“A bad song is absorbed whole, in the moment, unconsciously. The person whose life it enters barely knows it’s there – it’s just part of the day. But as time goes on, and the song fails to live up to the life of the person carrying it, it starts to break down. It reveals itself as a tumour in the psyche. Never saying it’s name, it frames the bits and pieces whoever absorbed the song was willing to settle for – and that’s all there is.
Of course everyone settles. No one wins. The absolute was denied in the Garden of Eden, and the defining characteristic of human beings remains their ability to want what they know they cannot have. That contradiction produces rage, desire, hate, and love, and real art brings all those things to life. Art that quiets or buries those cultural instincts can’t survive the human faculty – it falls apart. But as it does, it humiliates whoever carries it.”
Greil Marcus
It’s like putting ‘When Will I Be Famous?’ next to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. Emptiness versus substance, lies against truth. Be careful what you consume, programming exists in everything.
