Categories: uncategorized
Date: 31 December 2009 12:02:25
Ten years ago I still made mixtapes for people. On actual C90 tapes (thats about 128mb of average compression MP3s if you're younger than me). I guess people of my generation talk about analogue music in the way our parents generation talk about pre-metric monentary terms. My parents occasionally still regale me (read bore me) with tales of ha'pennys and grotes and half crowns and shillings and how somehow they formed a complete ontology of finance with such things. No doubt if I ever have children, I too will bore them with my stories of the golden age of music (1997-2003 if you possess the same pop-cultural touchstones as myself), of rectangular bags in music shops and trying to read the liner notes on rickety bus rides home. I still buy music on vinyl though. There is a particular type of tall thin man, not quite coordinated enough to be actual musicians who will always haunt record shops. Even after the rest of the world has switched to MP3 players or iPhones, they'll still be there digging through crates in search of white label rarities. When the world ends, they'll still be there amongst the wreckage, fighting mutants and cockroaches for the last Radiohead B-sides compilation in the world.
Ten years ago today I was in Edinburgh for the Millenium. In spite of the Y2K bug, everyone seemed pretty optimistic about the future. There was a tech boom starting and the internet was extruding its data-tentacles into our minds. I was certain that by now we'd be living in the Matrix (remember that film? I wonder why they never made any sequels? http://xkcd.com/566/ ). In fact maybe we are. Perhaps at some point in the last ten years the internet achieved sentience but no one noticed and now we are living in an artificial reality. I think the Boxing day tsunami actually knocked my optimism about the future more than 9/11 did. Not in the least because more people died but because the planet itself was responsible for that one. You can stop terrorists (sometimes), you can't stop plate techtonics. And now the sea levels are rising faster than ever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise). The next decade is going to look like Water World and that was an awful film.
Ten years ago I played basketball. Now I just rant at the internet whilst acumulating body mass...
Ten years ago I used to actually pick up musical instruments with the intention of learning them. Now my guitar sits in the corner unused and unloved, quietly weeping whilst it's strings slowly unwind...
Happy new year readers.