Watching the Seahorses Dance

A little while ago I decided, as I frequently do, to look up something of vague interest on Wikipedia. In this case, the subject was seahorses. I was aware, having learned it in that strange osmosis fashion by which I pick up a lot of my quasi-knowledge, that male seahorses were the ones who became pregnant, but I didn't really know how. And it occurred to me that, for animals if not humans, the carrying of children is pretty much the definition of being female. If a male can become pregnant, in what sense is it as male?

Well, I found out the answer to this question (it turns out the male impregnates the female, and then she passes the job of gestation onto him, in what you could quite appropriately call a biological egg-and-spoon type transfer). But whilst satisfying this little morsel of curisoity, I discovered something else that I found rather more interesting. This is what the article has to say about seahorse courtship:

"When two parties discover a mutual interest at the beginning of breeding season, they court for several days, even while others try to interfere. During this time they have been known to change color, swim side by side holding tails or grip the same strand of sea grass with their tails and wheel around in unison in what is known as their “pre-dawn dance”. They eventually engage in their “true courtship dance” lasting about 8 hours".

It then goes into the mechanics of the process, as mentioned above, and after that continues:

"Throughout the male’s pregnancy, his mate visits him daily for “morning greetings”. The female seahorse swims over for about 6 minutes of interaction reminiscent of courtship. “They change color, wheel around sea grass fronds, and finally promenade, holding each other’s tails.” "

(The internal quote comes from an article titled 'Pregnant-and Still Macho - seahorses', by Susan Milius, in Science News, March 11, 2000. By the way.)

Now because I'm an old softy, I did find the idea of these strange-looking creatures dancing with each other as they go through the experience of child-rearing quite touching. It's an undeniably beautiful image, and one for all the romantics out there. But, because I'm also an old logic-y, it didn't take long for my more sensible side to weigh in. The seahorses aren't dancing together because they're romantic; they don't even have the choice. They're following instinct, a pre-programmed biological operating system that has presumably come about due to some kind of evolutionary advantage. Or even, considering how fickle nature is, something that doesn't have all that much to do with helping the species but isn't harmful anough to be evolved out yet.

Being logical can be a real bastard sometimes.

But as well as being a romantic, and a realist, I also just can't let things go. I kept thinking about the seahorses. And I'm also (I like to think) an optimist. This doesn't mean, as some people think, naively hoping for things to turn out well. An optimist is someone who simply looks for a positive aspect to things. And that's what I got from learning about seahorses. Yes, I acknowledge that, to the creatures themselves, the dancing is meaningless. But it doesn't have to be that way for me.

I got something from learning about it, something that made me happy. If the world doesn't provide meaning on its own, then it is up to us to find it. Many of us do, and we can be criticised for it; we get called things like naive, childish, unrealistic, romantic (some people use this word like it's an insult). But it really is nothing to be ashamed of. Whether it's finding four-leaf clovers, climbing mountains that happen to be higher than other mountains, or watching the seahorses dance, we can make this world special. If and when we choose to.

Matt Berninger Hero-Worship.

As Dave McCormack once screamed over crashing guitars in a uniquely nonsensical climax, the words are important! the words are important!*

As much value as I get out of the sweeping beauty of Slowdive, Mogwai or My Bloody Valentine, and the grated fear of Shellac or The Mark Of Cain, my heart has always been drawn to words. By the time I had finished high school, I had abandoned most of my adolescent anger for the resigned detachment of I Am Kloot's Johnny Bramwell ('there's blood on your legs, I love you') or the enigmatic chants of dEUS' Tom Barman ('this place isn't real man, this girl is a whore, watch me fall to the floor'). More and more, the songsmiths who find their way into my life are those who bring the personal to the universal. Holly Throsby, Alan Sparhawk, Mark Kozelek... Matt Berninger.

Despite many recommendations over several years, I have only just now become obsessed with The National.

Substitute the name 'Karen' for Berninger's real-life girlfriend Corinne - who apparently looked over and corrected the lyrics before the finished product was released - and try not to be softened to a quivering paste by this:

Karen won't you take me to the nearest famous city middle, where they hang the lights, where it's random and it's common versus common? I've got five hundred in twenties, and I've got a ton of good ideas, I'm really worked up. I'm on a good mixture, I don't want to waste it. I want to go gator around the warm beds of beginners...

And then:

Parking your car you said 'I'm overwhelmed,' you were thinking out loud you said, 'I'm overwhelmed.' You said, 'I think I'm like Tennessee Williams, I wait for the click, I wait but it doesn't kick in.' I have weird memories of you.

Even though I have no right to understand, I think I do. I feel my whole life has been lived as a mere incident in Berninger's conception of humanity.

And now I too wait for the click.



* Custard, Nice Bird - This world divides into people who think there's two kinds of folks, and those who don't. Trey's got the Feathers and a 12-guage shotgun, Volkswagons from the Reich! I've got a nice bird, I've got a nice bird. There's a stretch of road out past The Gap, where they are taking some snaps, stick to the music champ, the words are important! THE WORDS ARE IMPORTANT!

That First Accidental Meeting.

I remember this weather,
The dank scent of late May,
The rain closing in, the cold far away.
I remember this weather.

I remember this building,
Your friends saw our first new hello,
A quick glance and then time to go,
I remember this building.

I remember that book sale,
All of those posters I covered in tape,
Only in turn they were all drenched in rain,
I remember that book sale.

All other words don't belong any more,
I put up a poster, you pass through the door.

I remember that party,
When strangers asked how long we had been placed aside,
And we told them how long it had been 'til tonight,
I remember that party.

I remember that evening,
When years of strained anger convinced me to flee,
To new beds to sleep in and new cities,
To new morning coffees and newfound unease,
To new innocence and new casualties,
I remember that evening.

They never believed us, they thought there'd be more,
I put up a poster, you passed through the door.

Brave?

MGMT - The Youth
(Yes, this post has a soundtrack.)

Tonight I walked to the supermarket, just me and my calico bags, in the dark, in the rain. And, again, I felt brave.

Bravery is a prized human commodity, and it's easy to see why. In almost every situation, somebody needs to be brave. Sometimes we even need a hero. Sometimes somebody needs to pull the trigger, crash the landing, make the jump, the climb, the step. But most of the time, there's no burning building, no trapped children, no screams for help. Most of the time, we meet bravery with ignorant silence.

Yet we certainly still need as much bravery as we can muster. Somebody needs to drive the ambulance, wear the uniform, take the blow. Somebody needs say the right thing (however unpopular). We're not talking climbing Everest here. At some point, we will all need to be brave. Hell, sometimes to even be alive is bravery enough.

As I walked through the rain, I thought of all of my years of cowardice. But in those dark, wet streets I could have been anywhere: the archipelago of Slussen, the street stalls of Rynek Glówny, places where I have walked on my own through the night with nothing but a passport and sense of adventure. Only, that didn't feel brave at all. And sure, this is home, but everywhere is home to someone. Sometimes even to be home is bravery enough.

You know what? I am starting to change. I'm starting to change, and I don't have any idea what I'm doing. It frightens me. Most of the time I feel like huddling in a corner with my hands over my eyes. But maybe, right now I'm the bravest I've ever been.

The Intoxicated Adelaidean White Boys' Choir

(Companion to Ben's 'Binge'.)

Just recently, myself and two close and long-standing friends decided we'd take a break from the freakishly large small town that is Adelaide and spend a long weekend in Melbourne. For two of us, it'd be our first opportunity to see a city where stuff, not to put too fine a point on it, happens. For the third, it'd be a chance to show off his love for a now familiar place to two trusting and eager tourists. The plans were enticingly basic: soak up some atmosphere, forget about our respective jobs and troubles, and drink heroic amounts of alcohol.

As well as doing a pretty good job on these, we had a bunch of other entertaining encounters, most of which we could never have predicted. I could tell any number of stories: the girls we found in our double-booked room the first night (who, of course, were not only from our home town but also attended the same school as Ben and I), the joys of retro clothes shopping, a set of experiences in each airport that frankly made me despair for the entire human race. But there is one incident that, for me, is a shining beacon of delight in an already deeply satisfying trip. It happens on a Saturday night, somewhere around Northcote.

We've just left a concert, aglow with musical appreciation and a modest amount of alcohol, and we're looking for a place to continue drinking and, hopefully, start dancing. We come across a small, unassuming bar. The lights are low and the people look like our sort. There's no dancing, but it certainly seems worth a drink or two. And the music, provided by a rather handsome black lady on decks, switches almost supernaturally from hip-hop to Lennon as we get our beverages - two G&Ts, one beer - and sit down.

We won't be there very long. The bar closes at 2.00 am, an hour fast approaching. The lack of dancing aside, we've enjoyed ourselves. We've been very happy with the choices of our DJ, which include songs like 'Young American', 'Golden Brown' and 'My Baby Just Cares for Me'. At ten-to-two, the DJ gets ready to play the last song. She turns to us, practically the only people left in the place, and says, "Sorry guys, but I gotta play some Etta James to finish." We assure her, with drunken amiability, that this is fine.

A moment later, a familiar orchestral swell plays. We bide our time, and then all together lauch enthusiastically into the first line: "At laaast, my love has come along..." And no sooner have we begun then our mistress of the decks bursts into immediate, uncontrollable laughter.

I wonder what exactly makes her laugh. Is it that we three are obviously very, very tipsy? Is it that our singing can at best be described as loud, and at worst would not be described at all for decency's sake? Is it simply the way we have boisterously defied her preceeding apology? Or maybe it's just that we are conspicuously a trio of white boys? Whatever the cause, it doesn't really matter. Because it wasn't a mocking laugh; it was one of pure, appreciative joy. I have rarely seen someone so delighted by something that, to us, would be practically unthinkable not to do.

We never found out the lady's name; I don't think we even knew the name of the bar, if indeed it had one. At the time I vaguely considered trying to get a photo with her, but I realise now that this would have imposed a certain artificiality on the moment. It was a sudden, spontaneous delight. And it means something special to me. Because, though I have been known to make people laugh with a witty aside, an absurd non-sequitur, or sometimes - to my slight shame - a scathing put-down, it is a rare and beautiful thing to cause pure happiness just by being who you are. The reward is as good for the bringer of the joy as for the recipient, maybe more so. It's a priceless treasure. And - let's face it - I don't often get the chance to look that funky.

Binge.

Impressions from a weekend in a bigger city.

It pays to be nice, even in mid-air. But clearly we didn't pay enough, because all of these people are awful. Their ineloquent voice-overs dictate our movements, and tell us that we'll be late. Quite late. And I pity the poor boy whose machine was still whirring as he wandered through. Sure, it might be dangerous, but a quick request would surely have been preferable to a ten-minute diatribe on just how he might have killed us all.

And it really was quite late. So late, in fact, that once we found our room we were unable to get out. We couldn't be given keys, let alone eat dinner. So it was that we sat by a table of drunks, the smell of spilling beer hovering through the open window, with a packet of biscuits and an empty Vergina.



I had forgotten the rain. This isn't the steady flow of home, not at all. From empty skies come a terrible flood, causing passers-by to evacuate to the nearest entrances. It was the library's painted archways which saved us from the terrible torrent. By the time we'd seen all the ancient manuscripts, winter had retreated and these bloody Autumn leaves came to greet me once again.



Soup from a stall in a laneway, poured from a ladle in a large wooden crate. Seating upstairs, they say. May we? Why, certainly, that's what it's there for.

Only, it's empty. Vide. Barren, save for the layers of dirty plates, souvenirs of the many who had come before. And the sign reading 'Home Made Ice Cream'. Yet no sign of Ice Cream, and thankfully, no sign of Home. A fully stocked bar, with a door wide open. Galliano, Bombay Sapphire, and the quiet hum of the fridge below. And there is nobody around. Not a staff member in sight, and it seems like nobody has cleaned up here for a while. Do you think we - think we could? I mean, couldn't we?



This is not just hospitality. This is war. Each restaurant a competitor, facing one another in a deadly game of conquest. Each hungry pedestrian a target in this pavement battle. Our first challengers seemed to come from the developing world, quietly mumbling to us in a language we could not understand. A plea, but never a bargain. But suddenly, we are arrested. We are held still by flowing words, laced with a magic not one of us could refuse. We huddle, like a football team before the last play of the third quarter. Our decision is made in an instant. We accept.

Two free bottles of wine. Score.



Oh, shut up. This is a supermarket, you can't go here. Go piss in the alleyway.



This place is full of bars. Not pubs, and certainly not clubs - bars. Where the lights are dim, and the clients wear coats and hats. And gloves. And the beers all arrived by sea from the continent, and the vodka came from beyond the Iron Curtain (cellared since before the Iron Curtain's demise. I can see this history in their eyes). I guess we'll stick to gin, hey? Gin it is. I shouldn't have drunk so much wine. But it was rather nice. Oh, this chair is comfortable. Seems to have come from the Victorian era, too, all wooden and padded and embellished with curves and edges. So comfortable, so...

... how long was I out for? You took photos? Fuckers.

Yes, bouncer, I slept well. Thanks for asking. Taxi.



I've been here before. Its blackened walls close in on me as I draw nearer. It is full of space - luscious, carefree space. Inside, glass jars reveal an unfamiliar face. Why this face? Why photocopied onto sheets of paper and placed inside glass jars? And why this tarantula light-fitting, without even a single light? And why all this space, for so few items of clothing? Why $250 for a black cotton t-shirt? Why?



Why does home seem so barren, when here is a playground of imagination? A satchel made entirely from the canvas material rescued from the roof of an impounded convertible. Score.



He's the singer in the band. I know him well. His voice echoes through the room, searching as always for notes which seem beyond reach. The voice is the same, but the songs are unfamiliar. And when I look at it, so is he.

He used to be so handsome. I once took a ladyfriend to see him, only to have her spend the hour relating just how much she desired him. I've seen him on the dancefloor, stumbling in circles, the remnants of a night's drinking carrying with each step, and yet still he left on the arm of a girl he hadn't even wanted. Now he's all blocked hair and porn-star moustache. Like he's trying his hardest to keep chaste.

She, however, is beautiful. And every one of us would marry her, without saying another word.



The question came suddenly, a soft voice from behind the locked door of the unisex toilet cubicle. Her name was Anna, but I never saw her face. I may forget her, but her wisdom will remain forever.

"What if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?"



At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are gone.

Don't laugh. Just because we're three white guys drinking German beer and gin don't mean we got no soul.



This was her city, and even now I can only see it through her eyes. These markets, these stalls, this coffee, were all hers to share. But that's all over now. All that she owed me has now, finally, been returned. She might not even know I'm here. And so I can reclaim this, this city, this life. I can take what I've been offered. Her shops, her clothes, her memories. Even vegetarian dumplings, though not the same ones. And it's not just the dumplings, either. It's the company. I'm sitting here, with her friends. Only, apparently they're now my friends. She might not even know that they're here with me. They are such lovely people, and the fears and tragedies that tumble through me never get in the way when we talk.

And we talk, although we don't mention her at all. That, at least, is all over now. Now it's about spaces, and times, and opportunities. We talk of things we can share, and ways we can hide. How can we circumvent the world, to do exactly what we want despite everyone else's expectations? It might be difficult, but it is possible.

And where have they taken me? This museum is quite odd, a collection of video games, just a history of my generation's wasted time.

And I think again, despite everybody else's expectations. Not hers, and not even my own. This is my city now. And I don't even live here.



This is my life now, too. If I can reclaim that city, I can reclaim myself. I'm not just passing through. I'm here, I'm home, and right now I have things to do.

And I have someone whom I want to see. And she even wants to see me.



So...

... what if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?

Swing Dancing.

(In response to Henry's 'Flirting, With Disaster' post below.)

Rock-step, kick-step, kick-step.

Once you have the footwork in order, you can turn to your partner. Who your partner is, well, that's of no importance here. Make sure you feel comfortable. Turn to her and assume the closed position. 5, 6, 7, 8. Rock-step, kick-step, kick-step. On the next bar, a subtle movement of your left hand will show her your intentions. Tuck-turn, open position. Pass-through. Now you're playing the game, following the pattern. All the other people in the room, gathered in a circle facing each other, are playing the same way. New song, new partner. The girls stand still, while the boys shift one partner clockwise. New girl, same moves. A subtle movement of your left hand will show her your intentions. You're the boy, you have to lead. You know all the moves, and it's up to you. Whether she likes you or not, she'll follow. Whether she likes you at all, you'll never tell. New song, new partner. Dance as metaphor for life.

Of course, life never works quite that way. The boy may not want to lead. The boy may not want to make decisions. The boy may still be having too much trouble finding his feet, searching too hard for the kick-step after the rock-step, to choose the next move. Even as he makes up his mind, he may not be gifted with the subtlety that allows his left hand to show her his intentions. New song, new partner, a smile and an apology. Life as a metaphor for dance.

It was only a one-hour lesson, but it taught me something very valuable. Sometimes I will have to take the lead. Sometimes I will have to show my hand - only a subtle movement is required to show her my intentions. The lesson was on Thursday night. I had the whole weekend in front of me. It is now Monday morning, and over the last three days I think I might have turned a corner. But on this side, the world is full of madness.

Flirting, with disaster.

I am currently single. To be more specific, I just recently became single again. There's a difference between being single for a long time and coming out of a relationship; it's like the difference between being constantly short of money - where you'd like to have more but you're used to doing without - and losing a fortune on the stock market overnight. So now I am, as they say, back on the market (somewhere in the bargain bins, I'd say). This is a place I really don't want to be, mainly because it means I'm grouped amonst other singles, and it seems the accepted way for singles to interact is to flirt with one another. This is a problem for me, because I can't flirt to save my love-life.

I can't say I've practiced the art much; they say if you've got it, flaunt it, but I never thought I had so I don't. But even assuming I had the bravado to go up to a girl I fancied and try my hand at impressing her, I actually do not know how to flirt. More than that, I don't understand the concept. That is to say, while I get its purpose, and envy people who can do it, I can't grasp the fundamental principles. I have no idea how to select those words that are flatter, entice, tease, even test the boundaries a little, all while making the recipient feel as if they are the most important person in the room. I love talking to people, but I'm more likely to discuss politics than tell them they're wearing a fantastic dress. To me, going up to a girl in a bar and flirting would make as much sense as attempting to broker a corporate merger on the dancefloor.

More than the words, though, I'm fascinated by the way two people who know each other only a little settle into their corresponding roles. It takes two to flirt, after all, at least to do it properly. How do guys and girls figure out the correct level of back and forth that separates flirting from, well, sleazing onto someone? Maybe it's because I'm not a very rhythmic person (as anyone who has seen me dance can attest) that it impresses me so.

Then again, maybe I'm not the only one. Not everyone manages it successfully. One person's red-hot moves are another's sad blunders, and I doubt anyone has a 100% success rate. Which leads me to wonder if you can flirt by accident. After all, if you don't know what you're doing, you wouldn't realise if you somehow got it right; a million monkeys on type-writers will probably bash out at least one line of Shakespeare. Find me in the right mood, on the right night (and a few drinks inside me will help) and suddenly talking to a pretty girl doesn't seem any harder than talking to my oldest friends. I don't know what kind of effect this has, but I've never had a restraining order put out on me.

And I'm always encouraged by, and appreciative of, those people who don't play by the rules. I'll long cherish the night I spent at a bar, drinking with some new acquaintances, when one of them said to their neighbour, in the middle of a completely different conversation, "You have such gorgeous eyes!" True, it was a straight (and married) girl saying this to another girl, but the fact that the comment was entirely unexpected, and completely genuine, gave me such a wonderful warm feeling inside. Because I'll never be good at flirting, like I'll never be good at spot-welding. But there's always fun to be had when you meet the strange people that make up this world and take them as they are.

Watching Grass Grow.

I can see my reflection in my office window, shadowed in the glow of artificial light fighting hard against the darkness outside. Beyond the pane, clouds have gathered, an ominous army of dark grey firing shots of water at the ground below. The war zone outside looms dangerously, and I feel it, despite the comfort of my temporary sanctuary. And yet, despite the risks lurking beside me, I can be nothing but excited. Rain in a drought-ridden city, although annoying, is a truly wondrous thing.

Because I have discovered that, contrary to perpetual English cliché, grass grows eerily quickly. Both my front and back yard were a cemetery of yellow not two weeks ago, and now they are alive with sweet, lush pastures of green. I have spent the last fortnight watching grass grow, and it has truly been a riveting display.

In other news, it took me a worryingly long time to realise that the Nice Jazz Festival was to be held in the quaint French city of Nice, and not just a festival dedicated to jazz in its most polite forms.

Singsongs.

Two years ago, Rickard Falkvinge, a Swede working for Microsoft, quit his job to establish the Piratpartiet: the Pirate Party. As its name suggests, the Piratpartiet is a single-issue party based around the issue of piracy, and in particular, encouraging legislation to decriminalise file sharing. At the 2006 election, it secured 35 000 votes in the Riksdag; not enough to win a seat, but enough to mark its place on the electoral landscape. Like any advocacy party, the Piratpartiet need not actually win a seat to pursue its agenda. Its electoral legitimacy - the potential for it to gain more votes in a subsequent election, away from the mainstream parties - gives it traction. Whether or not as a result of this traction, two days ago the Left Party reversed its support for anti-piracy laws, joining the Greens and the Centre Party.

Pirating copyright reform (On Line Opinion)
Left Party supports file sharing (The Local)

Of course, sharing of music was occurring long before the advent of broadband Internet. When I was a youngster rationing my pocket money, all I needed to do was borrow my favourite CDs from the public library, and then make a copy that would last me a lifetime. (I am still yet to own a copy of Nirvana's Nevermind.) File sharing has exacerbated a problem, of course, but exactly what is that problem?

The problem is that people are spending less money on CDs, and pay-per-file downloads are so clumsy that they are never going to reclaim that ground. There are two groups of people who are significantly disadvantaged as a result: record labels, and high-earning artists. When Metallica's Lars Ulrich successfully sued Napster, he wasn't just spoiling a party. Metallica is a highly profitable business able to attract a seemingly endless slew of new, young fans whose natural obsessiveness encourages them to spend every cent of their pocket money on the band's entire back catalogue. However, these kids are also fickle enough to not care greatly about the band's tactile art, and are unlikely to be interested in having the tangible package for its own sake. In the post-Napster world, one click and they're done.

Metallica, however, is in the minority. Those musicians whose work is entirely an artistic product and who attract a small but nerdy audience - Shellac, for example - will continue to sell their old albums on 180-gram, 12" vinyl. Bands who continue to release albums with relevance and vitality, such as Radiohead, can take advantage of the new distribution technology to actually increase their profitability.

The initial argument that less money on CDs will result in less music being produced is, as it turns out, absolute garbage. The myspace world gives us access to more music than ever before, more-than-occasionally of exceptional quality. So what is actually happening here?

Well, the same technology that makes file-sharing cheap and easy enough to destroy the music industry is also making recording cheap and easy enough to save it. Any fool with a computer can spend a few hundred dollars on a studio-quality microphone and record an album to match any commercial masterpiece. And they do: several of my favourite albums of last year, including El Perro Del Mar's amazing debut, were self-recorded.

(Trailblazers of this tradition were managing it in the 1980s: Big Black, for example, followed in the 1990s by Sebadoh and Elliott Smith. Electronic music then dominated the self-recording world, and with records such as Air's Moon Safari, it was well worth it.)

Many of the most prolific studios are housed in sheds or lounge rooms. Almost any band able to extract a sizeable record label advance - Radiohead, Wilco, dEUS, etc. - will no longer spend the money going to Abbey Road. They'll simply buy enough gear to build their own Abbey Road, wherever they like.

The effect of mass-file-sharing will not be the end of good-quality music - it will be the end of commercial monopoly. Over the last sixty years, a handful of large record labels has worked in concert with a handful of commercial radio stations to limit most listeners to only a handful of artists each year. The money they made from this was then spent 'finding' their next key artist; spending thousands of dollars buying the songs and the producers to make a 'quality' record; then spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing. Now the days of A&R tyranny are numbered.

The major labels are hitting back through the one medium which is still both popular and monopolised: television. Idol shows are simply easy ways for a major label to remain profitable through democracy.

For the rest of us, it is exceptionally cheap to record an album - once you have the basic gear, the unit cost per record is practically nothing. As for the distribution of music, and the potential of making a living out of it, the options there are opening wide.

I have spent the last six years writing music articles for independent magazines. For the last two years, I've been contributing to a magazine in a foreign city, having been recommended by a former home-town colleage. Two weeks ago, that colleague switched employment - as a result, I now write for a magazine whose entire staff are strangers to me. I realise that the days of getting 'care packages' consisting of new albums by Low, Arcade Fire, The Decemberists and The Hold Steady, for no reason whatsoever, are gone. I need to find another way.

And so I have come, belatedly, to blogs. There are an amazing amount of music blogs around, offering great diversity in taste, opinion, language and geography. Blogs can also support new distribution techniques. Denovali Records, a small Swedish label, offers downloads in lieu of attracting support for their operations. On the downloads page for French post-rock/metal band Celeste, is the following message:

" we have started the preorder for the new CELESTE - NIHILISTE(S) CD/LP to gain some money in order to pay for the pressing. But since you probably would not like to preorder a record you haven't listened to before, we have decided to make the full album available for download from our side. we support downloading music, especially as a way of getting to know unknown releases. But of course we are also record lovers, so if you want to be our personal heroes, you can preorder the record and help us releasing it faster."

Music can be art. Art can be loved. Money will still change hands - fair pay for fair art. File sharing may just open music up to the people, and allow mass audiences to be more discerning, and have more investment - financial and otherwise - in the music to which they listen. In the meantime, go searching - you'll be surprised at what you find.