Happy New Year 2010

It would have made sense, I suppose, for this inaugural article on the new New Roots Records website to have been about subjects such as “Why Craig Sonnenfeld and I decided to form a label called ‘New Roots Records,’” or “What 'new roots' means to us respectively.” Another reasonable idea, since me and Craig plan to be alternating articles every month, and since I do have a newly completed CD that was a long time in the making, would have been to write an article about the recording experience – or maybe more accurately, this latest recording experience. As this is a website about music, it would make sense that the article at the very least be music related. However, since I’m putting this jumble of thoughts together on December 31st, in the interest of timeliness I’ve decided instead to write a brief piece on the coming new year.

2010 seems to be a good number for a year. It is mathematically appealing, suggesting the nice clean concept of multiplication by 10’s, not to mention the first two digits being twice the second two. And also there are two zeros – good round numbers. All in all, 2010 has a unique roundness about it. Because of its roundness, I find it somewhat strange that the year 2010 doesn’t seem to be associated with dire predictions about the end of the world or the destruction of mankind – at least, not that I’m aware of. The years 2000 and 1000 were both good round numbers also, and were both associated with apocalyptic beliefs. Of course not all years that were supposed to mark the beginning of the end were round, many were odd numbers, and some were actually quite jagged. Lately the somewhat less round 2012 has been the year of choice for when the world (or, if you prefer, this world or this cycle) would end.

Going back thousands of years, nearly every religion – if not every religion – has featured some sort of belief about an end of days, end of a ‘cycle’ or just plain end of life as we know it. Usually these cataclysmic events are identified as being times in which all the good people (i.e. those that agree with us) are taken away to a happy place, and all the bad people (i.e. those that disagree with us) are wiped from the face of the earth (or in some kinder and gentler traditions, suddenly imbued with a divinely inspired spiritual awakening that causes them to agree with us). The belief in an ‘end of the world’ may have originally served to promise an end to death, suffering, and conflict. The belief probably also evolved from a desire to be reunited with lost loved ones and/or see judgment exacted upon evil wrongdoers – or more cynically, upon those that don’t agree with us…

Cynicism aside, an end to death, suffering and conflict has a obvious natural appeal. Most of us would agree that we would all be better off in a world with less violence, sickness and poverty.
No one in their right mind would argue that violence, sickness and poverty are good things. However, to an extent, they are relative concepts in a dynamic world. Some have suggested that there can be no pleasure without pain; that without unhappiness there can be no happiness, without feelings of loneliness and isolation, there can be no appreciation of companionship and without the frailties of old age, no appreciation of youth. Others have countered that such ‘pleasures’ are an illusion, a trick of this world, and not representative of the true happiness to be found in the harmonious existence of the world to come. Whatever your opinion on the subject may be, its undeniable that there is a great deal of beauty in the ways we as humans have found to cope with or celebrate the dynamics of this world. In fact, it is the dissonance of this world with its cruelties, treacheries and injustices that has been a source of inspiration for many works of art and entertainment. The ‘apocalypse,’ even if interpreted as the end to an ‘era of discord’ and the start of a new ‘harmonious cycle,’ would mean an end to the emotional as well as physical conflicts that have inspired much of the art and entertainment in the world. That’s not to say that conflicts, upheaval, and misery are desirable, but our coping with them and striving to minimize them, without the aid of angry gods, killer comets, nuclear bombs and environmental holocausts is. With all its problems, this is a beautiful world – in part because of our experience of it.
Here’s to hoping we can appreciate it for what it is, and accept that it’s up to us to make it better.

Here’s to a Happy 2010!