From time to time, I try to describe the feeling of overwhelm I have about the “information age.”
At one time, finding information was a little like digging for fossils: If you knew where to start, and you were persistent, you would uncover something valuable, differentiated from the rock and clay around it. You had to work at finding the pieces of information that were meaningful to you. And what you found was treasured, even if it was only partial or missing some bits.
But information doesn’t require finding today. It requires filtering. Being connected to an RSS reader is like standing in rushing water (they do call them “RSS streams,” after all) grabbing at fish as they dart past you, trying to determine if the one in your hand is worth keeping, or if it’s more or less valuable than the ones that continue to flit by you. Should I drop this one to catch that one? This one here looks a little smaller than one over there, maybe I should drop this and try to catch that!
And I don’t treasure very much the bits that I have caught, because I’m always wondering if I’ve got the one that is most useful for me, or if that very useful one is still out there somewhere. I’m devoting more energy to catching and rapidly evaluating than I am to using any of the information I’ve gathered. The gathered bits sit there in delicious.com, or in Personal Brain or a text file, waiting for “free time” to process it all.
A few days ago, I was thinking the thoughts above for the umpteenth time, and I had a sort of inspiration that a live musical performance is a little like that stream of information: it flows past at great speed. You grasp from it what you can and what seems to hold your interest at the moment. But there’s a difference — one doesn’t presume to filter the musical information you are receiving in the same way as one does with an RSS stream. You’ve committed to hearing that musical performance, and you enjoy it for what you are able to receive, rather than wondering if you’ve chosen to grab the right pieces. Or at least I hope you do.
As incomplete a thought as that is . . . today I stumbled upon (that is to say, I read my Google plus stream and found) this post from looping solo bassist Steve Lawson (a friend of a friend). I really enjoy Steve’s reflections on the “business” of music–and life in general–and this post reminded me of and cast a new light on the thoughts I’ve noted above.
Steve writes: “One of the joys of digital releases is that there’s nothing stopping the art from growing with the artist – our fixed idea of recordings being set in stone is just because of the ‘tyranny of recording’ that has dominated music for the last 60 or 70 years. Before that, the salable element in music was sheet music and every single experience of that music was unique.”
There’s the thing, right: “every single experience of that music was unique.” There’s a real value, a special set of information in that live performance. To me, this is really worth considering in an age when I’m trying to find a way to “market” a “product” … or really, I’m trying to find a way to make a living doing something I love, which is performing for people.
I welcome your thoughts. Yes, both of you who read this regularly, you’re welcome to contribute 🙂
– Jacque