What are you doing to improve your community? It’s easy to look over the fence at our neighbor’s yard, and criticize or feel jealous. It’s easy to look at others and pinpoint where they are doing wrong. “I would do it this way!” “Why isn’t he doing THIS instead?!” “Why aren’t they fixing this?!” “That lineup sucks, I would put together a better one!”
We question the choices of our bosses or colleagues. We wonder why politicians don’t do the right thing. We find ourselves irate at the lack of action from people we have never met. Why are the people in charge constantly getting it wrong? Do they not care about us? Why is it so hard to do what is right?! We even get irritated that local promoters don’t support local artists, or when they don’t book the acts we want to see, releasing festival lineups are the same regurgitated bullcrap without proper LGBTQ+, Black and women-identifying representation.
And yet, we ask ourselves all these questions while slaving away for a corporation. We use too much plastic and put the planet’s future at risk. We avoid taking a stance when it comes to politics or social issues, just to avoid confrontation with family and friends. We still order from Amazon every week instead of supporting small businesses. And yes, we still attend those very same festivals we complain about. We are constantly compromising and trading off on things that we know aren’t right, just because it’s easy, or because we have FOMO. And sometimes in doing so, we also fail to do what IS right. We fail to support promoters who constantly support new and exciting local talent, or pass on the opportunity to attend events that aren’t as FOMO-inducing, but are trying to build something bigger for our local scenes.
It’s not that we are bad people. We have reasons to do all these things, a million and one reasons. But for some reason, we then like to point fingers at others, to point out how they’re doing it wrong, even though you’re doing just the same and are contributing to the status quo.
“Tranquility… comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do.” — Marcus Aurelius
The ultimate basic truth is that what other people think, say, and do is not that important. What truly matters is what we do and say. What can we do to make a difference, to improve the status quo? What do we have control over? What slightly uncomfortable but important choices can we make that will actually make a difference, and begin changing the course of things? We get so lost in the hypocrisy of others that we begin to become hypocritical ourselves, and have wasted so much time looking in the home of others that we fail to see how dirty our own is.
What are we doing to make a difference? NOW. Today. Tomorrow. What changes are you willing to make in your life and in your buying decisions to help change the way things are, for the better? What good are you doing towards others and the community you’re a part of? How are you helping to improve the local house + techno community you love? Who and what deserves your hard work, your support, and your love?
It’s your answers to these questions that matter? Not the Governor’s. Not the President’s or any other politician’s. Certainly not your neighbors or any of your family member’s either.
What are you doing? Think hard and answer those questions. And take action where needed.
For years at 6AM we fell into the same trap of worrying about how others were doing things “wrong” rather than focusing on how we could do things right. That changed as we began to ask ourselves how we could make a difference and improve things within our own community, and one of those answers was the launch of REFORM. REFORM is a boutique festival experience centered around the attendee experience and the cultivation of a more balanced lineup curation that highlights meritocracy while simultaneously giving space to talent, old and new, that truly represents what House + Techno are really all about: community, togetherness, diversity, love, friendship and quality music of course.
We hope you can join us at REFORM 2021 on Sept 5+6, it’s our stepping stone onto something bigger and better for the House + Techno scenes of Los Angeles and Southern California.
REFORM isn’t enough, and we know it. We know that at 6AM we need to constantly ask ourselves how we can do more, and do better. We need to ask ourselves that question daily, and we need to come up with answers daily. There are many ways we can and need to improve how we do things and many ways we can take new, different actions to do our part in constantly nurturing, and growing the local and global House + Techno community we are a part of.
We hope you join us in asking yourselves these questions.
