{Make Media Not War}Have you ever read anything by Julian Barnes? You should, I promise. He has spawned one of my great love affairs, that is the one with the public library. Anyways, just read this...its quite intelligent I think and its from one of his short stories intitled the Revival.
" When did you last have your hands kissed? And if you did, how do you know he was any good at it? (Futher, when did anyone last write to you about kissing your hands?) Here is the argument for the world of reunciation. If we know more about consummation, they knew more about desire. If we know more about numbers, they knew more about despair. If we know more about boasting, they knew more about memory. They had foot-kissing, we have toe-sucking. You still prefer our side of the equation? You may well be right. Then try a simpler formulation: if we know more about sex, they knew more about love."
Don't ask me what this post is about, I get all dreamy after reading a good book resulting in a craving for good coffee, a thick blanket, a notebook, an inky pen and perhaps a moonlit room.
This is a horrible mood to study in because you can't study when you are like this. You just want to write and read and think about love and God and nature and futures and pasts and everything important that will not be on your exam on tuesday.
It makes me want to listen to songs like "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Halleluija", anything by Death Cab for Cutie or anything with strange deep lyrics and less than 40 beats per minute.
I have such strange moods and the silliest things like books effect them. I have just told you of one mood jump started by good deep books but there are others.
Example...
If I were to watch a program on home decorating, I immediately start cleaning house, rearranging furniture and planning my dream kitchen.
If I watch a commercial for weight loss I start to plan my exercise routine but if say I happened to read about political scandals in the next moment I would be energized to save the world.
This had led me to a particulary horrible realization: we are what we read, watch or encounter. Well at least I am.
Now think of this...if you were to grow up in an environment that did not have any form of media - no television, no music, no books what would you create. If you were sat in this room void of media but given instruments, empty notepads etc what would come out? You would have no musical influences but were given training would a new genre of music be discovered? What about you were taught the rules of writing but given nothing to read, what would you write. How would you dance? How would you sing? What media-less, non influenced creations would emerge?
A thought experiment, yes. A possible reality, no.
Unfourtunately we will never know anything new. As was said, "there is nothing new under the sun". Where did this saying come from? The Bible.
Ecclesiasties 1:9. Ancient wisdom, regurgated for my own use in the realm of the internet thousands of years later. Bible as the oldest popular form of media? Hmm, interesting concept.
"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun."
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