Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Nostalgia

Andrew Sullivan muses on iPods. Part of his piece is about how we view the world (you know the argument--even though more people avail themselves of more choice than ever, Sullivan joins those ignoring all evidence and pretending people's worlds are more closed off).

He complains that music is becoming a solitary experience:
"Music was once the preserve of the living room or the concert hall. It was sometimes solitary but it was primarily a shared experience, something that brought people together, gave them the comfort of knowing that others too understood the pleasure of a Brahms symphony or that Beatles album."
You see, in the good old days, "we didn’t walk around the world like hermit crabs with our isolation surgically attached."

I wonder if any blowhards in the 1920s, when radio and recordings made it possible to enjoy a symphony by yourself, made similar claims. I don't know. But I do know--and Sullivan is not so young that he can't remember--that old farts made Sullivan's exact argument, with just about the same wording, regarding the Walkman 25 years ago. Hey, Andrew, welcome to the world of old farts.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, I signed off Sullivan in September and don't think I'll be going back anytime soon. (Maybe I'm living in Sunstein's echo chamber, although I don't know how he would know, since he can't escape his own.)

2:05 PM, February 23, 2005  

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