I take issue with how I’m treated. I don’t know how much of it is pride vs sour grapes vs prickly old-aged-raging-robism vs my own feelings of entitlement. I have a lot of sorting to do and not enough time to do it.
Pushing buttons on the back end of these webstreams for various organizations is the place where most of my buttons get pushed and there is a straight-forward logic to it I suppose. Most of the artists I work with have been doing this for a long time – however “this” is “performing, playing out, interacting with audiences, setting up on stage, touring etc”. “This” may or may not also include setting up and running their own sound to some extent and “this” may or may not include having a manager to deal with some of those interactions – but very little of “this” is generally what we’re doing NOW : streaming with multiple performers through a specific platform.
THAT is what *I* mean by THIS.
Now, awe’re a full year into the Pandemic and more and more often “this” HAS included THAT but it’s by NO means a safe assumption. For the past year it’s been clear that you can’t take people at their word when they say “oh yeah, I do THAT all the time!” because THIS and THAT are often conflated with one another – not to mention there are dramatically varying QUALITIES of both this AND that and generally THAT is still one-way webcasting, not including the complexities of adding a host or another act or something. But even when the FULL value of THAT is actually understood the thing artists still seem to be unable to grasp is that if they KNOW how to DO That they need to TELL me they know how to do That – not simply ignore my emails and messages till a passive-aggressive short meeting online displays their skillset.
It’s obnoxious and it wastes everyone’s time. It reminds me of working with teenagers who think “you won’t understand cause you’re too old” and then sullenly go through the motions.
And part of my angst is that these are opportunities being offered on a tier that I am NOT offered. People aren’t approaching me to play these gigs. People are approaching me to run these gigs. I’m not being recognized as an artist skilled enough to be ON the stage. And so the idea that someone who sees me as part of this opportunity, then treats me (and that opportunity) like trash really angers me. Of course they’re generally quite polite to the host, so maybe if we were actually at a venue somewhere they’d be contemptuous of their sound engineer and the staff of the venue – but I’m not entirely convinced that that’s the case. I actually think it’s just that they’re not used to having to answer email from The Help. But… I’m here to make this thing go. When I talk to you don’t just ignore me. Don’t digitally wander away. And above all, don’t waste my time (and my clients’ money), please just answer the damned questions!