Joe McConnell's blog
Joe Mc tells the truth for a change ...
22 July 2010
The writer and performer, Julie McNamara, once advised me to 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story'. Maybe it is ironic that, with her recent humdinger of a play Crossings, Julie went on to spin a heady weave of stories fearlessly uncovering terrifying truths about the history of the world. As John Keats put it :
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' [1]
Wow! He wrote that to a grecian urn! Do you reckon he was bipolar? Good job the anti-psychotic pushers weren't around at the time to clip his wings isn't it?
Anyway, I have to confess to following the above advice yesterday when announcing my immediate flouncing out of Facebook. I have not done so. But this is only because I realised that in the 6 to 8 weeks i've been using the service, there's a horde of new friends, refound and rekindled old friends, not to mention dating opportunities ... that you just can't turn your back on. Can you? So I'm staying for a while to make sure I have the necessary contact details to keep in touch with this lot in my imminent exile from social networking.
Again, I don't know whet it is about all these wonderful high technology tools which are supposed to be revolutionising our lives. It just seems that there have never been such sophisticated and user-friendly communication possibilities at out disposal. And yot we seem to be living in a world where communication is disintegrating at the same pace as the ozone layer. Is it possible that one of the reasons for this is the unprecedented amounts of time that more and more people (bearing in mind that a huge amount of people have no access to such luxuries) are spending, drifting down the hallucinatory corridors of lalaland? We are drowning in a slimy sea of moronic entertainment. I think i'd prefer Quetiapine. Just joking - as anything is better than that. Unless its used to help get us through a crisis.
[1] Ode to a Grecian Urn
Keywords: depression,disability art,gender identity,history of disabled people
Comments
Joe Mc
”I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.” (Georges Bataille)
So you are probably right, dear Linus, and probably wrong, innit? But/and I agree that i've a whole lot of work to do.
Oh for a magic carpet "woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven." (Patrick Kavanagh, Canal Bank Walk)
Linus
The more you talk about this, the more it contradicts what you are saying. Many, many people will waste their time on Twitter and Facebook grazing on soundbites. But there is also the huge amount of progressive stuff that it being shared -- and being shared by you, Joe.
"The Medium is the message" to many but but for others it is still only the medium; and critical analysis of any message emerging is being practised.
Content and what people have to say is far more important.
You still have work to do...
Hi Nick
I think it's really interesting what you say about the move away from 'talking' towards 'chatting'. Tony Blair and a generation of political scumbags have shamelessly used sound bites to replace political philosophy of any intellectual integrity. We only have to look at the 'war on terror' to find a clear example of this.
I think this is a reason that, during my mental health recovery of earlier this year, art became hugely important to me. It was a way of escaping from the weirdness of what now passes for entertainment (webchat, soaps, reality TV, dumb documentaries ...
Nick
I'm sure it's not very original to say, but I find that the quality (almost the intensity or depth) of social networking contact is really unsatisfying. It's great for wisecracking - like a good comedy imrov show - or for whinging. But I'm finding these days that I really miss getting letters, and I really miss writing them. It's like the attention span to communicate has contracted, and with it, the need to 'talk', as distinct from 'chat'. Anyhoo, I'll stop banging on like a old folk... (Flouncing Out Of Facebook sounds like a song title worthy of Willie Nelson and Liza Minelli's love child)
Paula B
What ARE you on about?
What are you on? What? Paula x
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