The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Twelve - Small groups change the world

by NDK Creative Artist

In the twelfth installment of NDK Creative Artist’s Points of the Creative Artists’ Code series, we explore the importance of Creative Artists working together and collaborating to effect great change in society. - Joel Falconer, Editor-in-Chief

Small groups of Creative Artists operating together under the banner of a common purpose have brought about sweeping beneficial changes in society. When they let themselves be driven apart, they lost that power and they lost their industry. Along with this they lost the respect of their public. Times got hard. Then they got harder. Realize that this industry survives best when we act together in full recognition of each one of us to effect positive change and that together, supporting each other’s talent we are an unstoppable force for positive change.

Commitment is such a big word. It makes plenty of demands upon those who embrace it, fully, openly and in the proper spirit. Rare are the individuals, in a material world, who are capable of embracing it.

The periods referred to here are the pioneering periods of the First Renaissance and the 1960s (Second Renaissance) when idealism still had some merit, and long before capitalism and the corporatocracy had invaded the art & entertainment industry and set up camp.

That would happen within the decade and the decline of the free spirit of the art & entertainment industry would start the slide into materialism and become:

• a tool of imperialism,
• the most profitable industry sector and
• a means of fueling the ambition of a rapacious rogue nation pretending to love, own and have a monopoly on freedom, and pretty much everything else.

For a time, the development of the creative industries was phenomenal, and money was plentiful, and then it began to tighten.

The great songwriters of the Sixties became lonely voices of a generation that has since lost its way. So did the voices of a generation of filmmakers. A new order had taken over the independent voice of free articulators, who made movies and wrote songs that moved the world in a new direction.

We don’t have too many voices that are doing this sort of thing any more. Here and there a few voices, such as Green Day, bucked the system somehow, independents who managed to produce records that captured a more truthful sense of what’s right, good and true. The Dixie Chicks are another example.. Pearl Jam, yet another.

Six Giants

The conglomeration of the industry began concentrating power in the hands of six global giants, who gobbled up every independent using all manner of subterfuge, clout, leverage and tactic, legal and illegal.

The monopolization of the art & entertainment industry was well in hand and would stifle a lot of independent voices and begin the manufacture of artists and material that was designed to do but a few things, and most of them to do with selling products to youth culture and establishing brand loyalties intended to last entire lifetimes for products that ruin health, create illnesss and serious chronic medical disorders.

All accomplished while creating an appearance of traditional youthful rebellion, while in reality teenage angst was being manipulated, shaped and controlled in ways that would ensure economic enslavement and lock-in to brand loyalty.

The focus of songs would narrow and begin excluding any of the sort of material that encouraged free thinking, spirituality (other than that of the Old World Order), and awareness of anything beyond the narrow confines of sexuality and relationship disorder.

In the movie industry the focus moved away from rebellion to action, and the focus on a mythology that panders to jocksterism, and supports the concepts of a nation running on a war footing to ensure a constant stream of blind patriots, underpinned by a set of ideals that had long since been usurped and were already well on the way to being openly spurned and derided by those who had sworn to protect them as their highest duty. As power begins to assert itself the need for subterfuge falls away to reveal the horrific face of facism.

The wooing and corralling of free expression has been the aim of the power elite ever since they took power. Why? Because artists are first of all keen observers, and they see too much. Secondly, artists are communicators and they talk too much. Thirdly, because of their ability to communicate artists are able to motivate, and motivation leads to action, and action? That just means they do too much.

I don’t know if you’ve read an earlier article in this series on the Code Points, where I talked about being told I “think too much.” I find the idea of “seeing too much”, “talking too much” and “doing too much” to be spurious ideas, that are intended to bring about directed and controlled action, or no action at all.

How can one “see too much”? I do agree there are instances where people do appear “to talk too much,” but if you really listen to what those people are saying there’s usually nothing to what they have to say. It’s babble, it’s not communication.

Communication has substance. Communication has value. Communication leads to an advance of some sort in the understanding and condition of those who receive it, or it is not communication. It’s babble.

There are people who cannot tolerate silence. Similarly there are people who cannot tolerate open space. So they have to fill up the silence, and the space.

This is where works of art help to make life livable, they serve a function and purpose, by helping us to fill up space and silence. This is a very basic purpose not often considered.

One of the odd things about the effect of works of art & entertainment that identifies them as works of art & entertainment is that they liberate and expand our minds, our internal spaces and our awareness from the borders and boundaries we and life place upon those qualities that enable us to experience the full value of life. There is more to be said about this, but that will suffice for now.

The point is that the effect of works of art is liberating upon the hearts, minds, and spirits of mankind. Liberating on every level. Some works confine their effects to one of those areas, for example addressing only an intellectual or an emotional level. The greater works tend to work at all levels intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.

Human Concerns at Heart

At the heart of the Creative Artist is an abiding concern for the welfare of humanity. The desire for humanity to succeed drives every work created in some way large or small. This is what drives the creation of great works, the desire to reveal to the world in a way that it can receive it, the condition that has become clear to the artist that the world is ignoring, or not assigning appropriate value to, in such a way as to reawaken, or renew awareness of that condition.

Why? To bring about a change of awareness and a change of condition. You see this manifesting in various ways in the lives and works of artists, where they embrace particular causes and dedicate their work to issues that deserve that public’s attention.

The Bond of Truth

This can happen because of the bond of truth that exists between artist and public. Artists are not islands of isolation, they are an integral part of the community and society, and they are important to the health and well-being of that society and the future of civilization.

Thanks for your attention to this idea. If you have any questions, or comments then I will do my best to respond to them as I can.

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If you'd rather we did all the hard work, you're in luck. Here's a list of articles that are related to this one:

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• The Rise of the Independent Creative Artist - Prince, Radiohead Lead Way with Bold Marketing Moves
• The Points of the Creative Artists’ Code: Fourteen - Creating Ideal Scenes
• Creativity and conflict