“In this spirit-numbing information age, we gorge on the Web and on CNN, we cannot free our hands of our BlackBerrys and laptops and cellphones, but, in the end, we know less and less of each other, of our hearts, of our souls.
But Johnny Cash singing I Walk the Line or Hank [Williams] sorrowing through I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry still gives us more insight in three minutes, tells us more about what matters most in our lives, than we get in an entire 24-hour news cycle.”
– Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music by Dana Jennings, Faber and Faber 2008.
Is the Web more up-to-date than Webb Pierce? Has Google supplanted George Jones? Or is Jennings (an editor with the New York Times, by the way) just a country hick?
I would definitely agree with the first paragraph of Jennings quote. It really does seem like people are more connected than ever, yet simultaneously further apart. Through online means we remain "connected", but it's a more superficial connection.
ReplyDeleteAs a perfect example, I post on my blog and comment on Kenton's blog regularly; he does likewise. One could make the argument that we have remained connected since the last school year ended, and in ways they are correct. But at the same time, the type of dialogue that we're engaging in is quite different than if we went out for coffee together. The connection just isn't the same.
Music does have a way of drilling down to the heart of the matter and tapping into people's hearts. Strong visuals can be even more powerful than that, so the news, TV, and movies still could hold the trump card. Maybe they could exercise maximum impact by employing singing news anchors... Adam Sandler's "Operaman" from when he was on SNL comes to mind.