The Automaton and Popular Music

If time is money, evaluating today’s popular entertainments requires a certain currency of distraction. We live in an immediate era, and the logic of herd mentality can seem spun into perpetual disorientation. In a typical pop music video - for example - the object/ star never steadies before us. We only catch a glimpse as suggestive hyper edits whip up chaotic transfers of dream state heat. The effect is a stirring whirring on the Silly Meter with gravity pinging between points of raw befuddlement and head-up-ass profundity. It is as if our modern moment is a heightened refraction on the alchemy of NOW, with more ardent consumers rung up by the numbers.  

Automatons have taken hold within this skittish din of art pollution. Coursing through the culture can become a directionless trip amidst a source-less grip of information serving to spike our drink and mess with us. People get worn down after a few go-rounds; they just want to get somewhere and holler at a star. The Automaton Entertainer is there to receive and also, to shake it. Shake it as they hit predictable marks - breaking like a celebrity buzz that is just short a tickle beneath the chin. A gestalt of white noise has given shape to the media landscape, teaming like airs of data funnel farts trying to seduce with promises to weave our own tiny voices into the milieu. 
  
Most people just flunk in the static. But, the automaton walks away from an information jam as casually as a billionaire abandoning a car in snarled traffic. The culture is widely crushed; fallen for the object – the star with wildness tamed to a preening that already seems set for the wax, chief personifications of the deadness inside; hot calls for all the nameless cattle. The imaging blitz might seek to turn everyone into a sideshow, but constant readying for the camera is a challenging condition, a real affliction, a course addiction – and only the prime turkey walks out the Idol. One has to ride lightning to abide heavy metal thunder and still resemble the good meat.  In the end, it is an emotionless ride for an Automaton, which we should expect of one tied to the gilded flag of salable perfection. 
  
Like stealth current in a lazy river, a discombobulating PR attack on the scale of relevancy is the real deal behind a smooth veneer of cultured style. It is an all day messaging intent on clear-cutting the soul distance between the artful mind and body. It’s a cold clamor stymieing time by relentlessly tacking upon your wallet. The Automaton doesn’t notice, and their absorption in the moment has them running downhill towards a quickening obsolescence. Enter the Next Big Thing.... The Automaton Entertainer might impress by being able to butcher and eat the pony it rode in on, but the Hologram Entertainer is threatening to cut the whole heart out of the human act. Rumor has it negotiations are underway with Elvis’s head to top the bill at the next Lollapalooza.

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