The Naked Troubadour

Since when was music an “industry”?
Yes — oil, steel or pharmaceutery,
ship-building, hotels, textiles or military.
But music, as the food of love,
(the source of which is from above)
is not a money-grubbing tool
to line the dirty inside pockets
of those greedy 10%ing fools.
Music as an “industry” is so uncool!

The very term “to have a hit”
[or should I put an “s” in front of
that to make it what it really is?]
means dollar signs in greedy eyes
& ego-boosting of attention-whores
who masquerade as singers, artists,
f(art)ing out their billboard lies
while screwing influential folks who’ll
open all their once-were-bolted doors.

When art becomes an industry,
it’s lost its wings and symmetry
& link to love & to, of course, infinity.
For music’s purpose never was
to entertain a mass of slaves
or drug kids up at secret raves
or hypnotise with new age “bliss”
or Muzak you while in a lift
or be a vehicle for a “star”
who should really be in a piano bar!
or usher darkness on a stage
(sluts strut in front of underage)
or (w)rap you up in gangsta speak
or sugar-coated cheek-to-cheek
or terrorise a compound’s kids
(with N. Sinatra’s stupid song
to kill those kids was just so wrong
and yet that tune became the theme
for feminists — their perfect dream)
or brainwash young with vapid words
(the message being: “stay in the herd”)
or lend support for ego-trips
or make a bid to climb the charts
or masquerade as genuine art
or pseud around as atonality
or keep you stuck in 3-dimensionality,
provide a background to your drivel
or boost a porn-film’s vulgar sizzle
[somehow, I can’t stop this endless list;
but for my readers’ sake I’ll stay my hand
for now and hope you get the point].
And if you care to meet me soonsome
in a carefully-chosen lover’s golden tryst,
I’ll take you to a place where moons are songs
& tunes are jewels and suns are pools of dream
& harmony (though spattered with some
darker chords [sonata form] to bring the tension
to a coda-coated, white-key noted, unchromatic close)
forever rules and reigns so grab the reins with me.
I realise the show has now gone way too far
to salvage anything from out that crass bazaar;
for most know not what music has been gifted to us for.
But if the souls of everyone would truly music know
— not merely on the outside but from deep within —
showing to our wayward hearts what could have been,
an unknown world of euphony & concord would begin.
Music, then, would have no place to be an “industry”.
For industry’s a filthy, dirty cage and music, like a bird,
must only in the open wildness fly — eternally be free.

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© Alan Morrison, 2017
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