Francis Davis: Like Young

[Bill Barton]

Gary's post on the STN thread responding to the Robert Palmer quote made me think about this whole thing...

"[The] more we are bombarded by the same lower-common-denominator music, and the same canned "news," the less we listen ... As a people, as a world, we have forgotten how to listen. And if we don't start listening again, one day some fool we never bothered to listen to is going to be in the White House
and giving the order to nuke the commies. And then there will be nothing to listen to at all or anyone to listen." -- the late, great music writer Robert Palmer, from early '90s liner notes








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Gary Sisco










Registered: Mar 2003
Location: Vermont, USA


6 May-5th-2003 at 05:59 AM
Good one, Bill! Total agreement here. We have a small waterfall on our land where I like to take the dogs, nearly every day at least once. While they go about their dog bidness, I go about listening to the water, the wind, the birds, etc. Just listening.

I really can't take the media bombardment when I'm out in public these days. Turn that shit off! No one's paying attention to it!

Ten years from owning a television set, it really feels like an intrusion now, to me. Everywhere I go there's either some schlock "music" playing (often too loud) that I never wanted to hear in the first place, or a television going that no one's really paying any attention to, or some shit. There's a pub here in town where the tv is on all the time and so is the music, but the music's so loud no one could hear the tv if they wanted to, so leave the captions for the hard of hearing going so you can read what's on tv (if the feature isn't issuing nongrammatical gibberish, which it often is) if you want to.

I must be getting old, but that's not my idea of a pub atmosphere. Music, okay, certainly. Especially if its at a volume that allows conversation at something below a yelling level, but the direction seems to be going toward sitting and drinking and being unable to converse with any ease. It just makes me nervous, most times, and also wanting to leave. It makes me feel like I want to be alone and to be left alone. Exactly the opposite of what a pub is supposed to be (the word does come from "public house," after all, that is, it's supposed to be a public experience, not a private one, when you go out).

Anyway, I'm totally with that Palmer quote. For many years, I had music playing all the time. If I was awake, and often if I was asleep, there was music playing. The past year or so, I've kicked that habit and now listen to music. I mean *listen* to music, when I can. I'm tired of just hearing it. If I can't listen to it, I'd rather not have it playing, unless there's a party going on or something like that.

Which reminds me of the cliche from my parents' generation, "... so loud I couldn't hear myself think." What I think, is that this experience has now become *purposeful,* rather than a complaint. People don't want to hear themselves think, either because they're afraid of what they might think, if they actually did for any length of time, or because they just don't have any thoughts to begin with that are more interesting than the meaningless babble around them all the time.

Has anyone else read this collection? What are your reactions?