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Cultural Fascism
The advent of the MP3 player, Spotify
and the like means that many kids growing up in the 21st century
will never know the joy of listening to an album from start to finish. It’s not
just kids either. My mother works from home and listens to her iPod on shuffle
the way that many people do. It’s part of the growing trend of slowly wearing
away attention spans. Society is bound to collapse not out of any ecological or
natural disaster but by no one being able to pay attention to anything long
enough to learn anything, an idea which I believe was explored in the first
season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (When the Bough Breaks).
Maybe it’s because I’m a reader,
but I still think there’s something intrinsically beautiful about the internal
narrative of a well-crafted album. I do use an MP3 player to listen to music
these days, which makes life a lot easier. The first time I went backing around
Europe, I had to have a separate backpack just to carry all my tapes for a
three month trip. These days I can carry enough music and audio plays to last a
year on my phone. However, I miss the days of vinyl. I miss the way that an
album not only had an internal narrative, but were structured in acts over two,
four or more sides. I miss stacking albums and singles on to the central
spindle and watching each disc slide down on to the turntable like a stripper
sliding down a pole. That was as near to shuffle as we got in those days.
Listening to one half of half a dozen albums, then flipping the lot over. These
days vinyl seems almost steampunk. Yet there was something undoubtedly romantic
it about it. You never hear anyone speak with the same sense of quixotic
nostalgia about compact discs.
I don’t use Spotify and I don’t
listen to music on shuffle, ever. If I listen to music then I’m in for the long
haul, the whole album, start to finish. Especially if I’m reading then I like a
consistent soundtrack. On more than one occasion I have listened to the entire
five odd hours of Bitches Brew in a single mammoth reading session. Or twelve
Dylan albums or the complete Clash or Radiohead discography in a row while
writing. Perhaps it also has to do with my continually shifting mood. Music
soothes the savage beast, but it also preserves him in a state of suspended
animation when he’s in a productive mood.
Then again, I am a cultural
fascist and so I also think that what separates me from the Spotify generation
is that I listen to good music. If you’re listening to Justin Bieber or Lady
Gaga then I can understand why you wouldn’t be able to stomach a whole album’s
worth. It’s like eating a large bag of Haribo. Full of sugar and of no
nutritional value.
The strength of western society
has always been predicated on population control and whereas technology should
be enhancing our lives, it is instead being used as a weapon to keep people
fractured by decimating their attention spans, much in the same way that
incessant, structured ad breaks have been used in the USA for years. TV in the
US seems to be less a form of entertainment and more a device for psychological
conditioning. Online subscription services are slowly eroding the advertising
industry’s half century strangle hold on TV, but who knows how long that will
last. One would imagine that as the balance shifts from broadcast to internet
media the advertisers will arrive like Killer Whales beaching on the shore.
And now
a word from our sponsors: Download ad blocking software to your internet browser
of choice today.
Under these circumstances, one
would hope that the ones who mentally fight these assaults upon the senses will
have a distinct advantage over the rest. There is no doubt that people are
getting more stupid, spend five minutes on an any comments section if you don’t
believe me. I’m not someone who watches shit films for the sake of it or sits
on Twitter complaining about The Apprentice or Question Time or whatever. Not
only are we becoming more stupid, but we are forgoing intellectual advancement
and artistic creation in favour of pissing over anything anyone one else
creates.
You will rarely read here any
article in which I slag off or pick on an artist, musician or film. There is
plenty that I don’t like, but I tend to try and just ignore it. There are seven
billion people on the world, you, me, everyone is bound to be unattracted to
most of what goes on in the world. Yet the need for instant gratification and
the celebrity culture that has infected society like a disease that causes
severe brain damage means that it’s easier to attack the efforts of others.
Instead of commenting on the latest bunch of unpleasant wankers on The
Apprentice, you could be learning a new language or going to art classes.
Instead of arguing on Twitter about Toby Young’s thoughts on the NHS on
Question Time, you could be out helping your community or joining a local
Amnesty International group. And here’s a question for you: Why do supposedly
intelligent people watch Question Time? A program featuring a panel of
politicians. It’s like you want to lied to.
I have all but stopped watching
television. I don’t have a TV of my own and what little I watch is usually a
BBC Four program of iPlayer or something created by Dan Harmon watched using a
proxy server to make the internet think I’m in the US. And even then I have my
ad blocker enabled to skip through the commercials. That’s anarchy in my book
(humour).
Aside from that, I read, I
listen to albums, I struggle to learn new languages, I memorise the Shipping
Forecast areas and Rimbaud poems in the original French in order to keep my
memory keen. I listen to what I want, watch what I want, read what I want and
if there is no prospect of me enjoying something then I don’t do it. Everyone
should be so lucky.
Get it done.
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