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Radial Permeation
Communities Of Influence
by Augi Garred

As John Mellencamp once said, "I grew up in a small town."

Though it was tiny, it still qualified as a "community." Practically a village by all definition with an astounding population of 365 people. Yet there was a connection between most of the individuals in that place. You knew all about the Weymer’s, or the latest gossip on Mrs. Krodunkle; even the scoop on that "hippy" down the street. No one ever said you had to love your neighbors, but you sure had to know what they were doing.

Our family would frequently gather with others in the town and have barbecues, softball games, play cards or just sit around and discuss the latest news.

Since children tend to stay within the confines of what parents deem an acceptable "radius," I stayed close to home. In my case, it was about two city blocks. This limited my relationships to two people in my age group, and whatever interested them had to interest me, too.

The launchpad for these relationships was geography and nothing else. Pure physical proximity to other human beings. I made friends with my neighbors because they lived close to me. It didn’t matter if we thought the same way, what are parents believed or what inspired us. We had no choice. Maybe there’s merit in the simplicity of that arrangement, but I haven’t spoken to anyone from there since I moved away. It was a community founded on the limitations of space.

EVEN SMALLER CIRCLES
Inside my home another community existed-my family. We spoke our own language, did things our way, invented our own myths. It was simple and pure, just father, mother and brother. Inside those walls was a structured unit that formed the basis of who I am today. The only other influence was that power window-TV.

RADIO WAVES
Have you ever wondered why some of your strongest memories are those of a television show? I can recall with very great detail certain episodes of Gilligan’s Island more than I can remember episodes of my own life. What does that say about our culture?

Yet the tube gave me access to new perspectives on many things. Sesame Street, for example, helped me to learn what my mother may not have had the patience or time to teach. Walter Cronkite (an anchor for the CBS Evening News) was the voice of reason, of calm. He made the news seem human, accessible, and believable. Every night our entire family would sit around the TV watching him deliver one story after another, flowing like water, a master anchor and journalist.

As a communications medium, the television became central to our culture, creating a source of entertainment, education and a topic of conversation. Today, look how people discuss episodes of Ally McBeal or quote buzz phrases from Seinfeld. It penetrates and permeates the collective conscious of the entire country and, as a method of delivery, influences us even if we aren’t aware of its effects.

GRADESCHOOL - CULTURE SHOCK
About 10 miles away from home was Aurelius Elementary-a good-sized school that served the surrounding rural areas. Suddenly I was exposed to hundreds of different children that I’d never seen. People with unique backgrounds, personalities and characteristics.

It didn’t take long to make new friends, though my two existing "buddies" had an influence on who I should converse with. In my youth I didn’t mind, as I was happy to be around new and different a people. But as I grew older, I found myself slowly migrating away from these initial relationships and gravitating towards people of similar mind. This is, I believe, where the real community begins.

YOUTHFUL ATTRACTION
You’ll probably recall junior high school and the sudden formation of cliques. Jocks, cheerleaders, burnouts, brains, band-heads, science geeks, misfits and loners (who must be classified as a "group" even if they are solo). These micro cultures were the starting point of the now popular term, "Communities of interest." If you played football, you hung out with the football team. If you were a trumpet player, you associated with others in the band. Interestingly, these groups were still isolated by proximities of geography; you were limited to the number of people you had access to in your school system, and more often than not, peer pressure forced you into the community. You may not have wanted to be a member of that group, but if you chose otherwise, you would be cast out.

I fit in the misfit classification. Thankfully, there were a handful of people like me; artists and musicians, thinkers and oddballs. We formed our own group and created our own philosophy, building a micro-society within the confines of our high school and town. Together, we established a system of beliefs not all that unlike a traditional culture, each contributing an eclectic mix of thoughts that built the foundation of many things I still believe today.

EXTENDING THE RING
You surround yourself with people that you like for a variety of reasons; shared beliefs, opinions, occupation, affiliation, philosophy, social connections and interests, to name a few. And what you find is that these people have a great power and influence upon your life’s direction. Even stranger, the links these people make between you and your extended influencers---those outside your geographic and social reach---become potentially greater than the influence of your own friends and family.

When I was on a camping trip in 1978, my best friend introduced me to this very unusual band called RUSH. One afternoon as we were setting up camp, he put a tape in this little Sony portable cassette player. Out of the box came this music that mesmerized me. I stopped what I was doing and focused on the song…the steady building of a solo bass followed by guitar and then drums. Oh, the drums! Fixated, I stood there and listened to all nine minutes of this mini epic, forgetting where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. "Augi. Augi? Augi!" my father yelled at me from the van. "Are you going to put up that tent or what?"

After my friend and I finished the camp we sat up all night talking about this song and writing our own lyrics (we had just purchased guitars a few weeks before the trip and fashioned ourselves songwriters). I think I decided right then and there that I would be a rock star and write music like this---music that not only was fascinating to my mind and body, but that connected with me in a way that no other music had ever done before.

DISTANT RHYTHMS
After a few years listening to the band, I found myself either becoming more like the ideas the lyrics portrayed, or merely a mirror of the ideas looming in their songs.

Can a song have that great an effect on you? Can you become so entranced by someone else’s life that you begin to model your own after them? I think it is quite possible. I know that the drummer of the band, Neil Peart, had such a major impact on my young mind I began believing, in a very naïve way, that I could become him (or at least like him). And my friends all shared very similar ideas about the band. We were mystified by the rock god myth, and damn if we weren’t going to be gods, too.

15 YEARS LATER
At 15, I had access only to music magazines, record sleeves, and the occasional radio interview. When the band would tour, a group of us would travel to Detroit to see the band play which was very awe-inspiring. There’s nothing quite like seeing your idols in the flesh, even if they are mere figures on a stage and you still have no access to them.
At these concerts I truly began to realize that I wasn’t the only major Rush fanatic. In fact, if there were this many other lunatics at this show, how many other people were there out there? I had no way of knowing, but I could make an educated guess that they numbered in the millions.

In 1994 I logged onto AOL for the first time. I was so astounded by all this new information that it took me a few weeks before finding out about discussion groups. Curious, I poked around until I found what I was looking for-subject: RUSH

There must have been 800 messages on this discussion group’s list, ranging in topic from band history to collector’s items. I even found a person willing to photocopy and send the tour guide for a show I had missed because the band didn’t come to Portland. If that doesn’t show a mutual connection, I don’t know what does. For a complete stranger to take the time and send me something that meant a lot to them, too… and they lived in Toronto, which as over 2500 miles away. Suddenly, it became quite clear that the word "community" didn’t have to be limited by the bounds of geography. The Internet had just opened up the floodgates.

TODAY-EVEN BETTER
Thanks to the Web, today I can log on to Rush’s fan web site and learn everything I ever wanted to know in a few minutes; talk to other fans, read record reviews, get the latest news, even find out personal information on the band. If this resource had been around when I was 15… well, I think I would have had a little trouble passing my classes. What’s great is that a resource exists not only about the band, but a portal to meet other people that share the philosophy.

If you extend this theory out, and there has been much heated debate over this, a band has the power now to market directly to its fan base. You can preview CD-quality songs in MP3, watch QuickTime video clips, read the latest press clippings, link into TicketMaster’s online database and find out where the band is playing and purchase tickets for shows.

I recently read an article in Rolling Stone about Alanis Morisette. She’s taken the medium so far as to include information about the books which have influenced her recent studies of eastern culture… and Amazon.com is purported to have made a deal to sell those books to fans and Alanis gets a kick-back! Now, I think this puts an artist in question if they monopolize their rock god status to influence the buying decisions of impressionable minds (and hence fatten their wallets), but at the same time I see the incredible power for fans to learn more about artists and get a deeper glimpse into their lives.

I, too, would have taken advantage of this resource had it existed when I was in my idolization phase. Then again, when I found out that Neil Peart had written a book about his bike travels in Africa (via the web site, thank you), I immediately placed my order through the distributor (who had a link from the fan site and an online order form).

Think what the record industry might do if they made strategic inroads with FANS. Offering all the typical fan-based site content plus the ability to preview a band’s entire discography on MP3, buy the CD’s, purchase posters, tour guides, t-shirts, paraphernalia, concert tickets, learn about related artists. Even offer previews of the music that influenced the band themselves. Talk about circles of influence!

CLOSING THOUGHTS
We’ve explored how communities of the past were founded almost entirely on physical geography and influence was minimized to a two-block radius, television and the written word (which I didn’t hit on in this article). With the advent of the Internet came the ability to go outside our boundaries and meet people around the world who share similar interests.

When these communities of interest become cognizant of one another, they evolve into a wonderful form of communication that allow strangers to share ideas without feeling the least bit awkward or alienated.

The beauty is, there are people out there who we can identify with. Sometimes they are across the street. Most of the time they are thousands of miles away and inaccessible to us because we don’t know they exist or speak languages we cannot comprehend. The Internet has brought those people within our reach. Oddly enough, those we model ourselves after are often the most untouchable people in the universe yet we somehow feel close to them and now, more than ever, can learn detailed facts about them.

You may or may not know the people in your own community of influence, but I bet you they are out there waiting for you to log on and talk about what you most enjoy.

The lesson here is simple: influence is not isolated by geography, and neither are communities.