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Prologue • Statement of Purpose
Joel Isaac Black
I am calling this a statement of intent, as this shall be our only fixed point in an adventure. This is the last point of unity, our jumping-off point, an arbitrary, yet bold leap into a new sparkly abyss. It is a small flag plunged in our collective consciousness, a small oath indicating that from this moment out, we celebrate the human side of our music-making, space-making communities. It’s a stand, a vigourous gesture off into the distance - “that’s where we are going!” - What is yet to be determined is how we get there. What creative values do we hold near and dear as the technological ground beneath our feet trembles, then tectonically shifts?
What am I talking about? Artificial Intelligence, machine-learning, asymptotic algorithmic dominance in our joint experiential lives. When we live with, within, around, in-between the cold-metallic nudge of task automation, where do we turn to catch the contagious, fallible, dirty stories and memories, the soul-affirming warmth and resonance in our hotels, restaurants, listening-bars, clubs, and pop-up art spaces? How shall we navigate, propagate, elevate the humans - the people in the processes we undertake? Where do we assign value? How do we monetize our musical efforts? - Will anyone really care in the future?
We say unequivocally, yes. It’s in our name. Wild Mountain Honey.
This platform shall serve as a journal, magazine, document of this enigmatic phenomen. This is a tale, the story of the music-makers, the spaces, the moments that may go on to serve us in orientation, inspiration, and powerful purpose.
So we will initiate dialogue, discussions, arguments, and humor the most solemn to most ridiculous ideas to wrestle out into the uncharted territory, the shifting sands of essential musical humanity and hospitality in the age of asymptotic mechanisation. How do we adapt our music activations, how do we preserve the social richness of our beloved restaurant and hotel spaces as they are subject to a psychic erosion, an inevitable spirit-cheapening - the digital grind, an endless pressure in one direction - How do we find that little back-door and prop it open, to let the clumsy humanness back in with a mischievous grin? ...if nothing else, summon an unpredictability in the cold face of tireless, banal, convenience-through-automation encroaching here?
This stands to be a multifaceted and confounding journey that breaks conventions, challenges perceptions, and demands real inquiry into how we choose to proceed at this auspicious and precipitous moment in technohumanistic evolution.
Wild Mountain Honey is first and foremost a journal of talent and friendship. A solid and quiet momentum, a celebration of humans performing the life affirming labor of music and space-making. In an epoch of elusive origins, muddled phenomenology, here are insightful glimpses into the purposes and practices of beautiful, inspiring people, profiles in flux, imperfect futures, narratives you didn’t know you needed.