Kevin has been reflecting on the past, present and (maybe) future over at the Your Heart Out blog. Interesting stuff in there about music journalists and so on. The state of play. How it is now versus how it was then, perhaps. Then being a time I remember so well; a then that marked me for life; a then that cut me deep.

The thing is, I am not so sure there is really much difference at all. The technologies might be different, but the basic idea of journalists working their way through the ranks of the acknowledged structures is surely not so different? Having the right handshakes and saying the right things. Don’t rock the boat. It works as much in blogs and online writing as it ever did in the land of the weekly inkies. It’s all about building your networks, after all. ‘Virtual’ or ‘real’, it makes no odds. Because these days ‘virtual’ is ‘real’ and vice versa. Just ask your average 16 year old.

And to be honest, I really do not care much anyway. To be fair, I don’t think Kevin really does either. As he says, in a lot of ways he’s been lucky. I can say the same. Certainly what he says about his reasons for writing Hungry Beat and now Your Heart Out (and presumably the various other exhilarating episodes along the way) resonates with me. That thing about writing out of a need to communicate. A need that burns inside. Now let’s be generous to our journalist friends and suggest that there are similar needs burning inside them. I’m sure it’s true. I KNOW it’s true. But here’s the rub (and I’m only speaking for myself here, you understand): what’s made me lucky is that I’ve never had to write for a living. And why not? Well, partly because I was never much interested. Partly because I realized at a quite early stage that I just wasn’t really good enough. And partly because, yes, I was too bloody lazy to have to consider writing about things I had no real passion for. That last one is particularly important because it connects with the idea of potential audience: the potential audience for the particularly idiosyncratic collection of things I would want to write about being effectively miniscule and certainly not large enough to support me in the standard of living I’ve grown accustomed to…

Now one of the things I like about Kevin’s blog entry is the unspoken conflict between the idea of the refusal to engage with the established structures and the frustration at those established structures not truly embracing the voices of the outsiders. For me this is that eternal tension between longing to belong and the desire to remain, as Kevin might say, on the outside of everything. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: for me that is a tension essential to the creation of great art. And it’s why, in the broadest terms, there is so little that is truly great and so much that is, at best, merely satisfactory.

Elsewhere, Everett has been exploring thoughts of the impact of new technologies on the role of the critic. I think there are some really interesting discussions to be had around this, just as there are around the impact of those technologies on society in general. Being an educator with a responsibility for new technologies within my school I am of course particularly interested in the education implications, but in reality there are so many connections jumping around that it seems counter-productive to focus one’s attention only on one sphere. Personally I think there are really interesting parallels to draw between the idea of the tastemaker critic and teachers, and of how new technologies alter the balance of power in the relationship between critic and audience / teacher and student. It seems to me that increasingly the audience / student expects a conversation. They are no longer expecting to be merely consumers, but rather expect to interact. Everett suggested a list of things that make a successful taste-maker critic, and key in that list was the idea of trust. Me, I think it’s fundamental. In the critic and the teacher. Everything builds off that. It’s only with trust that the productive conversations can truly take place. And trust takes time of course. Which is why I always find it kind of bemusing when new teachers seem to expect immediate respect from their students from day one. Why? What have you done to earn that respect? Having a badge that says you are one thing or another is not enough.

Anyway, that’s enough thinking for one day. My head is starting to hurt and I am meant to be on holiday. So pass me that Stieg Larsson book and that cup of coffee.

Comments

[Tim B.]

Great Alistair...great post! The paragraph that starts with "Now one of the things I like..." completely articulates something I've been struggling with my entire life! That conflict. It's sort of like the old Groucho Marx thing of never wanting to join a club that would have me as a member.