What a year that was. Seriously. I know it's been hard for everyone. I am increasingly running into people that say things like “oh I don't pay attention to the news,” and at the same time that I am in shock when I hear that, part of me understands. It's so much easier to just not know what's going on, but I don't agree with the thought that nothing is knowable anymore. I've had many versions of that conversation, amounting to, essentially, “it's impossible to verify which sources are legitimate, so by extension nothing can be verified.” That feels lazy to me. Sure, it's partly accurate, but it just means you have to work a little bit harder. I get that those of us that like to call ourselves honest still have to make an obvious distinction between things that are likely to be true, and things that have absolutely been verified beyond the shadow of a doubt; but that doesn't preclude the building of a narrative with whatever information we have, and patching up the rest later. I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, there is a purposeful effort to flood the media environment with bullshit, and yes, the bar for editorial vetting is at an all-time low, but we can still try to have a meaningful conversation. It's just hard to know how deep someone wants to go.
Recently, my family has started labeling me, playfully, of course, as a “conspiracy theorist.” That was simply because I made the suggestion that, on one of our favorite reality show competitions, the final outcome in terms of the winner may not be completely ‘random,’ at least not in the way one might imagine. I suggested that, at the end of the day, a reality show is subject to the same forces of corporate stewardship as any other piece of media. By that I mean, it's possible, and perhaps even likely, that the production crew puts their ‘thumb on the scale’ in some small ways in order to achieve a desired outcome, both in terms of who sticks around to become the winner, and who goes home early. I think, depending on where your level of cynicism is, this would seem to be either an absolute given, or dismissed as quackery.
But wait, there's more. I am personally of the belief that the common human has been fighting against the forces of oligarchy since at least the time of Cesar. Julius Caesar was the Bernie Sanders of his time, in that he wanted to push forward permanent changes to the law that would preserve the public commons, as well as ensure the longevity of direct democracy. He was a force for progressivism. The ‘injury’ of autocracy was either a temporary measure, or a post-hoc fabrication, depending on where you look for clues. In any case, it was the reclassification of public lands that most likely triggered the assassination.
You have more than 2 millennia to find a point where you feel like we started losing. Many have a fondness for November 4th, 1980, as the beginning of the end. That was when we elected Ronald Reagan. This video makes a strong case for that date being November 22, 1963, when JFK was assassinated. But either way, if you really take into account the history of international politics in the 20th century, along with the role that the United States has played over and over again, which is that of a bully, it starts to make a little more sense. The word conspiracy is unfortunate: it's not that I obsess about people conspiring with one another against me, or things that I love, as much as I both understand the true nature of corporate think, as well as the widespread adoption of ‘might makes right’ in the image of our interventionist military. Together, this means that personal choice is largely removed from the equation. In this sense, it's very easy to still have faith in the human heart, and the ubiquity of kindness, at the same time that we call out the behavior of those same humans under the considerable subjugation of soulless corporations. When the only directive is financial profit, all of the costs have been externalized, and the zeitgeist feels like selfish is the new hot, there are so many reasons to say yes. That's what I mean by the editorial bar has never been lower. Pardon my French, but it's a fucking mess out there.
And honestly, I'm just a radio broadcaster, a playlister. A tech guy. I love to write, but I've never made a living at it. What the hell am I even doing here?
I've been wrestling with that question for about 12 months now. I was out of work for most of last year, which was complicated. That was hard enough, but now that I've gone back to work, I'm struggling a little bit with how to create a cohesive schedule with all the stuff I was doing before I started working again, and fitting that around the new 10-hour workdays. I realized quite quickly that I would not be able to continue blogging at the rate that I had been. But I see that as a good thing. It feels like evolution. Let me explain.
When I built this blog in 2018, I was a stay-at-home father with a lot of time on my hands. And the best thing that CHILLFILTR® ever did for me was to reconnect me with music: which was such a huge gift at that point in my life. I had been drifting away from listening to music at all, which now just sounds completely bizarre. But the original spark was simply as a way to find new music to listen to myself, which has now expanded into finding new music for the world to listen to. So that part is alive and well.
But in terms of the blogging, it was a very different world in 2018 then it is now. That was before chatGPT, that was before AI generated content had really started taking over the Internet, and it was just at the beginning of Apple News. There was a time when I formatted my URLs and page titles to work better within the Apple News ecosystem, with a lot of success in the first year or two, but eventually our reach was shut down (“we are constantly reevaluating our algorithm to best serve the needs of our readers”). That was a bit of a hit, but I kept on blogging. Another factor is that I have known for some time that the most effective blog posts, at least in terms of traffic, are the non-music ones, which I will continue to write. So I had been doing spotlight blog pieces on indie music mostly as a public service, as a way of giving back to the music community. But now that I am broadcasting every week, I just don't have the time to continue to write those music-centered blog pieces. After just over 2800 of them, I will at very least have to slow down quite considerably. To that end, I have reconfigured my SubmitHub channel as a radio station. Linked here. This means that I will have a lot more time to focus on the weekly broadcast. I am very excited about that. I really enjoy being a DJ for KSKQ and I plan to continue that for a very long time.
Next up, I will be releasing the CHILLFILTR® Top 20 for last year. That should be out over the weekend. The first 10 of those are already here, if you are curious.
Below is a list of all the songs we broadcast in Q4 of last year.
https://asset.cloudinary.com/ashland-io-llc/a7a67cb687c93d2823e61d269c34edff