Abandon in Place, part 3
This is the third and final article on “Abandon in Place,” the second track on my new Jamendo album, handmade. Part 1 talked about background, and part 2 was about the composition.
This article is about friendship, and the power of the internet.
“Abandon in Place” is about a lost dream; in my time I have seen the dream of space travel sprout, blossom, and wither on the vine unattended. I said in my previous article that very little has changed between 1977 and 2007. However, dreams are not predictable, and one of the dreams that did come true was a global computer network.
We discovered cyberspace, not outer space. Now, while a great mountain of material on the internet is trivial, it has given us one amazing thing: creative communities. I’m not talking about chatrooms; I’m talking about collaborative projects involving people all over the planet. Some good examples:
- Wikipedia.
- The GNU project.
- The Linux operating system.
But most importantly, at least to me, was the emergence of online communities for musicians. At first all we had was a few scattered user forums and mailing lists. Today, however, one of the online communities I’m active in is DMusic.
This is where I met Henri Roger. Henri is a serious jazz musician from France. Since my first Jamendo album, evolution, I’ve been learning French at a fairly steady rate; with Henri, I can practice the language with someone who’s into the same sort of music I am.
Well, if you go to his page on DMusic, you can scroll down and find a tune called “Bruce’s Jazz Chords.”
I’ve already written about this tune once before, on its debut. In a discussion with Henri through the DMusic shoutboxes, I brought up the chords I used on “Abandon in Place.” Henri ran with them, and built something dreamy, beautiful, and powerful.
And that’s what DMusic excels at: collaboration. Although I prefer Jamendo for major album releases (the albums and cover art are all distributed at once, as a whole, the way it should be), DMusic is a perfect match. Sometimes you want to work track by track, getting feedback at each stage, instead of turning out one monolithic finished product after another. This is how we learn and grow.
I’ve been hoping folks from one site will find the other, and vice versa. I’m not sure how much it has succeeded. The thing I always bring up is the old comic book story “Flash of Two Worlds” — Jamendo seems to be my Earth 1, and DMusic seems to be my Earth 2. I haven’t met many more who are interested in spanning two sites.
“Abandon in Place” is about a future I imagined that didn’t come true. I did, however, get a future I hadn’t imagined. I may have thought by 2001 I’d be working on the Moon, but you would never have convinced me in 1977 I’d be releasing jazz albums internationally and collaborating with musicians all over the world.
It’s not a moonbase, but it’s enough to live on.
