Keep On Keeping On

Today I feel a bit like sharing the reality with you:

This is hard time! This is where I should just keep on my random anticipation. That’s what I’ve been doing and I don’t regret a thing about music blogging. It has always been my passion and it somehow will be. But a blogger who writes and reviews indie music inside a country like Iran is bound to stay an outcast. We here, are a thousand kilometers from almost anything related to sound. There is almost no live gig. Rooting back up, where do you find a musical event worth scribbling about? There are almost no in-land artists to cling onto. There is no way of finding a sponsor for a single activity and there are of course no advertisements. There is no ground left for an orphan kid called music. All left is political underground hip-hop or pop-trash so void of musical virtues. I have been able to contact some Persian underground talents both inside and outside the country and I’m grateful they have been kind enough to share their thoughts with us. But it’s like living in a cage and watching the room around you get bright in the morning and dark in the evening without recognizing the difference and the reason. I have just never been in the hype of anything. I have only pretended I have!

Every day as I browse the web and wrestle with intense filtering just like any other Iranian citizen, I stay updated with most new quality releases and I try to live with them to their fullest. But the world outside is just unimaginably sad and cruel for music fans. Thank God I’m merely a seeker and not an artist! Iran is definitely a living limbo for music; the rotten land of the impossible. Political times have proven to be a turning point for countries with the slightest taste of freedom. New genres evolve and new audience arises by each major incident. In Iran’s case, it has always been a matter of choosing between the worse and the worst. You either sing traditional hymns, make people mourn and remind them of their imminent struggle with death, or you just sit down, bottle up and wait for a miracle. There are no portals to a new sound, for a diminutive amount of creativity or at least an eager ear to hear. And I look like a desperate soul yearning for a change in minds or situations or anything that clears up a path to music. Seemingly, music is the last thing they ever demand! Same for movies! Same for painting exhibitions! Art in general, is just never the case as an artist is never counted as a living being! And so the hope tunnel gets thinner and so I’m more out-of-words day by day. I still pine for a change; I’m still walking that road. But this shit is getting deeper. I just hope I’m not wasting my time.

[mp3] Vic Chesnutt "You Are Never Alone"

* Buy Vic Chesnutt's North Star Deserter via Amazon