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human dystopia :: 3/2/01
So now OK so now what? After Jakob and Freya got done having lunch, he’d walked her back to Tympanum, and she’d navigated him through the store’s electronic music section. (The proliferation of categories there took him aback: seeing that genres like Gabber and IDM and Glitch each have their own distinct section astonished and humbled him — these are genres he’s never even heard of.) Heidi. OK. Freya found a disc, Delivery, by that guy Scanner that she’d been telling him about (in the "Illbient" section) and she pulled it out, shrugged. Here it is, if you want it. He did. He’s in his apartment now, listening to it, sitting in a beat-up armchair that he’s hauled around since college. It doesn’t give me the right to uh OK it doesn’t. And a smattering of applause. The pale sky outside his window deepens.
The dance-oriented songs on the album strike Jakob as pretty plain, but he likes the more atmospheric pieces. They’re creepy-sounding, like music from an ominous sequence in a dystopian film. But what makes them even creepier is the human element, the incorporated snatches of conversation that Scanner has literally pulled out of the city air. Let me tell you all I want from you Heidi. I don’t want nothing else from you apart from this one thing I’m asking from you. OK? Humans have made the dystopia on this album, built it from the material of all their everyday misunderstandings and woundings. That is what makes it real. He’s currently listening to one half of a troubling conversation. I’m asking just one thing Heidi, I’ve always asked you for Heidi; Heidi, don’t lie to me.
Distantly he has some issues with this: taking someone’s private conversations, without permission, and using them for a commercial product, for — essentially — their entertainment value? Ethical considerations arise. Constantly constantly constantly constantly constantly you lying. But the ethical murkiness of communication technology underpins his proposed novel. This is going to be useful, he’s thinking, as he listens to some unnamed Londoner harangue his girlfriend. Tell me, tell me everything, tell me that you freaking that you slept with a billion guys Heidi, but you tell me, don’t let me find out. And on another level he’s simply engrossed, experiencing a simple emotional fascination, giving in to his aural voyeurism. He admits it. The applause that Scanner’s laid down on the track underlines its intention. I know I’ve hurt I know I’ve hurt you OK? I know I have hurt you. But why not be a voyeur? Listening to this argument refreshes him on a certain particular type of human interaction, reminds him of the different paths that relationships can take. (It’s been almost two years since his last one ended.)
And you might not believe it but when I say I’m sorry, I’m sorry, OK? I mean it. I’m sorry. The words begin to disintegrate, into static.
Further Reading ::
Information Prose : A Manifesto In 47 Points ::
A manifesto, outlining some of the aesthetic goals behind Imaginary Year, can now be read here.
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