last night, with one of my dearest friends in the world, i got to experience the force that is massive attack. i've spent a bit of time writing here about music -- going to shows and having some pretty incredible experiences. music is and always has been my life. i mean really. i collect it, i seek it out, i relish in the feeling of that song or that riff that transports me to some other place, some other memory. i've been listening to the new massive attack album pretty obsessively for the past however many months, starting with the Heliogland EP. the first time i heard 'pray for rain' i got that rush --a transporting, transforming, what-the-hell-am-i-hearing rush. now, i know this isn't their best song, or nearly their best album. i get a lot of 'they were better long ago' opinions. but for me, there's something deep that this album reaches. and, really, i cannot resist hope sandoval. i melt every time i hear her.last night, the very talented songstress, martina topley-bird, performed with the band, and she was fantastic. they all were. i didn't have many expectations for the show. just an opportunity to get in front of huge sound and lose myself for a while. i got that...and quite a bit more. the stage set up was comprised of a huge backdrop of LED ticker display screens a few inches apart, creating a canvas for words and digital images that cascaded behind the band throughout the show. it was so simple. and so amazingly powerful. every word, every image, politically provocative, triggering, highly charged. snippets of descriptions of torture from gitmo, quotes about freedom followed at the end by a simple question: "What the fuck, Arizona?" In case you didn't know, Massive Attack has something to say.
other images included silhouettes of people migrating, perhaps across borders, perhaps to refugee camps followed by running headlines from the tabloids. stats and facts from around the world -- number of days someone can be detained without cause in a dozen countries (7 days in Ireland, 43 days in the UK, indefinitely in the US). the encore came off huge with a hard hitting version of 'Atlas Air' that began with the creation of a flight departure board listing domestic flights and then extradition flights, morphing into simple red, white and black graphic representations of flags that slowly transformed into a barrage of corporate logos rotating faster and faster until they all just blurred together. there was no question of the message: our priorities are fucked. our world is too. do something about it, for fuck sake.
say what you will about art and politics. last night inspired me, got me fired up, reminded me of why i live my life the way i do. i believe in art. i believe in its power to transform the way we think and feel and see and hear. music has been doing this for me my whole life. so has art. i've been working with the flaming lotus girls for about a year now, building huge, interactive, metal fire art. right now, i'm spending nearly 30 hours a week building a huge piece of art with a community of people who have vision and passion and brilliant ideas and who also believe that we can change something with what we do (http://www.temple2010.org). it may not be everything, but it is always something.
we've all got the opportunity to make something in the world. and despite how definitely dismal it all is, we are not the first to experience a moment in time that feels desolate and depressing and devoid of any hope for change. we are also not the first to find our voice and say something about how and what needs to change. and we are certainly not the first to try to inspire change in whatever way it's possible. i'll keep making art and teaching people how amazingly capable they are of doing the same, just as people have taught me. i hope you will, too.
(Image above via Flick user Umbar)
(Video below from YouTube User Fourad)
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