art, society

Existential Dread

I’ve given up drinking and smoking, and it reminds me of a joke I heard once:

Doctor: Sir, you really must give up smoking and drinking
Patient: Why? Will it make me live longer?
Doctor: No, it’ll just feel like it.

I’ve been using the new BBC iPlayer (which is 100% for the win!) for the last couple of days and it’s had an unexpected side effect – it’s brought on a severe bout of existential dread.

It’s not the iplayer itself you understand, more the programmes that I have been able to watch through it. Firstly I watched “Dance Britannia” – which is a documentary written by the excellent Times Columnist, Caitlin Moran. The programme, in a nutshell, tracked dancing in the UK from Northern Soul through to Acid House through to the mosaic of theft we have now. Frankly, we don’t live in authentic times from a musical perspective, we’re just a generation that begs, steals and borrows from true movements, true underground scenes and true musical exploration and expression.

Check out those two videos (northern soul & acid house) – I just can’t imagine that thesedays? Either people are too caught up in getting wrecked or people are too caught up trying to be cool to actually have a good time.

To be honest, I don’t think this banality ends with music, we don’t seem to have much fight, I look around and pointless consumerism has consumed the gusto and originality of so many.

The second programme that I watched which made me despair was Charlie Brooker’s Review of the Year. When you see a year’s noteworthy TV output summarised and dispatched relentlessly by Brooker in just over an hour, you realise what a disgrace TV has become. If you consider how many people are choosing to live their lives sat in front of it, night in, night out it really does make you wonder what the fucking point is. How can I take someone serious at work when I’ve just heard them parping on about Strictly-Cum-Dancing
whilst-buying-ahouse-and-doing-it-up and-having-your-kid-kicked-the-fuck-out-of-by-Supernanny?

Parping Work Colleague: I think if we change this part of the document, we could really be on to something…
Me: Oh, I see…so you have ideas as well as being an immeasurable cretin? Well why don’t I set you up a little pretend “Ideas Idol” over here in the corner? Let me know when you’re finished so I can set up a panel of judges, routinely ridicule you and then kick you out of this fucking place.
Parping, dribbling Work Colleague: Wow, will I get an interview with Fern Cotton?

Although one thing that did make me chuckle was Brooker mentioning the whole phone-in scandal thing. It just made me think – what’s worse than watching Richard & Judy? Watching Richard & Judy and getting stiffed by a fixed phone-in! Haha.

Anyway, whack on some Eluvium and check out this slideshow tagged “existential dread” on flickr, it’s interesting viewing. Or just watch this, if you need a little bit of cheering up after my rant…

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