“Young people in Europe and North America in particular, but increasingly throughout the world, are being psychologically prepared for useless jobs, trained in how to pretend to work, and then by various means shepherded into jobs that almost nobody really believes serve any meaningful purpose.”
[R.I.P David Graeber – a truly radical, global thinker]
A description of how I used Indian rhythm games to help keep my mind alive through the grey mundanities of my former life as an office worker. Written (originally under a pseudonym) for Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, radical anthropologist David Graeber’s insightfully provocative 2018 book on the rise of meaningless employment under late capitalism.
“The frustrated musician in me has come up with ways of silently learning music while stuck at my corporate desk. I studied Indian classical music for a while, and have internalized two of their rhythmic systems. Indian approaches are abstract, numerical, and nonwritten, and so open up ways for me to silently and invisibly practice in my head. This means I can improvise music while stuck at the office, and even incorporate inputs from the world around me. You can groove off the ticking clock as dull meetings drag on, or turn a phone number into a rhythmic poem. You can translate the syllables of corporate jargon into quasi-hip-hop, or interpret the proportions of the filing cabinet as a polyrhythm. Doing this has been a shield to more aggregate boredom in the workplace than I can possibly explain. I even gave atalk to friends a few months ago about using rhythm games to alleviate workplace boredom, demonstrating how you can turn aspects of a dull meeting into a funk composition…”
George Howlett is a London-based musician and writer. I play guitar, tabla, and santoor, loosely focusing on jazz, rhythm, and global improvisation. Above all I seek to enthuse fellow sonic searchers, interconnecting fresh vibrations with the human voices, cultures, and passions behind them. Recently I’ve worked long-term for Darbar, Guitar World, and Ragatip, and published research into tuning and John Coltrane’s raga notes. I’ve written for Jazzwise, JazzFM, and The Wire, and also record, perform, and teach in local schools. Site menu above, follow below, & get in touch here!
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