Robbing Glass Houses
Last night our neighbors invited us over to watch the premiere of The Knights of Prosperity, a new sitcom centered around an unlikely group of misfits who band together with the goal of robbing Mick Jagger’s lavish Manhattan apartment. My boyfriend and I don’t normally huddle around the neighbor’s television set, but this was a special occasion complete with wine and pizza. Turns out that someone on the writing team for the new series lives right next door, which made for some interesting conversations on how storylines are collectively developed—daily eight-to-twelve-hour discussions—and which actors are real assholes on the set.
After the program, we all speculated about the show’s success, while telephone calls steadily poured in from friends and family. For me, this all felt like a rather high-profile debut, considering none of my creative endeavors have ever reached a national audience—not in America at least. The writer informed me that the most important phone call would come the following morning: news of the overnight Nielsen ratings. Imagine what a burden it must be to rely so heavily on the popularity of your creation to determine its success—something many composers never even bother to consider.
What if there were someway to accurately monitor actual usage and survey opinions about concert music? Could composers and classical musicians nab some of those fancy endorsement deals away from golfers and tennis players? Okay, probably not, but maybe a little clever embedded marketing could make things interesting. Hell, I’d start working on the Enviga Sonata tomorrow if Coca-Cola paid me residuals—Margaret Lancaster would make a good (and yes, quite sexy) spokesmodel. See what I mean here? Yes, I know it’s an old argument, but nothing seams to have budged an inch over the years. So now with the Dems back in power, maybe it’s time we re-motivate ourselves to do what Warhol did for the visual art world so long ago. Let’s get behind a superstar composer that puts more emphasis into appealing to a broader consumer marketplace than, say, constructing airtight counterpoint and extra-flashy harmonies. We might actually get something in return if we go down this road. I’m not just talking about royalty checks, but that thing that all artists crave most: attention. So, anyone out there up for breaking into Philip Glass’s house?