"The Chaos Factor"
When scientists discovered that much of what they thought was Reality
was made up of stuff they don't understand, they did what they do best.
They gave it a scientific name: The Chaos Factor.
The usual example of this is:
A butterfly in Waycross, Georgia flutters its wings starting a snowball effect
that winds up as a hurricane in Great Falls, Montana.
These things are unpredictable,
which is the weather forecasters' excuse for getting paid,
even though they are seldom right.
The Old Farmer's Almanac actually gets it right more often.
The Chaos Factor is not really chaos at all,
but just too many facts for our little brains to process.
Data overload.
We can only learn so much from history,
because no situation is ever repeated exactly.
Here's how The Chaos Factor can work in the Music Business:
You've been working all your life toward a career in the recording industry.
You started playing guitar as a fetus.
You wrote your first song when you were six months old:
"I Think There's Something In My Diaper, Baby."
By the time you hit your teens you've already got a recording contract.
You write, produce, sing, and promote your records.
A couple of decades go by and you're still trying, never giving up,
and then you finally have a record that has climbed to #2 with a bullet in Billboard.
You've already made a down payment on a guitar shaped Porsche.
About this time a guy named Hank Nitney in Fat Chance, Idaho,
has just recorded his first song:
"No Grits At The Ritz", and has a dance to go with it called the Macaroon,
which could be described as Spastic in Rhythm.
He recorded it in a U-Haul storage stall,
using only six bass drums and a police whistle.
It's so different that it debuts on the chart at #1,
and stays there for two months, killing your record.
Your family spends the next ten years trying to coax you out of your guitar case.
For the next 20 or 30 years nothing happens,
and then you have an amazing comeback.
Somebody has dug your old record out of the archives and re-released it.
It's all the way up to #2 again!
But there's this guy in Sleazeburg, Florida who is putting out "The Life and Death Polka".
Copyright © February 9, 2001 by Jack Blanchard. All rights reserved.
