Try as you may, you can't escape the future. The Radiant Future, as our one time friends the Soviets called it, assuring young Jerzy Kosinski with the phrase you see above, which he would later use as the title of his first book in English.
Dana Gioia (pronounced Joy-a) is a businessman turned accomplished poet, who now heads the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal government agency with a measly yearly budget of $133 million to fund art institutions across the country. Somehow or another Mr Gioia was invited as a commencement (graduation) speaker at the Stanford University last Sunday. According to a press report, some students were concerned that he was a controversial choice as a speaker, not being a celebrity, i.e. someone being known for being known. In his speech he called American culture "bankrupt", and said "we live in a culture that barely acknowledges and rarely celebrates the arts and artists." And "Everything now is entertainment. American culture has mostly become one vast infomercial." The students' reactions? Judging from the interviews conducted by the reporter, they're already in the future "I'm a pop-culture whore", says one laughing. "For me, my culture is sports," says another, while another is interested in little besides economics, and so on. The poet spoke to the wind.
I don't own an iPod, or a mobile phone, or a fixed-gear bicycle like the one pictured above. But I do attend spinning classes. Spinning is a group exercise on sturdy stationary bikes built for this purpose, expensive and lacking all controls normally present on stationary bikes, except wheel resistance adjustment. The bikes allow the rider to stand on the pedals. Spinning sessions last an hour or longer and are led by an instructor who, on a spin bike himself, leads the participants through a program of drills, such as climbing, sprints, flat road racing, etc. After a good hour of spinning participants end up soak up in sweat.
Unfortunately, this futuristic exercise, hasn't escaped the future of auditory experiences. Any group exercise at an American gym, be it yoga, aerobics or spinning, must be, by some diabolic rule, accompanied by loud noise of piped in music, if music it is, and not an infomercial to purchase the CDs of the performers. Our regular spinning instructor, a woman in her early 40s, a geologist, road bike racer and mother, plays CDs of retro music dating back to the 80s and 70s, generally melodic hard rock. Her summer substitute, a woman slightly older, a gym professional and a New Yorker who says "come one", when she means "come on", plays the music of the future, what my drinking buddy calls "techno", no manual virtuosity allowed, all electronic, all programmed by, presumably, a non-musician, but a conceptual artist. One "tune" we heard last Friday imitated the sounds of a construction site, unchanging pounding of machinery, with electronic bass and drums, no melody of any kind for 5 minutes. I looked around me at the five other participants, some of them not much younger than myself, and they didn't seem bothered by it one bit. Annoyed, I thought of leaving right there and then, when the obnoxious tune ended, and another one slightly less offensive started.
More on the topic of inescapable future next time, but for now here's something from the past. A book titled The Walk by William deBuys was published recently by a university press. I learned about it reading a review in the local newspaper, and immediately ordered a copy through Amazon. The author is a teacher and naturalist living in New Mexico. For 27 years he has made the same 45-minute walk "up one arroyo, down another, back by the river and the ancient mill, and up through the farm". It is a meditative book, the review informs us. The writer says "the more you know the place, or think you know it, the more it can take you where you do not expect." And "Sometimes the easiest answers to our difficulties is not so much to get outside ourselves, as simply to get ourselves outside."
"I take the walk and then the walk takes me."
Dana Gioia (pronounced Joy-a) is a businessman turned accomplished poet, who now heads the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal government agency with a measly yearly budget of $133 million to fund art institutions across the country. Somehow or another Mr Gioia was invited as a commencement (graduation) speaker at the Stanford University last Sunday. According to a press report, some students were concerned that he was a controversial choice as a speaker, not being a celebrity, i.e. someone being known for being known. In his speech he called American culture "bankrupt", and said "we live in a culture that barely acknowledges and rarely celebrates the arts and artists." And "Everything now is entertainment. American culture has mostly become one vast infomercial." The students' reactions? Judging from the interviews conducted by the reporter, they're already in the future "I'm a pop-culture whore", says one laughing. "For me, my culture is sports," says another, while another is interested in little besides economics, and so on. The poet spoke to the wind.
I don't own an iPod, or a mobile phone, or a fixed-gear bicycle like the one pictured above. But I do attend spinning classes. Spinning is a group exercise on sturdy stationary bikes built for this purpose, expensive and lacking all controls normally present on stationary bikes, except wheel resistance adjustment. The bikes allow the rider to stand on the pedals. Spinning sessions last an hour or longer and are led by an instructor who, on a spin bike himself, leads the participants through a program of drills, such as climbing, sprints, flat road racing, etc. After a good hour of spinning participants end up soak up in sweat.
Unfortunately, this futuristic exercise, hasn't escaped the future of auditory experiences. Any group exercise at an American gym, be it yoga, aerobics or spinning, must be, by some diabolic rule, accompanied by loud noise of piped in music, if music it is, and not an infomercial to purchase the CDs of the performers. Our regular spinning instructor, a woman in her early 40s, a geologist, road bike racer and mother, plays CDs of retro music dating back to the 80s and 70s, generally melodic hard rock. Her summer substitute, a woman slightly older, a gym professional and a New Yorker who says "come one", when she means "come on", plays the music of the future, what my drinking buddy calls "techno", no manual virtuosity allowed, all electronic, all programmed by, presumably, a non-musician, but a conceptual artist. One "tune" we heard last Friday imitated the sounds of a construction site, unchanging pounding of machinery, with electronic bass and drums, no melody of any kind for 5 minutes. I looked around me at the five other participants, some of them not much younger than myself, and they didn't seem bothered by it one bit. Annoyed, I thought of leaving right there and then, when the obnoxious tune ended, and another one slightly less offensive started.
More on the topic of inescapable future next time, but for now here's something from the past. A book titled The Walk by William deBuys was published recently by a university press. I learned about it reading a review in the local newspaper, and immediately ordered a copy through Amazon. The author is a teacher and naturalist living in New Mexico. For 27 years he has made the same 45-minute walk "up one arroyo, down another, back by the river and the ancient mill, and up through the farm". It is a meditative book, the review informs us. The writer says "the more you know the place, or think you know it, the more it can take you where you do not expect." And "Sometimes the easiest answers to our difficulties is not so much to get outside ourselves, as simply to get ourselves outside."
"I take the walk and then the walk takes me."
(to be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment