By Mark Antony Rossi
One of the most critical things I learned from reviewing albums of musical groups is how much they borrow from artistic generation before them. This observation is not a negative mark on their process but rather an acceptance that originality is not born apart from reverence but made precisely because of it.
You greatly admire those who ventured out to the world in the days past. And mimic parts of their sound, fashion even verbiage. The mimicry is done out of respect but also done out of insecurity. It takes time and experience to form your own mark, your own identity. Only then is it possibly to step outside the shadow of influence and be who you are supposed to be.
The shadow of influence weighs on me as a parent of two young boys. How I act, the decisions I make and literally the words I choose have an impact of their childhood. Parent or not I’m an imperfect human being and make mistakes of candor and openness that doesn’t always serve my children regardless of my lofty ethical intentions.
However; I can live with these so-called transgressions because I am exhausted with the utter dishonesty of daily life. My hope is my directness will prepare them more for a world willing to pee on your head and attempt to convince you it’s raining. I want children stronger than cowardly politicians spitting out words but have no action to be counted.
At the end of the day I wonder how wise it is to live inside a shadow or how diminishing it is to continue the path of an influence rather than staking out your own direction under your own vision. Each of us pay a price for staying somewhere too long. How much of our identity or soul is whittled away by not standing up for ourselves is determined by how fast we recover from the anesthesia of influence.
About the Author: Mark Antony Rossi is a poet, playwright and author of the bioethics volume “Dark Tech” now available from Amazon. His most recent plays have been produced in Liverpool and New York.
http://ethical-stranger.webnode.com/
great message mark … best of the conclusion is … you hit the nail on the head with pointing out the fact that our ‘politicians are cowardly’ yes we do hope our progeny will learn more values and conscientiousness and not just ‘spit out words’ like them and prove themselves honest citizens
Thanks so much for your over the years.