...simply to engage with the world sometimes. Because the world is not enough, or rather the world outside my head fails to connect, or sometimes is simply not as interesting, as the world inside my head.
The old pictures and the old books and the the old songs of the old world make more and more sense the older I get. It is not simply nostalgia - I wasn't even old enough to fully appreciate what was happening in the sixties for example. The current culture is pretty uninteresting, unchallenging, simply not there.Or as an online friend wrote the other day, commenting on the current music scene:
"I've been told off for suggesting that new artists can never be as good as the good ol' gold old ones so I'd just like to make something clear: it's my contention that the the machinery of modern digital technology as used in making modern pop records, when coupled with the formidable machinery of the tabloid media and the way that showbusiness is in bed with it goes so far as to actively preclude the emergence of any genuinely remarkable pop personalities. It doesn't matter how much raw talent a performer has, in order for them to succeed they have to be fed into the Simon Cowell Sausage Machine. The public have had their tastes second guessed by professional smartarses for so long that they have grown to like it, to expect it, and anything that falls outside the Simon Cowell Sausage Machine remit will simply never be presented before a mainstream audience...
The dice of success are loaded against individuality and absolutely dead against young talented people having any chance to actually work out who they are, what they're trying to say and how they want to say it. Fit in or fuck off, is essentially the message. And I'm sick of it. " (Adam)
You could apply that to so many other art forms. My hope is that the economic downturn will open up space for stronger, more serious stuff everywhere. I really feel those shiny shallow nobodies with the money and the power have had their day. And maybe young people might begin to learn that they have a history, and a heritage.
The old pictures and the old books and the the old songs of the old world make more and more sense the older I get. It is not simply nostalgia - I wasn't even old enough to fully appreciate what was happening in the sixties for example. The current culture is pretty uninteresting, unchallenging, simply not there.Or as an online friend wrote the other day, commenting on the current music scene:
"I've been told off for suggesting that new artists can never be as good as the good ol' gold old ones so I'd just like to make something clear: it's my contention that the the machinery of modern digital technology as used in making modern pop records, when coupled with the formidable machinery of the tabloid media and the way that showbusiness is in bed with it goes so far as to actively preclude the emergence of any genuinely remarkable pop personalities. It doesn't matter how much raw talent a performer has, in order for them to succeed they have to be fed into the Simon Cowell Sausage Machine. The public have had their tastes second guessed by professional smartarses for so long that they have grown to like it, to expect it, and anything that falls outside the Simon Cowell Sausage Machine remit will simply never be presented before a mainstream audience...
The dice of success are loaded against individuality and absolutely dead against young talented people having any chance to actually work out who they are, what they're trying to say and how they want to say it. Fit in or fuck off, is essentially the message. And I'm sick of it. " (Adam)
You could apply that to so many other art forms. My hope is that the economic downturn will open up space for stronger, more serious stuff everywhere. I really feel those shiny shallow nobodies with the money and the power have had their day. And maybe young people might begin to learn that they have a history, and a heritage.
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