I feel like I should close the loop on last night for my self and my current mental well being. I searched for this particular conversation after it was vaguely mentioned because I was curious. When I saw it was about books I felt I had something to provide to the conversation as it’s what a lot of my enrichment time in my life revolves around. I didn’t feel like I said anything egregious here or in the nfl thread, more just made observations on the behavior I was seeing, but if that was taken as shit talking, I do apologize if it caused any frustration. It wasn’t my intention. I’ll refrain from commenting on it any further because it’s already consumed more of my thoughts and mood than I think is necessary
Spiff’s apology was not genuine lol he said “I’m sorry I called you a name elsewhere instead of calling you the name directly” come on
Again, please stop. You can let this go and you are not helping the situation even though your heart is in the right place.
Ben I get being upset about this but I don’t think directly doing the same thing other people were doing behind the walls of another thread is necessarily any better. Like Dustin said it should probably just stop all around.
As someone who keeps up with this thread and used to post in and keep up with the NFL thread, I hope I'm not coming out of left field to talk about some of the conversation I saw. How we interact with art has changed drastically since the Internet. Poetry is in hospice and reading literature is on a broad cultural decline. What a lot of the conversation that I saw seemed to be expressing was the opposite of gatekeeping, a gladness for engagement with books but a hope/desire that readers can have the curiosity, open-mindedness, and drive to explore further and experience more challenging works. "Let people enjoy things" is noxious because it has been used to stifle criticism just as a lot of "pop" (or "trash" if you prefer, derogatorily or not) forms of entertainment are being demanded to be treated as serious art. If someone only listens to Taylor Swift and Benson Boone, or only watches Marvel and Star Wars, or only reads Colleen Hoover or whatever, their basis for connection to and thinking about art is inherently limited. Of course people like that have always existed, but the shift in media and how much of the production of art and entertainment is controlled by corporations in a capitalist society has altered what the average person comes across. Not to be an annoying David Foster Wallace guy (he was not necessarily a good man or someone I agree with on everything), but it's like one of his famous interview answers says: "...as the Internet grows, and as our ability to be linked up... we're gonna have to build some machinery, inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it's gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that's the basic main staple of your diet, you're gonna die. In a meaningful way, you're going to die." The stage of capitalism we're in has made convenience a mind killer, in that lots of people became so used to having whatever they want whenever they want it, they don't feel the push to investigate art further, or seek out challenging art, or even seek out art at all. Movies are in as precarious a place as any artistic medium, because even though technically we have access to more films from all over the world than we've ever had before, people aren't watching them. Culture became so fragmented that anyone can find their preferred way to passively entertain themselves from anywhere, and why should it be art? Especially challenging art? When I went to film school, no one watched movies, especially if they were made before 1990. I work with a lot of recent graduates now, and almost none of them watch movies at all. Tik Tok and Reels are a huge part of their media diet that didn't exist ten years ago. That new time spent on short form video content has to take the place of what people 10 or 20 or 30 years ago might have been doing with their time. Wallace talked a lot about TV, and how the novel had to compete with the TV screen in the 80s and 90s in a way it didn't really have to compete with movies. So while people who were content to listen to top 40 or just see big blockbusters throughout the 80s, 90s, and 00s have always existed, today the media landscape is so different that more people than before are content to let that shift happen. In the follow up to the first answer, he says: "...probably each generation has different things that force the generation to grow up. Maybe for our grandparents it was World War II... For us, it's gonna be that at, at a certain point, that we're either gonna have to put away childish things and discipline ourself about how much time do I spend being passively entertained? And how much time do I spend doing stuff that actually isn't all that much fun minute by minute, but that builds certain muscles in me as a grown-up and a human being? And if we don't do that, then (a) as individuals, we're gonna die, and (b) the culture's gonna grind to a halt." I think everyone in general (myself included) has a responsibility to think critically about why we consume what we consume (even more broadly outside of art). Part of that equation is recognizing the way the corporations who control our algorithms are trying to keep us on their screens and create the biggest monopoly they can on every aspect of our lives. Resistance to that is a small act, but I believe it's an overwhelmingly meaningful one. For me, I've been trying (and often failing) to spend less time on the Internet, and trying to spend more time reading serious literature and watching international films when I have spare time for myself. It doesn't mean there isn't a place for lighter entertainment, I watch pro wrestling every week so I enjoy my trash. But as an author and a musician (sorry), I feel like the problem of declining literacy and the equation of consumption with identity is everywhere, which combined with the "let people enjoy things" mindset can be regressive and toxic. We can take all art seriously, and recognize the place all art inherently has as a part of the collective culture, whether high brow or low. But we should also be able to talk more broadly and critically about art than looking for affirmation of broader/objective quality from others (especially critics) in whatever we consume that makes us personally feel good. Experiencing art that makes one uncomfortable, or challenges previously held perspectives and beliefs, is better for the brain and soul than staying in a comfortable place where the art and stories I interact with all either reinforce things I already feel and believe, or that actively work as escapism from the uncomfortable and challenging real world that exists around me. That hope and desire for people who are reading at all, or seeing movies at all, or reading poetry at all, to be so enriched by the art that they want to venture into deeper, more complex works, seems to be where a lot of the sentiment in this thread is coming from, to me.
I appreciate that, but I did get scolded last night in here so that’s why I’m feeling the need to close the loop.
Not that anything more needs to be said about it, but I don't care if an influx of users is pointed to a specific post if they are going to engage in the discussion in a thoughtful way, which a lot of people did. That is hard to do when the context in which the original post is presented is "hey these guys think they're better than everyone", which is so clearly not the point of the discussion. hope that I and @OotyPa and the other people have explained themselves clearly enough at this point for most people to get that.
Great post, man. Genuinely thankful you came in here to thoughtfully articulate this after all the mess.
Are there any go to books of poetry you like to recommend? It’s a blind spot for me that I’ve decided I want to address. In the past few years, I’ve read a couple books by the trans Christian poet Jay Hulme, and also a couple books of Rumi published by NYRB (forget the name of the woman who translated them, but it’s not that one infamous guy, lol). And so far this year I’ve read Wound From the Mouth of a Wound by torrin greathouse (on my bestie’s recommendation) and am currently doing an Emily Dickinson book. Got some other random things another online community recommended in a list in my phone.
Yay I’m glad someone else agrees. This was my perspective, really. Most of us found common ground and understood each other
Ooh, this looks like something I’d for sure dig. Since it seems to be a translated work, is there anything to avoid I should know? Or would the average English version be good.
No, the 1-2 posters who only came in here to rile things up and then dipped when an actual discussion happened.
I thought you liked it because you work with animals. I wouldn't hate someone based on their taste in movies. The vast majority of people don't watch the same types of movies I watch. It would be exhausting to hate that many people.
Outside of the regulars in the threads I frequent I have username blindness and people change their avatars often, so it is always weird to get insulted and then search to see what interactions I've had with a person and there's like 2 from 2018 that are about beer or mcdonalds or something innocuous
Dickinson and Rumi were foundational to me so great start. Mary Oliver is probably my favorite poet. She and someone like Robert Frost and Walt Whitman are great for starting to try and set a basis for poetic structure and symbolism. You might appreciate Whitman’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. I also like Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, and Antonia Pozzi (for a bit of an overlooked poet), plus Matsuo Basho as an entry into Haiku and Japanese poetry, and I have a soft spot for the energy of the Beats despite their many personal failings lol. Kerouac wrote many lovely haikus.
Watched this morning, fantastic episode of television. Greene doing his best but also digging himself deeper by making mistake after mistake was a brutal rollercoaster. Plus Benton being responsible for his mom but not allowed to help her medically? Gut wrenching shift in the ER. And it was written by a doctor! I can’t believe the show goes from that to a guy being crushed by a helicopter after his arm was previously chopped off by a different helicopter
I did hit a reading rut that I need to get out of and start something new. I read a decent amount last year but not nearly as much as I should have. Nathan's post evoked a lot of thought about that in general especially in how it touched on my general consumption in other areas and how that may keep me from my own development. I dunno. Lots going on in my head