Audiobooks
- Thread starter jenks
- Start date
jenks
thread death
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
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.
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
shakahislop
Well-known member
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Precisely because that is a thing and fuck that
sus
Moderator
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
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.
I don't think any 60s or 70s artist approaches Joanna Newsom as a songwriter, for instance.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Simply put, no. There is that factor, but one of the horses I keep beating over and over on here and elsewhere is that it's all been done. The constellation required for another explosion like we had from the 50s to the 90s would require a stream of new technologies that allow for exploration into new sounds to be coming out - in combination with a generation of kids full of energy and subversive zest, champing at the bit to get their hands on said tech and having some sort of ethos to communicate through it. But I don't see that type of energy in young people anymore. I see boredom, listlessness, too cool for school, folded arms, flicking an cynical 'what?' at the camera. Thinking theyre the shit but palpably conservative. Hollowed out. Scared to step outside of the consensus. Maybe unaware that that's even an option. All thanks to the homogenization of globalized culture and the dulling effects of being raised by and living through the screens. There just isn't the same spark as there was when I was that age, and that spark is the key to it all. It's what lights the fires. Don't get me wrong, not everyone had that even back then, and only a small few managed to make something good out of it at all, but where are those equivalent few now? I'm waiting to hear from them
Kids from my limited experience seem to understand things through data. They learn how to live through data. They analyse and calculate how to have their first kiss by watching a YouTube tutorial. They learn how to talk to their crush via chatGPT. It's a world architected by nerds who never had a chance. Never loved or were loved in return. Never got their hands dirty. No wonder they're all bored. That shit kills creativity. To have a generation of creatives they need to be surrounded by and immersed in a creative world. People need something to build off of. But the current ground has been overfarmed. I get that some people are doing some shit on tiktok but is any of it really thought provoking ala jenks' post? Or some Blake or Shakespeare?
Yes but we don't even have an equivalent to that now. There's nothing happening of that nature in art. Tiktok? Everyone caring as much about seeming TV ready with perfect skincare and ring lights n shit than talking about revolution? Where's the fucking grime? The doomscroll gen has been fully subsumed, while playing acting and spouting words about shit they've never lived. Fated to dwell within the guidelines which act like a maze with no exit. Whole world is contrived now man. As I said, it's gonna take some fucking freaks who don't give a shit about anything to break us out, if it ever happens NYC in the late 70s style, smash smash smash
No one will remember Arcade Fire in 10 years. Radiohead are fronted by a poseur Zionist blowhard who loves the sound of his own warbling and tries to have his revolutionary cake and eat it. Singing the effete plights of the middle classes and purposely plucking at your heartstrings like a fucking vulture. Meanwhile, to contradict myself, outside of our western bubble, there's music going on. Just check @The King of Pussy Gettin's latest mix. Latin America is on fire at the moment. Africa etc..
So not even Joni or Bob? 🧐