I haven’t written a lot here lately but that’s only because I have embarked upon writing a massive post, tentatively entitled “Landscape and Memory: The Social Web and The Watchers.” It’s an epic one I promise you, in fact it could be the end of me. It begins like so:
The Cross and the Cathedral in the Mountains
Fair warning: This post can only be described as an attempt in text that if it were in any musical form it would be called a mashup. Whereas in music two or more songs are literally mashed together, often using vocals from one song added as an overlay on another completely different song, I attempt here to mash ideas from different author’s work. Unlike its musical cousin, my particular text mashup is more one of nuance; taking ideas and drawing out passages from author’s works that I feel hew closely to the implications in the title of this post. It is not a derivative work per se nor is it homage, and it is not about fair use under copyright law. It’s an attempt to show that on the social web, misperception can be universal and at the same time perception can be painfully singular and personal.
The authors and the books from which I have culled ideas for this essay are as follows: Simon Schama’s epic book, Landscape and Memory [1995,] in which he forges a new path into how we perceive history, David Foster Wallace’s essay, E Unibus Plurum; Televison and U.S. Fiction [1993] on how television is an incredible gauge of the generic and how that affects new fiction writing. John Gray’s, Heresies; Against Progress and Other Illusions [2004,] particularly his essay, The Society of the Spectacle Revisited, in which he posits how famous people, particularly English politicians, recycle their life experiences into commodities and sell them to a public hungry for the vicarious intimacy that comes from self-exposure in the mass media, Wim Wenders’ The Act of Seeing [1992] and Don DeLillo’s White Noise [1985.] And finally Julian Barnes’, Nothing To Be Frightened Of [2008,] in which he considers his atheism and later, agnosticism, as he considers what it is to die, [hint: put stress on the word nothing in the book's title, then pause before continuing.]
Cheap Holidays In Other People’s Misery – The Sex Pistols [1977]
In the past decade TV viewers in the U.S. became armchair voyeurs, glued to the screen as they voraciously gobbled up untold amounts of reality TV garbage. [The Sex Pistols had a great song back in 1977 called Holidays In The Sun with the lyric - 'Cheap Holidays In Other People's Misery.' Seems like a similar thread to me.] In 2009 on the cusp of a new decade, how we “watch” has now changed forever. We view the social web through a TV-shaped monitor but the similarities end right there. The simple act of opening your browser means you are now unequivocally participating in the social web.
I hope to finish this crazy undertaking in the next week or so and in the meantime I will attempt to keep up with the ever shifting world of music – but I have to say, music seems to be doing fine, so perhaps moving my focus toward the social web will keep you all more interested….
