The Snowball Effect
By Chicovera

Provided you weren’t born yesterday, and assuming you are capable of experiencing human urges and sensations, the following scenarios shouldn’t be unfamiliar to you. Place yourself in the shoes of a twenty-something suburbanite accompanied by your regular suburbanite cohorts on a Saturday night. The coffee table is densely packed with empty beer bottles and crumpled bags of bar-b-que potato chips. The walls are covered with icons of pop culture from the Stones to Star Wars, or even the Swedish Bikini Team. You are in the middle of the 313th screening of The Big Lebowski. Your eyes have adjusted from the departed daylight to the inevitable evening without notice. Out of the twenty-minute long collective silence comes an abrupt inquisition: “So, what do you guys want to do tonight?”

This could easily be the opening scene of the next big college/party/horny frat-boy/slacker MTV Films production, but in the real world, this is a sad, disturbing sight. The room is now decorated with blank responses and shrugging shoulders. After a brief, but suspenseful pause, comes the classic, brutal consequence: “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. We should do something.”

“Well what? There isn’t anything to do.”

There isn’t anything to do. Because of this unfortunate assumption, these poor youths are doomed to yet another weekend of insignificance. They are, in effect, allowing themselves to sink deeper into their respective places on the couch. So deep, in fact, that it is becoming more and more impossible to climb out. It’s beginning to feel like you’re stuck inside these four walls and somebody put some Michael Bolton song on repeat. If only we hadn’t dug such a hole, you think to yourself.

The true irony is that at the same time, from a short drive to a couple blocks away, there are people just your age dancing, laughing, enjoying a choice cocktail or microbrew, and listening to good music. Practically next door, there’s a DJ spinning funk and hip-hop in front of a crowded and sweaty dance floor. Across the street, there’s a jazz combo tip-toeing through Footprints. Then, a few doors down, there’s a slammin’ rock band. Kitty-cornered from that is a quaint coffee house with a solo pianist playing and really cool artwork from local talents and/or third-graders.

Simply put, you’ll never find anything if you don’t look for it. While musicians and artists need an audience as much as an audience needs music and art, the music and art won’t go into your living room and find you. It is found on the stage, in the clubs and coffeehouses, at community centers, in parks – in your neighborhood. . It takes the collective to create the essential, other side of performance. When musicians play for a crowd, they are looking into a mirror of fellow music fans. The artist doesn’t paint for himself; he already has the image in his head. I think you get the picture.

It may take just a few instruments to create a beat, but it takes two strangers to make eye contact and bob their heads to the beat to create the groove. It’s a snowball effect. By going out and meeting heads and creating the groove, you are making that groove bigger and more abundant. When the demand for quality music in your neighborhood goes up, there is no choice but to provide more music and venues. But it is up to the couch dwellers and the addicted poker players and the hermits to get out and start the revolution. Go do something!

Besides, once last call hits, then you can go home and watch Lebowski.