Creators and Consumers

I have consciously divided the world into those who create and those who consume. The older I get the more the consumer fills me with disgust and shame and despair. I loathe the fat, vulgar, lazy, weak and helpless figures we are starting to (physically) cast on this doomed earth.
There is a curious anomaly though that requires further investigation. It occurs to me that an increasing amount of popular media is interactive and demands at least some kind of simplistic response. You must push the red button on your TV and be fed a meaningless rolling screen of multiple choice click-throughs – all ending in dead ends. But thinking further, much music is interactive. Dancing, singing along, miming, playing along, whacking a beat out on your leg, and so on. It is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine having the concentration to merely do nothing but sit and listen to a single and complete work, consume it wholly, then reflect upon the effect the experience has had upon you. Is it an ultimate act of creativity to sit completely still, with a healed over mouth and just respond internally to the impact of the work? To create by consumption. It seems the greatest conceit of all is that the thoughtless consumer becomes more active than the creator – merely because the creator resists the call to twitch and switch and vote for this plastic bitch over that plastic bitch and sing along and clap and dance and send a text to win a dream holiday, home, car, job, opportunity, home cinema set, etc.
All I would ever ask of a listener to one of HG’s records is to sit still, put it on at the beginning and see it through to the end. Just under an hour of your time.

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