When my Radiohead book was published, there were a few rumbles that bringing the likes of Baudrillard into the conversation were a bit – perish the thought – pretentious. I’ve never been particularly stung by such a label (standing proudly alongside Ian Penman on the subject) but I was amused when I recently revisited my old copy of Will Pop Eat Itself? by Jeremy J. Beadle (no, not that one) and noticed that by the second page he was comparing This is the Day... This is the Hour... This is This! by grebo titans PWEI to The Waste Land. And now I wonder whether the modest sales of my book were down to it not being pretentious enough.
cultural snow
Sunday, April 07, 2024
Monday, April 01, 2024
About AI
In the New York Times, the neuroscientist Eric Hoel argues that the increased use of artificial intelligence is forcing any notion of intellectual or aesthetic quality into a death spiral, prompted as much as anything by human laziness. For example he refers to researchers at a conference on AI using AI to conduct peer reviews on AI-related papers, taking any human critical intervention out of the equation. Which is a problem, because one thing AI is very bad at detecting is bullshit, which is ultimately what peer review is for.
Of course, most of us don’t hang around at AI conferences, but Hoel suggests that the process is far more prevalent than that, eroding the fabric of culture itself, to the detriment even of people who reach for their weapons when they hear the word:
Isn’t it possible that human culture contains within it cognitive micronutrients — things like cohesive sentences, narrations and character continuity — that developing brains need?
Friday, March 22, 2024
About art and men
In Tasmania, a man is claiming that his exclusion from the Ladies Lounge, an exhibit at the Museum of Old and New Art, constitutes gender discrimination. The museum’s lawyer contends that his being turned away is integral to what the art is about: “Part of the experience is being denied something that is desired.”
Monday, March 18, 2024
About comedians
Friday, March 15, 2024
About a classical education
An interesting piece by Emma Green in The New Yorker about a resurgence in what’s known as liberal arts and/or classical education. Whatever you want to call it, it stands in opposition to the modern mainstream of pedagogy, favouring the canonical Great Books (and implicitly Dead White Males), which makes it popular with right-wing politicians, although as Green makes clear, that’s by no means the whole story. And if I look at a Trump rally, I wonder how many present, including the main speaker, would understand this gag:
And then there’s literature: one New York City public-high-school reading list includes graphic novels, Michelle Obama’s memoir, and a coming-of-age book about identity featuring characters named Aristotle and Dante. In classical schools, high-school students read Aristotle and Dante.
And before I’m accused of snobbery, I’m well aware that there are vast gaps in my own cultural knowledge; opera, for example is little more than a blur. That said, I do know that Richard Strauss wasn’t Johann’s son, unlike the poor sap writing on the ENO website...
PS: And while we’re there, the Arts Council of England is condemning opera critics for, among other sins, writing “almost exclusively writing from a classical music perspective”.
Sunday, March 10, 2024
About ‘Hallelujah’
A while back, I wrote a book about Leonard Cohen, with a focus on That Song, which had become ubiquitous two decades or more after it had first been released (and mostly ignored). And today, in the midst of an online discussion about the incongruous uses to which it’s been put (see also ‘My Heart Will Go On’ and ‘I Will Always Love You’) I finally realise that I should have called the book SAD JEWS FUCKING.
Thursday, March 07, 2024
About pop
Just came across something I wrote for The Guardian in 2008, offering a sort of “OK, boomer” sigh avant la lettre, suggesting that old people should stop appropriating pop music. Which in turn prompted this delightful response:
Presumably by ‘old’ the author means himself; he’s bald and looks very boring. Probably not intelligent enough for classical though; Andy Williams fan? Nana Mouskouri?
Friday, March 01, 2024
About Brontez Purnell
I can’t claim to know much about the work of Brontez Purnell but it does seem to me that if you’re the subject of the New York Times’s By The Book feature, affecting not to read very much is an, um, interesting look.