A little background.

Nah, that doesn’t look all that great. Maybe move it a bit more to the left. How about a fill light or two. Is that any better? No? Right … start again.

Man, oh Manischewitz! This age of virtual meetings and electronic communications is annoying in the extreme. You freaking can’t do anything in person anymore. For the first few months we managed to keep a low profile by simply sending Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out to do our various tasks, like shopping, garbage removal, pretzel bending, molecule counting, and other odd jobs. Then last August, Marvin started reading Thomas Piketty, discovered the value of his labor and chose to withhold it from us, now that he considers us soulless capitalist exploiters. In response to Woke Marvin’s job action, we’ve had to go on Zoom, go on Google Meet, go on Skype, go on Facetime, go on, go on, go freaking on. Ever try doing your grocery shopping on Zoom? Don’t.

Hey, a lot of bands do whole concerts via these web-based video conferencing apps. That’s largely because, well, there’s no place else to freaking play – everything’s shut down and chances are good that a lot of the rickety establishments that supported plain-clothes bands will have fallen over backwards by the time people feel safe enough to venture out on a Saturday night again. Fortunately, we haven’t had to resort to such tactics. Mind you, I’m not ruling it out, but for the time being, we content ourselves with spending the pennies we make via streaming services on little bits of cheese, crumbs of bread, and a log for the fire. You may ask how we’ve managed to live so extravagantly off of what an indie band can make from web streams. The answer may surprise you. (It certainly would surprise me, because I haven’t the foggiest idea how we do it.)

So yeah, when we need to talk to a promoter or the people who own our squat house, we do the teleconferencing thing. The biggest challenge, from my perspective, is finding a backdrop that faithfully amplifies the kind of image you want to project to the world. For instance, authors often have their books prominently displayed behind them. Representative Lauren Boebert makes sure to have a jumble of assault weapons randomly dumped on a shelf behind her as she speaks. I myself had to think long and hard about what objects would best represent my values to anyone interacting with me over Zoom. I thought maybe a stack of sandwiches, but we don’t have anything like that lying about long enough to make it into the picture. I don’t know – maybe I should go with the Boebert approach, except a little more intimidating than just some poorly maintained long guns. Something that will make my interlocutors thinks TWICE about contradicting me.

Or maybe I should just show them dilapidated interior of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of them, nothing will.