Ringo 022: Too Much Information
or, wrangling the demon of a second kind
Hi, friends! I'm Michael Donaldson, and this is my weekly newsletter about music-listening, music-making, and whatever else comes to mind. Thanks for subscribing a being a part of the Ringo squad.
First off, I wanted to let you know that I'm probably taking a Ringo break next weekend. I say 'probably' as who knows, right? But I'm planning to reset 8sided.blog over the next week and get a few other professional procrastinations sorted, and I'd like to make sure the runway is clear. If you don't hear from me next Sunday, that's the reason why.
Last week's theme song was sort of a downer, sure, so let's lighten things up this time. I'm titling this week's tune "Snags," and it's a leftover from a commercial content scoring project that I worked on last month (yes, that's something I do). Though we didn't use this sketch, it's hella catchy, and I love the spacey synth melody. When I have the time, I might expand it into a REAL SONG. For now, listen, enjoy, and then let's embark on a ramble about info-overload.
Note: Yes, this issue’s title is taken from this old favorite. I guess this episode has two theme songs.
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This week I read Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad, a book of short stories written by the Polish author in 1965. Most of the stories feature Trurl and Klapaucius, a pair of 'constructors' able to invent machines that do fantastic, sometimes god-like things. The book's setting is a strange, distant future (or maybe a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away) where there's a mix of space travel and medieval-style feudalism (probably standing in for criticisms of Poland's state communism of the time). Each story is an adventure or a 'sally' (as in, sallying forth across the stars), with the constructors usually enlisted to make a machine to serve a king. It often goes awry.
In one story, titled “The Sixth Sally,” our heroes are captured by the hundred-eyed pirate Pugg. They assume a pirate always wants gold and offer a gold-making machine in exchange for their freedom. The pirate refuses because he's a Ph.D. pirate, and what he wants to hoard is information. Pugg won't let Trurl and Klapaucius leave until they've given him all their information. That would take decades as the constructors are geniuses with a lot of info to give.
Thinking fast, the constructors offer to make a wondrous machine for Pugg if he lets them go. They propose 'a Demon of the Second Kind,' a machine that pulls information out of the atoms that make up the universe. This Demon will supply an endless stream of info, reliable gossip, and factoids. Pugg accepts. The pair construct the Demon, and Pugg sits down before it. He's drawn into the device, and the constructors make their escape. And then this happens:
… and little by little his hundred eyes began to swim, and it dawned on him that all this information, entirely true and meaningful in every particular, was absolutely useless, producing such an ungodly confusion that his head ached terribly and his legs trembled. But the Demon of the Second Kind continued to operate at a speed of three hundred million facts per second, and mile after mile of tape coiled out and gradually buried the Ph.D. pirate beneath its windings, wrapping him, as it were, in a paper web, while the tiny diamond-tipped pen shivered and twitched like one insane, and it seemed to Pugg that any minute now he would learn the most fabulous, unheard-of things, things that would open up to him the Ultimate Mystery of Being, so he greedily read everything that flew out from under the diamond nib …
One could interpret a few of The Cyberiad's fables as analogous predictions of today's emerging technology. There's a story about a poetry-writing machine that analyzes poetry's history to create its own, learning and constantly improving to write the most beautiful poems. The non-machine poets get angry and shut it down. Sounds like today's musicians' worries about AI music, right? In a later tale, there's a machine that a king plugs into to experience predetermined dreams. He assumes the perception of a character or object within the dream and is in danger of losing his sense of reality, trapped within and addicted to the dream-world. Fears of virtual reality, anyone?
But Pugg's fate welcomes an interpretation that hits home. He's all of us, scrolling through that newsfeed, swiping down to refresh on our phones, and digging into algorithmic playlists of seemingly unlimited music. We're all captured by the Demon of the Second Kind.
Newsfeeds are one thing. We are scrolling endlessly through Twitter or Facebook; our need (FOMO) boosted by the companies' devious application of behavioral science. Remember that TV commercial where the guy reaches 'the end of the internet?' In 2002 — when it aired — the concept was quaint and maybe even seemed possible. Now it's just cruel. The platforms train us to keep going as if there's a finish line. We know there's no end to this firehose, but we keep drinking. Newspapers have endpoints. Books do, too. But newsfeeds will only bury us, as the Demon buried Pugg in coils of info-tape.
It's not entirely the newsfeeds' fault. The information itself is seductive, and it's everywhere. We've never lived in a time when all this information is at our fingertips — the phenomenon is only a couple of decades old, really — and human-folk haven't yet learned to cope. I'd even argue we're just now figuring out that we need to cope. We've reached a time when esteemed thinkers — people who trade in information, such as Cal Newport and Greg McKeown — are encouraging us to put on blinders to narrow our intake intentionally.
Another of these thinkers is Peggy Orenstein, who, in 2009, likened information overload with a scene from Greek mythology:
Not long ago, I started an experiment in self-binding: intentionally creating an obstacle to behavior I was helpless to control, much the way Ulysses lashed himself to his ship's mast to avoid succumbing to the Sirens' song. In my case, though, the irresistible temptation was the Internet. […] Those mythical bird-women (look it up) didn't seduce with beauty or carnality — not with petty diversions — but with the promise of unending knowledge. "Over all the generous earth we know everything that happens," they crooned to passing ships, vowing that any sailor who heeded their voices would emerge a "wiser man." That is precisely the draw of the Internet.
The Industrial Culture Handbook, published in 1983, featured the quote, "The next war is the information war and it is being fought now." I doubt the author imagined the war would be fought not with information, but against information itself.
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Music falls under this vast category of 'information.' We once accepted there was only so much music we could hear and, frustrating as that was, it guided our listening choices. Now, there isn't infinite music, but it sure seems like it. Has this affected the way we listen? Have our choices become fleeting and especially impulsive, as music enters and leaves our lives with accelerated frequency? As with the over-saturation of information, should we shield ourselves from 'so much music?'
In an article for The Telegraph, Ivan Hewett writes about people who are ambivalent about music. To you and me, that's crazy talk — how can someone not care one way or the other about music? But Hewett claims these people exist, and their numbers could increase. He believes a growing amount of options counter-intuitively discourages choice. All these musical choices paralyze the listener, diminishing the experience of fandom. Hewett sums it up in the closing paragraph:
We no longer have that guidance, so we're driven back constantly on personal choice. Choice relies on appetite – I want this and not that - but when faced with an infinity of options, appetite is baffled, and choice soon shrinks to mere whim. Every listening experience is enfeebled by the thought that if I flip from this song in iTunes to the next, I may like it more. Appetite, when led by social norms, is a way of prompting decision and action in conditions of scarcity, which is humanity's primordial state. When everything is available, and the only action required to access that infinity is a flick of the finger, appetite is bound to ebb away. Which is why my hunch is that the hidden, shamefaced tribe of people with no feeling for music will grow and grow.
This paragraph makes me think about the early '90s when I was a music director of a radio station while I also worked at a record store. I was rolling in free music. When friends visited my apartment, their eyes would bug out at my always-expanding wall of CDs. And I would think 'today I'm going to check out those new albums' or 'I'm going to listen to something new I haven't heard before.' But, flummoxed by all the options, I always fell back on the same ten albums I always listened to.
Is there a solution? I don't think we need to go as far as Orenstein's self-binding. But some intention in our listening habits might help.
I tried an album-a-day experiment for several months, but it didn't work out — just like what happens when one solely follows playlist recommendations to guide listening, nothing ever stuck. And lately, I've been thinking about deep diving into artists. For example, taking a couple of weeks going through Miles Davis's discography, reading about each album's history, and taking notes during the exercise. But it seems like a lot of work. Can't I just listen?
There's a fascinating essay from the beginning of 2018 on NPR's site. Writer James Toth, feeling this 'too much music' frustration, decides he's going to listen to one album non-stop each week. He won't listen to any other music during that time, hoping each album will sink in and become a memorable addition to his mental library. Toth will pour over liner notes and learn about the records, aiming to capture his teenage knack for remembering everything about an album — the names of all the players, the producer, the studio location, and so on.
Spoiler alert: Toth's experiment lasts three hours. The alerts from artists, the email updates from labels, the constant flow of Bandcamp Daily pieces, the recommendations from friends — everything is a temptation, and sampling any of this sudden music is a click away.
I can't decide if that's dispiriting or amazing. I mean, I love having 'all the music' available to me. In that article, Toth mentions the Lafayette Afro Rock Band — I just typed that into Apple Music, and now I'm listening to them. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
As far as developing a personal canon of favorite albums and obsessing over band member names and all of that super-fan stuff — is that a condition of our youth? Our coming-of-age music will always be the best music ever, and there's no need to fight that. Is wanting to recapture that feeling just an admission of what's lost, now that we've crowded our minds with adult responsibilities?
I don't have the answer. But I do know we should be intentional in our information intake, whether that's from newsfeeds or YouTube videos or music coming at us from all sides. We don't need all the information — we'll never get to the end of it anyway — and, as Pugg learned, it's not healthy to hoard it. Of course, I'm thankful for the abundance of knowledge, the wealth of music, and the access granted to us. But this is a new moment in our history, and I suspect our minds aren't ready. There's a necessity of pausing, leaving room for thoughts about what we're taking in. Take your time and enjoy yourself — the music's not going anywhere.
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EDGING →
• Our COVID-times have lasted long enough that now there's a whole subset of albums inspired and recorded during pandemic lockdown. Music historians will look back at these releases as a sort of genre, offering clues about 'what it was like' through the lenses of our artists' compromised creative lives. But, while not directly influenced by The Strange Times, nothing says 2020's mood to me more than 'comfy synth,' recently uncovered by Bandcamp Daily. The full package — the music, cover art, and presentation — of these artists say, “fantasy, but not too fantastic.” This music is a soothing escape, sure, but it's best not to get too outside of your head as no telling what's going to happen next, and you might want to stay ready for it. I hear a little bit of the A Clockwork Orange soundtrack here and there, which is also fitting. Also, isn't Bandcamp Daily like Simon Reynolds on steroids these days when it comes to identifying and naming new genres? [LINK]
• While on the subject of perfectly summing up the mood of this time: I'm not into sportsball but these photos … omg, 2020. [LINK]
• And speaking of Simon Reynolds, he posted this gallery of artwork and design from the heyday of Trevor Horn's ZZT label. It's inspiring how fully realized that label was at its beginning, despite completely losing its way within a couple of years. [LINK]
• Related to how we remember songs from our youth, here's a fascinating graph showing how well certain ages recall the names of the biggest songs from the '90s. I grew up in the '80s and, looking at some of these song titles, I'm amazed how little of them I know. Though that said, I can easily name a dozen or so obscure New Zealand bands that were releasing 7" singles in 1992, so there's that. [LINK]
• Iceland scream, you scream, we all scream into this app (sorry). [LINK]
• More evidence that Brian Eno has the best artist's life, allowing him to do whatever the hell he wants. The dude now has his own wallpaper. [LINK]
• I know I just ranted about lessening your music intake, but if you want to steel yourself against additional temptation, here's a list of my listening recommendations for this week. [LINK]
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Thanks again for reading my weekly ramble! I’d love to hear what you think. How are you dealing with all this music? Is your experience different than mine? Do you have any tricks or routines to make your listening ‘intentional?’ I’d love to know.
Again, it looks like Ringo Dreams Of Lawn Care will take a two-week vacation so don’t feel left out if your inbox is empty next Sunday. Until then, stay safe, reach out to those friends you haven’t seen or spoken to in a while, watch a few classic movies you haven’t seen yet (that’s one thing I’m doing to stay sane), and hang in there. I’ll see you in two weeks! 🚀
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btw — I'm Michael Donaldson and you can read more about who I am and what I do here.
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