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

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Specifically "pop", but also a lot of rap and hip-hop. But, honestly, to people who aren't familiar with it, dubstep doesn't sound THAT much different than techno and industrial . . .

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I guess :-) I'd argue that they're very different, but I'm aware that I'm doing that from the inside.

One area of music which is _very_ different is the whole genre of mash-ups. Rap and hip-hop used sampling, but mashups are a new (and, when done well, highly entertaining) level.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oh, there is new stuff, but it's mostly fringe. Like steampunk. I'd count maships as similar in that sense.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

The fringe is where change always happens. The centre consumes it later.