empowered to write songs grown organically in a real time and place…and we might not feel badly anymore if those songs (or if we as individuals) don’t travel so much.

This re-framing might encourage songwriters to respond in a more particular, specific way about what’s going on in their neighbourhoods, and to consciously sing the songs for the people there. The aim of writing a great song would be not to have it recorded by a big Nashville star, but to help actual people, right here and now. That kind of song, like that kind of great-tasting organic food, is nourishing to the soul. If songs are like food, maybe we can grow our own.

It’s nice to see these sorts of subjects spoken about from another angle, especially one which shows that not all artists are self-centered bores hell-bent on mega-stardom.

• The Map is Not the Territory! Or Is It?
• Good Man of the Hundred
• The Hundred Flowers Campaign
• Artist Needed to Paint Bus
• FUNDRAISING REQUEST. Need $200 for bills