Barefoot Doctor Bit: Why shouldn’t Promoters Pursue Profit instead of Philanthropy?
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Vice Magazine moaned about the state of London clubland last week complaining ‘tour garden-variety part-time promoter seems to be more interested in being Donald Trump than Tony Wilson and the spirit of philanthropy has given way to profiteering’. We asked Barefoot Doctor what’s wrong with aspiring to be the next Donald Trump . . .
Barefoot Doctor: “Well firstly I’d imagine you’d want to avoid having a hairstyle like that.
Though there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with creating profit – more fun for everyone than creating loss, for sure. But if that’s your prime motivation rather than being driven by the desire to create something beautiful for others to enjoy, people will know it.
If you do it well, they’ll still come of course, in droves probably, and you’ll make your money, but the satisfaction will be limited. The true value you afford your life will be diminished rather than increased.
Value derives solely from doing things from the heart that enrich peoples’ lives. You may not make instant profit, you may never make profit, you may even make losses at times, but your life will feel rich, your soul will feel fed, and more importantly perhaps as it’s not all about you, those you’ve served will feel richer for it.
The whole point of parties is to make something good happen – an event that people will remember forever as a landmark celebration of life, a reference point by which to recalibrate themselves when life’s feeling dull and remind them to have hope.
You’re adding color, warmth and excitement to the mix. But that only happens when you do it because you want to make something beautiful happen for everyone.
When all you really want to do is make profit you merely generate one of those soulless, cold, dull events, albeit with lots of punters, noise and light, and are actually contributing nothing to the mix, so will receive nothing much in return no matter how much money you make.
Life will still feel soulless, dull and cold for you just as it might had you made the money selling ball bearings (unless you really loved ball bearings, of course).
The profit-mongers are like leeches sucking the blood out of the party scene. Not that I’m biased or anything. But the sooner we reignite the trend for people putting on events for the love of it the better. That’s where the whole scene started from in any case.
And generally if done well and given the time to grow these are the ones that tend make the most money over the long-term anyway because they’re the ones that spontaneously spread by word of mouth and establish themselves as genuine trend-setting societal phenomena. And you avoid having the daft hairdo.”
Questions by Skrufff.
