Music's My Imaginary Friend

Thought: You could pick any one of the past, say, five decades and I would be able to very quickly list at least ten bands that are clearly representational of whatever the dominant force was in popular music at the time. You could repeat this with a number of people and almost certainly see a high level of overlapping in the choices.

Now is different. There are certain groups who will long be remembered, of course, but overall, this decade is far less cohesive. I believe this is true of most other areas of culture, as well, but sticking with the musical theme, what will get first mention in the nostalgic conversations and history books of tomorrow?

As I see it, the music will be only marginal; the specific artists, a short aside; the songs, a side-note. We've entered a period where content is subordinate to medium. I'm convinced the symbol of our time, the icon of our total current culture, will be the iPod. This is the Internet Age. File-sharing, MP3s, Podcasts, YouTube; in short, the Internet. It's no secret - we're discovering music we never would have found before. We're finding it, downloading it, burning it, spreading it, and forgetting it at an accelerated rate that's unlike any we've seen before. History presents no precedent for the present.

Does this scare you?

On a different note entirely, I continued the road to self-betterment today by buying a sketch-pad and an assorted pack of pencils, charcoals, pastels, and the like. I love buying junk like this because it's a great way for me to convince myself that I'm moving forward when, in fact, all I've really done is dropped a few bucks. All the joy that comes from genuine work with none of the effort. I imagine it's the same sort of thrill Al Gore feels when shopping for carbon offsets.