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the anti-chart args here are also all args for not buying or reading newspapers
i don't buy any of these args, they're too often based on vague assumptions about other non-present people, generalised
and a bit insulting: BUT ALSO I DON'T BUY OR READ NEWSPAPERS EVER BECAUSE THEY ARE STUPID RUBBISH. Ahem.
Is this not somewhat contradictory of you mark s?
So I was thinking about that. Obviously reading the Guardian every day doesn't make Momus a conformist, anymore than
listening to the charts every week makes me one. So what exactly is it abt a newspaper that fills me with the same kind
of rage that he feels towards the charts?
The only thing I came up with was this: I'm a working writer, and just arbitrarily exposing myself to someone else's
agenda — random to ME but yes, perhaps not to them — can be very extremely derailing and distracting; I get annoyed at
things that just happen along (the current events that "everyone"s talking about") and then can't focus on what I'm
really trying to work on. So I deliberately DON'T read newspapers: and I rationalise this self-cocooning by telling
myself that I'm missing nothing, because it's ALL peabrained halfbaked cliche anyway — what the fuck could I possibly
learn from it? And I don't have to read it to know it.
Momus is a working musician: possibly quite a lot of anti-chart arguers here are. Maybe working musicians hate the
thing I like about the charts — the intrusion of the unexpected, finding you like something you would prefer to hate,
because it fucks with your head exactly where you have to be careful about what you let in. Creativity is about being
selectively closed-minded: not a bad thing so much as an unavoidable thing. I try to manage and play with my
prejudices — when I'm aware of them — so that they push me in unexpected ways. (So yeah, the fickle swiftness of the UK
charts IS a bonus there: it's kind of a handy map of "Things a lot of people think they like which they probably won't
for long" => I quiz myself: Do I? Could I?)
Right, I'm off to buy some anadin extra, some coffee and the paper. For the Guardian Guide you clowns: Television is
where it's really at!
― mark s, Saturday, 6 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
"the thing I like about the charts — the intrusion of the unexpected, finding you like something you would prefer to hate, because it fucks with your head exactly where you have to be careful about what you let in."
The US charts are the exact opposite of this. They are everything you know already. You don't even have to look at them to know what's there.
― Ben Williams, Saturday, 6 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
six years pass...
ten years pass...