FundamentallySound Blog

I really think it has to do with an inherent conservatism in the culture of this country. It's conservatism in the sense of knowing clearly one's place and not stepping beyond those boundaries. One can see this when walking through the Castro in San Francisco and noticing how cookie-cutter all the gay men look or walking through the Financial District and overhearing the similar tones of voice and subject matter of all the businessmen. In this same way, in America, there are those who are interested in surprising/experimental/"other" music and those who aren't. The ones who are dress in their own fashion and speak their own language, clearly separating themselves from those who don't. The number of people who cross boundaries, the number of businessmen who might attend an experimental music concert, are practically non-existent. My friend Nathan, now living in Berlin, expressed to me once how happy he was to live in a place with real diversity while in the Netherlands, and it took me a long time to understand what he meant. In Europe, and especially in countries like Holland, a huge part of the population is curious, willing to try something they have never tried, creating a complex borderless diversity full of surprise and unpredictability. Where here in America, diversity exists, but it is a depressingly clearly bounded diversity, with no crossover. Diversity happens as long as we can clearly identify it as diversity, as long it fits into the neat little diversity box. How boring.