Honest Recordings, Dishonest Times

The noughts was that kind of decade. The ‘dynamic range’ of everything — of life itself — became compressed. It was hard to tell whether the person claiming to be an actor, a filmmaker, a song writer, a playwright and a poet was in fact doing anything — except, that is, spending eighteen hours a day using MySpace, Facebook and Twitter to inform whoever was listening (or reading) that they were all those things. Their job became the propagation of information pertaining to non-existent — or at least barely discernible — jobs. Their life, also just about legible, became so entangled with their so-called job that you could no longer tell the two things apart. The quiet bits became loud and the loud bits, comparatively speaking, were quieter.

The Noughts Man was Mediated Man. The signifier and the referrent — the man himself and his ‘media presence’ — were indistinguishable. When the process of representation — of mediation — is raised to the level of an art form (when it becomes, if nothing else, so bloody time-consuming) then where does the artist — the songwriter, the filmmaker, the playwright — stand? Is it possible to tell the genuine article from the phoney? Is the dictionary definition of ‘fraud’ still useful — or necessary?

Even if we could, nobody would want to work in a factory any more. Who wants to admit to being the person who stacks the shelves in Tesco? We would far rather be the star and/or producer of internet drama, the singer in the internet band, or simply the Mediated Man on Facebook, pulling faces for the camera so we can show everyone what a great time we didn’t really have in the pub last night, the same almost-empty pub with the same almost-empty people in the forgotten town where we no longer have to admit we live — not since we took up residence in the lavish confines of our own representation, the oxymoronic fate of Mediated Man.

Who needs to work when we have the media?

In 1525, William Tyndale produced the first translation of the New Testament in English; in 1611, the publication of the King James version of the Bible, based on Tyndale’s translation, helped to establish the Anglican, i.e. Protestant faith, in the British Isles, giving widespread access to the Bible for the first time, at least to those few who, at the time, could read English. The identities of the British and American peoples are rooted, fundamentally, in two things: text on the one hand and dissent on the other, or; the facility to read and write, and then, to argue. At least, this is the tradition. Half a millennium down the line, text now reigns supreme. We are far more likely to read someone than meet them. Text might be alive and kicking, but that other great British tradition, empiricism, is going to need a makeover from Gok Wan if it is to remain fashionable. Most of the time we are denied the opportunity to see and hear for ourselves about the person or event in question. The senses have been a loyal servant of the intellect but, these days, we are forced to take someone’s word for it about what they do and who they are. Text is king. Yet, as with Anglicanism, the whole point of the text is that it enables us to challenge authority, confront injustice and even, as with the Revolution in Britain which quickly followed on from the publication of the Bible in English, overthrow the establishment and execute an undemocratic King. But when that King is not, in fact, text at all but global capitalism with turncoat text — the fine art of mediation, its un-trusty sidekick— then dissent seems, if not impossible, then at best futile.

Radio Khartoum, in preserving the dynamic range of its releases, is, in fact, doing a lot more than just that. It may be swimming upstream in rapids with an anvils tied to each of its spindly arms and legs — but at least it’s still swimming.

These are honest recordings. Sadly, though, these are dishonest times. We need the truth, not the mediated version, but the thing itself. It’s an awful shame that George Orwell died in 1950. Imagine if he had been born then instead, right there at the start of the decade which, arguably, started all this; imagine if he could have interviewed Elvis Presley or, indeed, Colonel Tom. Imagine if he could have provided this commentary on the unlawful murder of the truth by the media instead of me. In a sense he is still here. Ironically, though, you would have to read him to find him these days.

Norman de Plume, 14 June 2010