26/09/2024
Samuel Beckett rewrote my LinkedIn bio (with the king of plagiarism, ChatGPT).
David McLoughlin. A figure adrift in the vast, echoing void of Brazilian music. Over thirty-five years wandering the labyrinthine corridors of sound, he begins, he ends, he begins again. From the barren shelves of Tower Records in London, the journey drags him to Brazil, where rhythms beat like a tired heart, incessant and relentless, though nothing truly new emerges.
Labels come and go—Atração, Eldorado, MCD—names that rise and fall like dead leaves in the wind. He remains, a ghost in the wings of an industry that only cares about the living. And Brasil Calling, that feeble thing blowing in the wind. A cat’s flux! A fragile creation, doomed to sway back and forth, trying to anchor meaning in a world where meaning slips through your fingers like sand. He strives to lift up artists, both new and forgotten, and watches helplessly as they are swallowed by the merciless machine of noise. Every chord fades before it’s heard, consumed by the relentless march of time, leaving behind only the echo of silence.
He writes. He speaks. Articles, bios, conferences. Words that fall on deaf ears, futile gestures in a world that no longer remembers how to listen. Music export guides no one reads, projects no one supports. He speaks, but it’s as if he’s talking to the wind. He persists. But why? He knows he’s caught in this absurd cycle, that the game is cruel, that the industry devours its own. And yet, he continues, because to stop would be to admit the void has won.
The tropical heat is unforgiving. Rio de Janeiro? New York? Berlin? It’s all the same stage, just different degrees of sweat. Every show, every international release is an attempt to plant flowers in barren soil. Shows in Rio? Concept albums? They rise, fragile as promises, only to wither at the first touch of the heat. The sun beats down, the air is heavy, and yet he puts one foot in front of the other, as if walking made a difference. The music? It dissolves like a mirage, another illusion lost in the burning asphalt, while dreams of success evaporate before they can even take shape.
And the industry? Ah, the industry... cruel and relentless. It smiles, extends a hand, only to pull the rug out from under you. Broken promises, invisible contracts. You think you’re making progress—only to realize it was just another mirage, that you’ve been walking in circles, that the road ahead is the same as the one behind. They say it’s possible to take Brazilian music abroad, but they never say where. Abroad from what? Abroad to where? And for what? A meaningless act, trying to open doors that lead only to more doors, with nothing on the other side but the familiar void.
But what is there, beneath this relentless sun? Music evaporates like mirages on the scorching asphalt, promises of albums and tours disappear before they take form. There’s nothing left but the repeated and futile act of continuing, without end, without purpose, as days bleed into nights and nights into more days, until nothing remains to distinguish them—not even rock n’ roll, which, like everything else, has already been swallowed by the heat and indifference.
"I took advantage of being in the studio to lay in a stock of fresh tracks. They were songs, but I call them gems. Yes, on this occasion, I amassed a considerable collection. I distributed them equally between my playlists, and played them one after another. This raised a problem which I first solved in the following way. I had, say, sixteen tracks, four in each of my four playlists—these being my release playlist, my demo playlist, my personal favorites, and my collaborations playlist. Taking a track from the release playlist and adding it to my rotation, I replaced it with a track from my demo playlist, which I then swapped out for one from my favorites, and so on. Thus there were still four tracks in each of my four playlists, but not quite the same tracks.
When the urge to play another arose, I would draw from the release playlist, certain I wouldn’t repeat the last track. And while I played it, I shuffled the other tracks in the way I’ve just described. And so on. But this solution did not satisfy me fully. It didn’t escape me that, by an extraordinary chance, the four tracks circulating thus might always be the same four. In which case, far from sharing sixteen tracks, I was really only showcasing four, always the same, turn and turn about. But I mixed them well in my playlists before I hit play, hoping for a more varied rotation from one playlist to the next. Yet, this was merely a temporary fix, one that could not long satisfy a creator like me. So I began to search for something else."
You continue, because stopping would be to acknowledge the absurdity. You continue, because there’s no alternative. Under the weight of endless heat, under the weight of time that no longer counts, under the weight of a life that, like music, moves forward into the void, without applause, without anything but the echo of your own footsteps.
"You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on."
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