It is not the same to say “I am burned, but the sun is out & rdquor; that “The sun comes out, but I’m burned”. Nor “I would kill you, but I love you & rdquor; that “I love you, but I would kill you & rdquor ;. Or “I’m going to a party, but I get sad & rdquor; that “I’m sad, but I’m going to a party & rdquor ;.
Anyone knows all that and, of course, knows Adele. The singer, who has just released a new album, has succeeded in eliminating random play from the Spotify listening platform: The option to play the album without rhyme or reason no longer appears by default. According to her, this tab removed the intention of a creator to imagine a sequence of themes: “Our art tells a story and our stories must be heard in the order we intend & rdquor ;.
It may seem like a silly detail, but I see something more important behind. The idea that the order of factors does not alter the product can be used for a multiplication, a commutative operation, but not if that product is a record, a novel or any story.
In the early decades of rock and roll, the vinyl single format in seven inches it was crucial. But then came the LP that, somehow, ordered them in a story, a story that explained the LP. In that album there was the maturing process of a year or two, also the aesthetic and thematic portrait of a time, and for that reason it was memorable. Practical example: listening to the B-side of the Beatles ” Rubber Sou’l.
The rise of streaming music, playable with a click, shareable with a clack, has further accentuated those beginnings. Artists cannot disappear, but are hinted at every so often with a new song. And the fact of being able to choose one song or another by pressing a button has penalized the idea of a long work that requires our attention for a little while.
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I’m not talking about nostalgia for past technologies. God knows I don’t miss having to rewind a cassette with a Bic pen. What i say is that a hyper-accelerated culture that rewards the flash or the loose phrase has its consequences. They make us long movies, novels or records. I myself fell asleep one day in the middle of a Gif. That this type of consumption undermines our patience and our understanding seems obvious. Which eliminates the need for context, too. And this has to do with the decline of music albums, of course, but also with how we inform ourselves through decontextualized headlines or misinterpreted phrases. A character appears with a knife in his hand and tears in his eyes and we think he has killed someone, when in fact perhaps in the next scene he is chopping some onions.
12 years ago, a azoradísimo Jonathan Franzen made a character say, in his novel ‘Libertad’: “That was what kept me awake: that fragmentation. It happens on the internet, or on cable TV: there is never a hub (& mldr;). Intellectually and culturally, we do nothing but bounce back and forth like billiard balls thrown at random. Nor do I think that listening to Adele’s new album in full is going to save us from anything, because it would be like thinking that not taking a low cost trip a year will save the future of the planet, but at least it can help us to be aware of the matter. . Having said that, as few of you have surely come this far, and many more have been confused along the way, I allow myself to end whimsically with another musical Adele: “If Adelita went with someone else, I would follow her by land and by sea. If by sea in a warship, if by land in a military train & rdquor ;.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com