Losing Touch

[poliphilo]

The older you get the harder it is to keep abreast of contemporary culture and ideas. Scan a person's bookshelves and you can tell at a glance when exactly they stopped thinking (or so an archdeacon of my acquaintance once said). This article offers a diagnosis and an excuse. The guy who wrote it is only in his 40s but he's already reached the stage where he'd rather watch Peter Cushing for the "n"th time than Benedict Cumberbatch for the 1st.  

I lost interest in pop music in the 90s. I stopped keeping up with the movies about five years ago. I'm happier with Edwardian novelists than I am with contemporary ones.  I still sort of keep up with what's happening on TV- but that's because it takes so little effort. 

I tell myself I need to get a grip. 

Comments

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

This is one of the unexpected side-effects of working with teenagers. I am exposed to all sorts of stuff - and attached perceptions and priorities - that most people my age won't be. This includes people my age who have children, because there is much that teenagers discuss amongst their peers at school that I overhear, that would be hidden from a parent.

The young person's view of time is horrifying though. My class of fifteen year olds, two years ago, here trying to think of the name of 'an old famous singer, who was REALLY huge back in the day, and their mums liked him, but head sort of disappeared and might even be dead'. I thought they my mean Frank Sinatra. They were talking about Robbie Williams.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Alas, poor Robbie.

Hasn't Gary Barlow just been made Master of the Queen's Music, or something like that?