Just wanting a piece of the pie as they say. But what if that pie was just a hollow pastry shell to start with, that had potential to be great and would sell over and over again. It just needed filling with a tasty, tempting filling to bring the customers, and the money in. And if that same pie could be sold over and over again, you wouldn’t want that pie to disappear, would you? Like the bucket that refilled with water, or gold, or whatever the old story decided would be an everlasting flow of. And let’s imagine that empty pie shell is the music and entertainment industry. And the filling is all the artists and creatives that fill it, making it an everlasting pie. In this analogy, the artists are the pie filling, the industry is the pastry shell, and the people wanting a piece of it starts at the top and works its way down. The executives who sign the deal, the extras that get employed to manage and ‘look after’ the artist, then the family and friends, then the fans. Everybody wants a piece. And not always with the intention of taking it all, some people do end up with good people around them because they choose well, or their families are genuinely loving and supportive, and not vampires like the other types.

We should all know by now that there is something quite sinister occurring within certain industries, and the entertainment one has been a part of many lives for decades and is no different. Recently bought more into the spotlight by the princess of pop and a strange legal stranglehold her family had placed upon her. I realised after the first public meltdown that it would be used against her, as with all of them, and anyone who is not playing the game, or by the ‘rules’. My articles – Are You not Entertained? and A Witch, How Convenient touch upon how easy it is to label someone as unstable to discredit them or as a way to control them. With Opposition mentioning another recent celebrity scenario, showing the methods in action and how people publicly weren’t quite buying it. Noticing a pattern, and certain names that seemed to pop up time and time again in similar cases, being the ‘behind the scenes’ driving force in most cases. Feeding things to the media for them to fuel the flames of influence, to help and to hinder people depending on the desired outcome. Make or break you as they say.

And many have been broken along the way, not all with us anymore and some a different person to what they were before. And sometimes I used to think they carried on performing for an audience because they had to, part of the contract etc and if you are being held ‘captive’ in a performing world, then just as the circus animals get let out of the cage to do their routine, so are the human counterparts. I see the managements teams and other vultures as the ringmasters and side ‘acts’ to keep the main attractions in line. Like the cartoon Dumbo, where it was realised that elephant could make more money than all the others. They then took steps to enrage the mother, take the ‘child’ and groom it thereafter for their own benefit. The people cheer and clap, paying their ticket price and applaud the circus for finding such ‘talent’ and letting them see it. Not then seeing how after the lights are off, and the audience has dissipated, the animals get led back to their holding pen until next they are needed.

It isn’t nice when you see it like that, knowing that having a special talent actually makes you a target for unscrupulous people who see you as a gravy train and cash cow and ultimately just a commodity. Like Pinocchio too, mentioned in my article Being Real, of luring children to a ‘pleasure island’ with promises of whatever they wanted to hear, so they could be trafficked into a sinister world of corruption. And with all the mainstream outlets seemingly pushing a more sexualised landscape generally, but especially for children, one can only presume the profit margins are just too high for them to keep it as an undercurrent. General conditioning is being rolled out with the hope of luring new generations towards a pleasure island – but as with the fictional one, it is their pleasure and greed it is there to satisfy. And it seems that it has been there the whole time, as a sideline to these forms of ‘entertainment’, covered in my piece Face Of A Clown, In Story Town, with theme parks, carnivals and other places they say are for children. I used to think it weird even before I knew, that one minute children are being sent down mines and up chimneys with the Victorian saying, children should be seen and not heard, to suddenly having very expensive projects constructed for them and their amusement. And as they wouldn’t be able to afford them themselves, adults would also have to have a change of mindset, that children needed to be entertained and taken to these places. To learn to trust them, and things dressed as characters playing a part, merging fantasy and reality to create a very odd thought process in some it would seem. Where it is almost hypnotising and allows a certain type of person to get to you. After you have been carefully groomed, programmed and conditioned to stare at the pretty lights and faces, listen to the music and let yourself get swept away into the dark and murky world of illusions…

(c) K Wicks