One Thing Leading To Another

[poliphilo]

I found a pair of headphones in a cupboard yesterday- and- on a whim- tried plugging them them into the tower- and now I'm wired for music for the first time in months. I told myself I didn't miss the music- but clearly I did because I'm more than happy to have it back. This morning I've been listening to a clip of K D Lang singing Hallelujah (posted by my friend wyrmwwd ) and it's stiffened my spine for the day.

The reason I didn't have music is a strange reason. We moved the computer from one corner of the room to another and the speakers became detatched and I couldn't work out which of the many combinations of jacks I should plug them back into. And since the business of plugging them in involved lying on a hardwood floor in bad light and hurt a good deal I just gave up.  Feeble, eh?

The headphones plug into the front of the tower. Easy.

Not having music meant I missed out on the Sarah Boyle affair, which I now see is turning sour. She's had a makeover and dyed her hair and Simon Cowell is reportedly angry because he can't patronise her any more. Or something like that. I never saw why I should care in the first place. She doesn't sing my kind of music. Divorced from its sentimental backstory her act is just something I'd hastily flip past if I came across it while channel-surfing. And I hate Simon Cowell with his manipulative ways and his kitsch.  Bread and circuses, people, bread and circuses.

But now I've got the music back I have watched the archive clip where she's singing for Michael Barrymore and he's lying on the floor trying to look up her skirt. Barrymore was the ur-Cowell- even more disgusting but considerably less canny.

Also he should have stood trial for murder.....

Talking about kitsch, I read a good article about it here.

Kitsch... is a heartless world. It directs emotion away from its proper target towards sugary stereotypes, permitting us to pay passing tribute to love and sorrow without truly feeling them. "It is no accident that the arrival of kitsch on the stage of history coincided with the hitherto unimaginable horrors of trench warfare, of the Holocaust and the Gulag -- all of them fulfilling the prophecy that kitsch proclaims, which is the transformation of the human being into a doll, which in one moment we cover with kisses, and in the next tear to shreds." Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will is kitsch's most exultant moment, its massed Nazis both adored and turned into statues.

Sorry, I'm feeling a little waspish this morning. We've had a hard few days and my hallelujah is cold and broken.

Comments

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I have not managed to fall in love with Sarah Boyle the way many people have. She has a lovely voice, of course. But so do many other people. I am not sure how to put it...I just find so much hoopla over people appearing "out of nowhere" and stunning folks with their talent to be overrated. I'm not inspired by their stories; I am bored.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think we're being manipulated. And it all puts money in Simon Cowell's coffers. I don't care for the kind of show music Boyle sings, so why should I care about her?

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I think we're being manipulated.

This simple sentence is why I, as a rule, feel damn near offended at stories like Boyle's. Her story is presented in a way that suggests, "How can you not fall in love with this woman's story?!? You are heartless if you are not moved to tears." I hate being told how to feel and what to think. I hate being manipulated into being a follower of a trend. If her story was presented without all of the drama, I wouldn't mind. But the media worship and the suggestion that anyone with a heart must love her and be amazed at her turns me off. Politics aside, that is what turns me off about President Obama's story, as well.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I detest Cowell and all his shows. Quite apart from anything else, I hate the way he has flooded the culture with his brand of horrible, heartless, kitschy "music".

There's nothing new in the way Obama has been sold to the electorate. Look at JFK; almost everything we were told about him at the time turned out to be untrue.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I still have some hope for Obama. Seems to be a man with some values. Hope I am not disillusioned in four years time.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Obama has changed the national- and international- mood- just as Kennedy did. Maybe that's the thing that really counts.

Or- as the newspaper guy says in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend."