I was reading The Telegraph after ages the other day, and I came upon this article. Well, I was actually reading it in print, but anyway. I was quite taken by the point of view. Especially this bit.
I used to consider myself the observant type. No, not noticing the subtle undertones in a voice, of distress, or anger. I'm mostly pretty thick when it comes to things that matter, people and shit. I was talking about pointless things, like the names of every street the No. 219 bus takes from home to Howrah Station. Like the colour of the fields by the railway line. These days I usually have to shake myself out of some sort of a haze, shake off the blank gaze, to actually look. Thing is, it's so easy to just stop looking :-<. That's all you've gotto do, stop. Most of the time you won't run into anything or stuff like that 'cos you've probably walked/driven that way a million times before.
Sometimes, you really do notice something, something nice, like the little girl picking a flower off the shrub and putting it in her hair. Then you realise that she's probably homeless and the shrub's growing out of the cracks in a divider on the road that runs through the city slum and the flower's stained black with exhaust fumes from cars that have bribed their way around pollution control. And you desperately try to concentrate on the lyrics of the song playing on the car radio/iPod/discman/walkman, just to strangle the train of thought, ignore the vision. It comes to your rescue and plays your favourite track.
I've stopped looking anyway, why blame the iPod?
Feeling: bitter
Listening to: Texas - Hush
“We are not in a very visual age. I think it’s all about sound. People plug in their ears and don’t look much, whereas for me my eyes are the biggest pleasure.Now I don't really consider myself to be in much of a position to comment on the impact on art, but I do appreciate the point about how people no longer look, well, in a way. I'd say it's quite an addiction. I myself have gotten to the point where I absolutely need some music playing around me. All the time! Sadly enough, most of the time, it's just a relaxing background. Helps calm those frayed nerves and that temper on edge, keeps those legs pushing and those arms pulling, even when they don't really want to. Or so I tell myself.
“You notice that on buses. People don’t look out of the window, they are plugged in and listening to something.”- David Hockney
I used to consider myself the observant type. No, not noticing the subtle undertones in a voice, of distress, or anger. I'm mostly pretty thick when it comes to things that matter, people and shit. I was talking about pointless things, like the names of every street the No. 219 bus takes from home to Howrah Station. Like the colour of the fields by the railway line. These days I usually have to shake myself out of some sort of a haze, shake off the blank gaze, to actually look. Thing is, it's so easy to just stop looking :-<. That's all you've gotto do, stop. Most of the time you won't run into anything or stuff like that 'cos you've probably walked/driven that way a million times before.
Sometimes, you really do notice something, something nice, like the little girl picking a flower off the shrub and putting it in her hair. Then you realise that she's probably homeless and the shrub's growing out of the cracks in a divider on the road that runs through the city slum and the flower's stained black with exhaust fumes from cars that have bribed their way around pollution control. And you desperately try to concentrate on the lyrics of the song playing on the car radio/iPod/discman/walkman, just to strangle the train of thought, ignore the vision. It comes to your rescue and plays your favourite track.
I've stopped looking anyway, why blame the iPod?
Feeling: bitter
Listening to: Texas - Hush
Point noted. Considerable food for inconvenient thought.
ReplyDelete*reaching out for iPod and plugging in*
:)