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Wild Mountain Honey


A JOURNAL AND AGENCY FOR MUSIC • SPACEMAKING • HUMAN ENDEAVOUR IN THE NEW MACHINE AGE


01

Statement of Purpose / Manifesto
Joel Isaac Black



“Is everybody in? Is everybody in? ... the ceremony is about to begin.”  Our dear lizard-king, Jim Morrison pleads plaintively from the stage of the Felt Forum in New York, 1970. “The entertainment for this evening is not new, you've seen this entertainment through and through...” And moments later ... “WAKE UP!” he screeches in this infamous live recording. The scheme and spirit are simple: Let’s get together and initiate. Many have tread this way before, we are, in fact, standing on the shoulders of giants, and so the ritual, the communion must proceed. It is with this resolve, the Wild Mountain Honey project is summoned into existence. 

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. 

It’s the magic elixir, the nectar of the gods, the secret sauce. The source is hiding in plain sight, one must only know where to look. Humanity between the cracks, inexplicable, contagious, unrepentant. It’s the real abundance, the talent and communion we share. 

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. 

The writing is for readers and cultural producers and consumers alike, those who have reached a consensus that the common portrayal of individuals and their projects and practices remain severely lacking in specifics - that is to say: vibes, video-reels, shallow profiles, performative perpetual promotion-as-media defy a common need for legitimate, challenging, complex, contextual dialogues for healthy and rigorous thinking and a new economy of ideas. An alternative with In-depth interviews, profiles, portraits of humans and their ambitions becomes not only inspiring, but essential. 
Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff here in music and cultural journalism. It’s time we announce the medium shall NOT be the message. Press must not (necessarily) mean praise. When an artist, community, or project is featured in a media platform, channel, or achieves a certain online visibility (the medium) this presence alone shall not equate or validate, nor necessarily celebrate the entity nor rubber-stamp it with tacit virtue and importance. (the message) - Real questions, doubts, queries into the details, the nature of the art and expression must be the subject and location of inquiry. There needs to be critics, there has to be dialogues. Ideas are refined in this particular context and space. There’s an intellectual imperative for working cultural creators to aspire and not stoop to the diminished mechanics of our time. In an age when all curation, taste-making, and hype is manufactured behind opaque, algorithmic, monolithic ‘channels’ ‘brands’ … we’ve lost our way. As social media, AI, and oversimplified thinking devastates our social and political realities, it becomes time to unapologetically amplify nuance, hold numerous truths at once, and identify real creators, artists, curators, and space-makers with interviews that illuminate, beguile, and frustrate. It’s almost as if the quality futures of our creative scenes rely on it. (They do.) So, here’s real curiosity, urgent psychic liberation, insisting on a sharp veering back to righteous, opinionated, sometimes difficult - always raw music and cultural journalism. I am me, thus it can’t be anything else. 

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.

INDEX


🍯 Statement of Purpose / Manifesto

Joel Isaac Black

🍯 Profile One

Simon Herody

🍯 Profile Two

Qazi & Qazi

🍯 Profile Three

Boogie Rookie


Joel Isaac Black 
Wild Mountain Honey
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