Physical construction has not yet begun, but the website is up and ready for business. The plan for this blog is to write and reflect on ideas that don’t have a proper home in the website proper–ideas that expand beyond “what is the one thing you want people to remember about your studio/site/project/etc.” So for ideas more complex than “I NEED TO BOOK TIME AT MANIFOLD RECORDING RIGHT NOW”, this might be a good place to start.
One idea that seems to have no place on a website about music and recording studios is food, specifically, slow food. The slow food movement is the brainchild of Carlo Petrini, a gregarious, optimistic Italian who believes that food should be good (authentic & delicious), clean (healthy to grow and healthy to eat), and fair (to the farmer and to the community). When I consider the lot of the average talented musician, one who struggles to realize their artistic vision in an authentic way, one who worries about the adverse effects that loud music is having on their own health and the health of those who listen to their performances, one who cannot afford to live by the practice of music alone, I wonder: where is the good, the clean, and the fair in music? How can we re-imagine music as Carlo Petrini has re-imagined food?
I won’t answer such a profound question right off the bat–there are too many interesting angles to consider to try to answer even the most basic in this first real post. (Carlo Petrini wrote Slow Food Nation, a 300 page book answering his questions–I hope I can do it in fewer.) But I will leave you with this provocative thought: evolution teaches us that the bones of the mamalian ear evolved from bones of the jaw. Might it therefore be literally true that music is indeed food for the soul? If so then I believe it should be good, clean, and fair!