Future's Future

I find this passage, which follows a paragraph about about the relationship between the media and corporations, from Toni Morrison's The Source of Self-regard serious food for thought:

What strings these social perversions together, for me, is profound error--not only the errors in questionable but unquestioned data, in distored "official" releases, in censorship and the manipulation of the press, but also and especially faoults deepy embedded in the imagination. A prime example is the inability or unwillingless to imagine future's future. The inability or unwillingness to contemplate a future that is neither afterlife nor the tenure of grandchildren. Time itself seems not to have a future that equals the length or breadth or sweep or even the fascination of its past. Infinity is now, apparently, the domain of the past. And the future becomes discoverable space, outer space, which is in fact the discovery of past time. Billions of years of it. Random outbreaks of armageddonism and persistent apocalyptic yearnings suggest that the future is already over.

In March (which feels like the distant past) Americans either had one view of the future or we (whoever we actually is) had many views of the future, depending on where we lived, what we did for a living, what our religious beliefs were, or how we voted. Our downstate Illinois area had only a few cases for quite a while, but our governor wisely chose to move all the schools in the state to on-line learning. 

A false sense of security in these less-densely-populated parts led to an serious increase in cases. And now kids in families who either don't have the option for on-line learning, or don't want to take the option, will be spending their days in school buildings either wearing their masks or not, and either maintaining social distance or not. Administrators and teachers will end up directing much of their energy to enforcing safety, and students will end up directing much of their energy in ways that have little to do with doing their schoolwork. 

For grown-ups with advanced degrees, a trip to the supermarket is intellectually exhausting. I can't imagine what it will be like when a space the size of a grocery store is filled with kids who need to stay six feet apart.

I'm trying to imagine a future.

[from a drawing by Marc Foden] 

In the musical internets, which ends up being the place where I spend most of my "social" time, the international and collective we are starting to look at the distant and not-so-distant musical past differently. Handel, for example, owned shares in a corporation that profited from the slave trade. This piece by David Hunter in Musicology Now has information that would be most interesting to anyone reading this post. So much of the European Baroque music that we love was steeped in a culture (read: financed by people) of buying and selling human beings for the profit of their shareholders and their customers in the Americas.

While thinking about the unsavory state of musical patronage during Handel's time (and before), I can't help but reflect on the fact that I have routinely played concerts for organizations that are supported by entities that engage in business practices that I consider unsavory. I have also often played for weddings for families that may have earned the money they have paid me with in ways I would consider unsavory, and I have taught children who come from families that support politicians I seriously dislike. 

Musicians and performing organizations are using this dark time without live music to look at the business of what we call "classical" music with new eyes and listen with new ears. Some are hitching hopes to a handful of composers of color who have written music of serious quality, and are trying to imagine a musical world, a musical future, where people going to concerts in concert halls and other performance venues will be able to hear music by "rediscovered" and previously neglected (rejected) composers will have their works played by orchestras and chamber music ensembles (including the major ones) everywhere.  

Will audiences in the future respond to unfamiliar music the way they have done in the past--not showing up if they have never heard of the composer, or if they doubt the quality of the music that they will hear if the composer they never heard of was female rather than male? Will a "return to normal" involve the pipe dreams of a more equitable musical world collapsing under the weight of the traditional concert repertoire that everyone missed hearing in concert halls during the pandemic?  

Or will it not matter to most people. 

In a post recession economy (assuming that we have one in America) I wonder how long it will take for (not wealthy) people to start spending their money in order to go to concerts given by organizations that are not "A-list" organizations. I imagine that much of the free online musical content that musicians have shared during the time of Covid-19 will still be available when concert-going becomes possible again.  

I also wonder how much of the audience for "classical" music will opt to stay in, listen to CDs, and watch YouTube videos and DVDs. And I wonder if the idea of a "classical" repertoire will contract after the attempt at expansion that musicians have attempeted during this time.