When capitalists have given us a flawed present, the only thing we have is a potential future. Keeping one’s eyes up and open is vital. What we’ve been given is inhumane and inadequate, and we have the power to create for ourselves and our communities a better future. We have been set up for failure from the very beginning — every effort has been made to obfuscate this fact. The process of even acknowledging and understanding this fact is a lifelong pursuit. It is important to keep this information in your core at all times. It is not a burden, but a force. 

The first step is to break the spell of values that we’ve learned from past generations, from capitalism, from notions of political liberalism and cultural elitism. These notions are almost second nature for young people in the early 21st century. If Cultural Production has any purpose at all, it is as a spell- breaker. Cultural Production divested of its ability to be a spell-breaker is An Entertainment — not lesser, necessarily — just something to be handled differently, and possibly even more delicately. Entertainments are much more dangerous than Cultural Production because it seeks to affirm the status quo. Because music exists in the liminal space between Entertainment and Cultural Production, the form is primed to be an extremely potent spell-breaker. This is only possible with extreme focus and community engagement. 

Further, the ephemeral nature of of music allows for the creation of the piece and the piece itself to be a single object. This makes live music outside of Entertainment contexts an essential element for a fully realized progressive culture. Music is utopic: the culture of underground and DIY touring and performance provides cultural and anti-capitalist economic models that have potential to be expanded on and applied to a variety of contexts. 

To that end, the Longitudes series seeks to present music and sound work that would otherwise not have a home within an Entertainment music context. Entertainment music represents an extremely narrow slice of the aesthetic possibilities that sonic work offers and access to that work should not be limited to coastal cultural centers. By presenting touring artists alongside aesthetically parallel local artists, we hope to cultivate a vibrant scene of experimental music in Lubbock that exists beyond the limitations of the Longitudes series.