Audiobooks

jenks

jenks

thread death
sus said:
Technology invented before our time is good and proper. Technology invented while we're alive imperils the human spirit.

Culture from our teen years—or from our parents' teen years—was the best culture that's ever existed, and everything's downhill from there.

Either these are terrific coincidences, or—as is borne out in written testimony from time immemorial—this is always how people feel about change.

At the very least it seems like we should be very skeptical of our personal feelings, when it comes to judging the trendlines of contemporary history.
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I get that declinism is always there and we’re capable of getting misty eyed about the past. And even the Greeks moaned about things getting worse. And we are our own worst judges on what will last from any age - Moby Dick, Gatsby etc. Even now I hear/read something and think ‘how did I miss that? What was I reading or listening to that was half as good?’ but to have a Panglossian approach that we are living in the best possible of times isn’t that helpful either. For example,
there does seem to be a trend in various art forms of allowing a high profile blanding to become the dominant form of art- novels with no real character development or interest in quality of prose just lots of plot. Supercharged YA. Poems that aren’t poems, just glib extended metaphors, Robbie Williams getting a gallery space for shit which is vacuous, light sculptures which are just words. Fucking Banksy. Anything that doesn’t cause one to stop and actually inhabit the space where thinking occurs - just a quick glance and move on. TikTok attention span art. TL : DR culture
 
version

version

Well-known member
The popularity of audiobooks is clearly in part due to them being more easily slotted into the pursuit of 'productivity' that's captured so much. You can blast through them on the commute, at the gym, running errands. They don't disrupt the tempo you're expected to operate at, they don't require time out from the routine.
 
0

0bleak

Well-known member
pattycakes_ said:
It's gonna take some proper freaks to break us out.
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Why would would anyone be motivated to try anything when you get props for a #1 hit from a couple of completely unaltered loops from Splice?

To try to do anything besides using stock sounds and unaltered loops makes you antiquated and dated after all.
Also, today I ordered another one of those music releases that sound exactly like what I was listening to 40 years ago :rolleyes:
 
sus

sus

Moderator
pattycakes_ said:
I know what it feels like to literally have my mind blown by something that just came out. Like donkey kicked in the fucking skull. The same receptors are there, as they were back then, in me waiting to be activated. It simply doesn't happen anymore.
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It's a beautiful sentiment, beautifully put, and I feel some of the same way

But don't you think it's as much or more a statement about our personal aging? Even in the 60s, my impression is few folks over thirty felt like they were getting their heads blown off by electric guitar. They thought electric was a cheap gimmick, more likely, and not a development of real substance.

It's an amazing thing to be fifteen and entering the world for the first time, I had my head blown off by Radiohead and Arcade Fire but I don't think they were a worldhistorical highwatermark for music, I think I was fifteen
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I think you're right to say, Contradict me, Prove me wrong, but I also think that would just be a list of what I love. And I've posted that on Dissensus before and it's not to anyone's taste.

I don't think any 60s or 70s artist approaches Joanna Newsom as a songwriter, for instance.
 
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