This is going to sound like the whining of a middle-class, good for nothing swine whose life is so sickeningly comfortable that his worst concerns are merely the pettiest inconveniences but....
Do you ever feel like you're drowning in too much culture?
That last sentence makes the bile in my stomach lurch upwards. Yet it's true,
isn't it, the modern world provides such ease of access to the arts, both high and low, as to make it nigh on impossible to know where to train your attention first?
I've currently seven series worth of 'The Sopranos' to plough through on DVD, the complete 'Blackadder' box set sitting untouched on a shelf since my birthday in April, I've even got 6 episodes of HBO's 'The Pacific' piling up on my planner. I'm not even sure I think it's a particularly outstanding show! It's no wonder I felt a palpable sense of liberation when I recently deleted a whole host of 'Curb Your Enthusiam' episodes.
Meanwhile, practically all the music in the world is available at the click of a mouse, enticing me to check out the latest upcoming bands, spending far too much time listening to some terrible indie also-rans who, more often than not, demonstrate as much guile and inspiration as an episode of Eldorado! - Never has the adage 'all that glitters isn't gold' been more apposite.
Of course, I've neglected to mention the increasing pile of unread books under my bed; classic novels, political memoirs etc. I really
want to read them but just struggle to find the time.
So why do it to myself? Why not just forget about it? Why should I let my life be dictated by a white box in the corner of my living room? Why does reading a book sometimes feel like a burden rather than a joy? Am I too often trying to appreciate other people's interpretation of life rather than making the most of my
own?
Yes, it's clearly a quest for more and more knowledge but it's also a simple and shameful case of pompous one-upmanship. Ultimately, I want to be able to talk in an informed way about everything and to everyone.
If someone happens to comment on a film, I want to have seen it; if someone talks about the philosophies of Descartes - unlikely as that may be - I want to be able to give some kind of informed opinion; should an album I haven't heard appear in the top 10 lists come the end of the year, I want to know whether I missed out on an unexpected gem or whether it really is the pile of over-hyped dog turd I originally presumed it to be. It may be pretentious, arrogant, I don't know but there it is.
In the developed world the majority of us have it pretty easy. Food, heat and shelter are all pretty much a given for most of us and as a result we bother ourselves not with survival and, shamefully, not with acts of kindness, but rather with developing an 'identity'.
It's no great insight on my part but clearly we end up judging ourselves and each other, not by our deeds, but by how we dress, what we read, our likes and dislikes etc. and, of course, I'm a main offender. Here is my blog with its lists of what I'm reading, watching and listening displayed proudly to the left of this very text you're reading now.
This is how I define myself.
I recently read a blog, the full-text of which can be read
here, discussing the onset of eBook readers and whether or not they will ultimately put an end to printed publishing of books in the future. Fascinatingly, it suggests this is unlikely for 5 main reasons, the last of which is quoted below...
5) E-books can’t be used for interior design.
It may be all about vanity, but books — how we arrange them, the ones we display in our public rooms, the ones we don’t keep — say a lot about what we want the world to think about us. Probably more than any other object in our homes, books are our coats of arms, our ice breakers, our calling cards. Locked in the dungeon of your digital reader, nobody can hear them speak on your behalf.
We may never get round to consuming the content of all the books, DVD's, CD's etc. that come into our possession but you can bet we'll display them on a prominent shelf anyway. Culture has always been a kind of social currency but it can also be as debilitating as it is empowering.
