Muses never stop

‘New’ normality

NBy Cezary Owerkowicz

owadays it is difficult to write anything without mentioning the word pandemonium created by the pandemic. (Once I called it ‘Terrible Strangler’ (TS), because it strangles us personally as well as our societies, our life, freedom and activities.)

Now all of a sudden we have found ourselves in the situation of the ‘contemporary cave man’ which is impossible not to think about in terms of its influences and situations for our life, personal and common, for human activities in every field, including health, education, business, but also culture, including music; considering common problems which sometimes brings similar and sometimes very different reflections and conclusions.

Here Terrible Strangler is wreaking havoc. If you want to, think that artistes are unnecessarily trying to spend time in quarantine without listening to music, watching movies, images and games. Now, that we spend most of our time at home the need for art is gaining momentum. Artistes don’t use it, they are temporarily unemployed which no one knows how long it will last. From day to day concert, spectacles, film premieres have been cancelled.

It is about considerable amounts as well as the number of people working for that sector of the economy. Portal ‘Statista’ informs us that revenues of the world music industry last year were $56.74 billion and for this year it is assumed above $60 billion. The revenues from concert tours in 2019 were $5.55 billion. There was an estimation that music market would grow regularly to $65 billion in 2023. The current crisis can significantly change these forecasts.

The canceled events for industry are not only unrealized revenues but also financial losses. Especially if the performances were to take place now or the near future and organizers had already incurred costs associated with them.

Owerkowicz

Advance

Major Festivals such as ‘Coachella’ (Indo, Ca), ‘Lollapalooza’ (Chicago) or last year record breaking revenues from ‘Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival’ (San Francisco) should be planned one year in advance. While preparing the event for the start takes a few months, it’s hard for an organization not to cost even if there are not performances.

In Europe one of the counterparts of giants from across of Atlantic, gathering hundreds of thousands of people is ‘Glastonbury Festival (Pilton, England). It is also cancelled although it was planned for as far as in June. An announcement by the organizers said: ‘We cannot allow the thousands of crew members for the next months to build infrastructure and prepare attractions for the expected 200,000 spectators.’ However, not only the preparation will be interrupted. You also have to pay for what has been done so far and return the money for those who bought the tickets.

58 million tickets were sold for global tours in 2019. ‘Billboard’ reports that for this year’s performances the pre-sale was almost 50 million tickets. It was assumed that 2020 would be higher than last year by 30 percent in terms of audience number. It will not surpass, unfortunately. For some of the postponed events, even for 2021, tickets are still valid, but not all new dates match, so returns are. Organizers who are now suffering such losses would try to compensate them when situation will come back to normal. Then we will expect higher ticket prizes, when the concerts recovers.

But let’s not just talk about the bad sides of situation. If we have no influence on something, let’s stop worrying about it. One day we can dream about going to the concert of our favorite artistes. Today the artistes come to our homes alone, exactly to laptops, phones, and where everybody connects to the world.

Opportunity

There have not been such concerts yet, straight from the private salon of our idol, amongst the home mess and children or pets running around. Our favorites play and sing for us, and we can preview their houses, flats and apartments. This opportunity will never happen again, because till all wellknown had diligently guarded their privacy and didn’t let anyone into their messy kitchen.

The artistes try and find the way to reach fans despite the ban on gathering. There are many different ways. Some of them edit new songs. In mid-March Swedish metal formation ‘Amaranthe’ announced that they had started recording their 6th album. Its members promised to transmit from studio reports of their work, even on the early stage; encouraging everyone to wash their hands and calling to ‘Share love not viruses.

The American group ‘OneRepublic edited ‘Better Days’ song done at once during… quarantine in London, after contacts with infected people. They closed themselves inside the studio of their leader, Ryan Tedder and completed a record of album ‘Human’ (Interscope Records). Part of the income will go to the foundation MusiCares that support musicians the most affected by the crises.

At the same time artistes try to support the contemporary heroes, the people of medicine protecting our life and health, sometimes at the cost of their life. Symbolic was a concert on April 18, called by Lady Gaga bringing together the cream of the cream of pop stars under the name ‘One World. Together At Home. Before and during the event donations were collected – a few tens of US million dollars; money is still coming.) However she called: ‘We wanted to collect money before the concert, so when we are broadcasting put down wallets, credit cards… and enjoy the show you all deserved.’

Exhibitions

How it is with artistes in other fields? For Philharmonic and Operatic musicians balconies replaced concert halls. Galleries, exhibitions, even auctions hid in real and opened on the Internet. Film makers and producers delayed premieres or released movies on TVs, some arranged e.g. Corona Short Films Festival also on Internet.

On the agenda of ‘defrosting calendar’ concerts and stadium events are last. For many artistes it is a cut off from income, and main if not the only source of income. Because of it many artistes reacted quickly with streaming activities, but after first month the real questions popped up how to survive pandemic and where to seek help?

I found in my region that some actors not so widely popular (but not only – it also depends on personal foresight!) started to work as couriers and even vegetables traders. The misery had already struck them.

I believe that after time of isolation and all virtual experience, people will have a great desire to taste art the traditional way.

We heard often a promise that we will come back to normality soon (I hope!), but it will be a ‘new’ normality. Whenever you look, people who used to live everyday matters, often ask themselves for the first time in their life, what was normal in our interrupted normality. How often we considered what this ‘normality’ is and what is ‘normal’? Not too often, I suppose, but we do not know yet what was that interrupted normality, we started already to talk about that new normality.

Survive

I don’t think so, that this culture of rush we faced, immediate reward or attraction, shorter horizon of thinking, doing everything as quickly as possible, could survive. Will hermit months teach us to evaluate deeper experiences? Not just results, measurable, immediate. After all, measuring everything that was possible became grotesquely limited. The production rush has infected our whole life. We created a culture of unbearable race. Now the clocks slowed down.

We believe more in our immortality than the virus will kill us. I’m afraid about the scenario that when the epidemic finally recedes, we will return to what was before, as if nothing had happened, without any reflection. It could be the worst.

There are more questions than answer? However, I hope that muses never stop.

Editor’s Note: Cezary Owerkowicz is the chairman of the Kuwait Chamber of Philharmonia and talented pianist. He regularly organises concerts by wellknown musicians for the benefit of music lovers and to widen the knowledge of music in Kuwait. His email address is: cowerkowicz @ yahoo.com and cowerkowicz@ hotmail.com