deteriorations

We live in the age of the short attention span- where vacuousness is a virtue, where time to stop and think is rarely found and where everything goes in one ear and out the other.

-angloplugging.co.uk
*****

Sing

There is this thing that's like touching except you don't touch
Back in the day it just went without saying at all
All the world's history gradually dying of shock
There is thing that's like talking except you don't talk
You sing
You sing

Sing for the bartender sing for the janitor sing
Sing for the cameras sing for the animals sing
Sing for the children shooting the children sing
Sing for the teachers who told you that you couldn't sing
Just sing

There is thing keeping everyone's lungs and lips locked
It is called fear and it's seeing a great renaissance
After the show you can not sing wherever you want
But for now lets just pretend that we're gonna get bombed
So sing

Sing cause its obvious sing for the astronauts sing
Sing for the president sing for the terrorists sing
Sing for the soccer team sing for the janjaweed sing
Sing for the kid with the phone who refuses to sing
Just sing

Life is no cabaret
We don't care what you say
We're inviting you anyway
-Dresden Dolls
**

The loss can be a leak in history or a shrinking in the vitality of everyday life. --Adrienne

*****
A couple of years ago, a tabloid in one of India’s metros called in a consultant to help them make the newspaper more reader-friendly. “Keep stories short,” he advised. Shorter stories, snappy paragraphs, simple sentences; suck the reader in and spit him out before he gets bored. This is the age of the short-attention span, and we see it all around us.

It’s there in the journalism. Tabloids keep their stories brief. Agency copy often consists entirely of one-sentence paragraphs: news for dummies. Magazines have found that the pages that readers turn to most are the snippetty ones, that don’t make demands on the reader’s time – like the last page of India Today, or the second- and third-last of Outlook. One of the reasons that blogs are gaining in popularity along the world, in fact, is that they cater to the short-attention span: the most popular typically have brief, pithy posts that efficiently encapsulate the subject they’re on about.

We see this also in the way we consume music. Soon, all music will be sold in the form of digital downloads, which is convenient because most people prefer to buy songs rather than albums, preferring to listen to a familiar song they like over and over rather than explore an artist’s oeuvre. It’s all a-la-carte now, and concept albums might soon be the dinosaurs of music. Television channels have also recognised this: MTV India found years ago that their maximum-TRP shows were their so-called vignettes, the two-to-three minute snippets that viewers can consume easily, like MTV Bakra and Filmi Fundas. We are hungry for the easily digestible. Ten-course meals? Sorry, no time, could you summarise please?

Television, in fact, is often blamed as a cause and not a symptom of this. Camille Paglia recently wrote: “The jump and jitter of U.S. commercial television have demonstrably reduced attention span in the young. The Web too, with its addictive unfurling of hypertext, encourages restless acceleration.”

-India Uncut

**********
Fuel

they were digging a new foudation in Manhattan
and they discovered a slave cemetary there
may their souls rest easy
now that lynching is frowned upon
and we've moved on to the electric chair
and i wonder who's gonna be president, tweedle dum or tweedle dummer
and who's gonna have the big blockbuster box office this summer
howabout we put up a wall between houses and the highway
and you can go your way , and i can go my may

except all the radios agree with all the tvs
and all the magazines agree with all the radios
and i keep hearing that same damn song everywhere i go
maybe i should put a bucket over my head
and a marshmallow in each ear
and stumble around for
another dumb- dumb waiting for another hit song to appear

people used to make records
as in a record of an event
the event of people playing music in a room
now everything is cross-marketing
its about sunglasses and shoes
or guns and drugs
you choose
we got it rehashed
we got it half-assed
we're digging up all the graves
and we're spitting on the past
and you can choose between the colors
of the lipstick on the whores
cause we know the difference between
the font of 20% more
and the font of teriakiyi
you tell me
how does it...make you feel

you tell me
what's ...real
and they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
even when they're as dry as my lips for years
even when they're stranded on a small desert island
with no place within 2,000 miles to buy beer
and i wonder
is he different
is he different
has he changed what's he about...
or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about

Am i headed for the same brick wall
is there anything i can do about
anything at all
except go back to that corner in Manhattan
and dig deeper, dig deeper this time
down beneath the impossible pain of our history
beneath unknown bones
beneath the bedrock of the mystery
beneath the sewage systems and the path drain
beneath the cobblestones and the water mains
beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals
beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels
beneath everything i can think of to think about
beneath it all, beneath all get out
beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel
there's a fire just waiting for fuel
-Ani DiFranco
**
Songless

What is the point
of being artists
if we cannot save our life?
That is the cry
that wakes us
in our sleep.
being happy is not the only
happiness
And how many gadgets
can one person manage
at one time?

Over in the Other World
the women count
their wealth
in empty
calabashes.
How to transport
food
from watering hole
to watering
hole
has ceased to be
a problem
since the animals
died
and seed grain shrunk
to fit the pocket

Now
it is just another matter
of who can create
the finest
decorations
on the empty pots.

They say in Nicaragua
the whole
government
writes,
makes music
and paints,
saving their own
and helping the people save
their own lives.

(I ask you to notice
who, songless,
rules us
here.)

These are not containers
void of food,
These are not decorations
on empty pots.

-Alice Walker
******************

this is a translation of a Chinese poem, it is a little choppy, yes

No Time


I must get far away from this city
with it's soot streaked curbs
and people who pass each other
without a smile or a word
'No time! I have no time!' She answered me,
the girl dressed all in lavender

Still, she did answer me, and yet
I didn't dare ask her,
'What important things have you time for?'
But whispered to myself instead
- the homeless whispering to the homeless -
there are those who love but have no time
for loving.

If this is true, how can birds fly back to
their nests?
How can poetry be written?
If this is true, birds and poems will die.
Yes I must get away from the city
If there is no time, no time here
to speak one word,
to share one moment's laughter...

- Nguyen Sa


_________


What are we all becoming?