In praise of mediated texts

There are plenty of reasons why Simon and Fi’s ‘One Day in July’ holds the top spot on my Weddings-O-Friends Leaderboard and one of them is a cd. Seventeen songs attended my way on the drive to New Norcia last year, and they’ve attended most of the social events held at the Bessell Vessel since then too. As a cd, it’s a perfect mix of sweet songs and true songs and songs by Michael Jackson and it plays beautifully when driving or drinking coffee. But I don’t love it for the songs; I love it for what it tells me about Simon and Fi and the plans they had for that day.

A High Fidelity friend put together some cds for my birthday, and by the third time through, I realized that I actually have a thing for mixes. When I buy a cd, it takes ages to get beyond the assessment stage – do I like it, should I have spent the money, am I going to end up stashing the darn thing with the other embarrassing mistakes, Gwen…? But the HFF has pretty reliable (if firm) views on the tunes, so I came to it expecting good stuff – and there it was. Sure, there were surprises. And some stuff I can only shake my head at. Still, the whole thing feels like a meandering, generous, disputative conversation, and I like it.

It got me thinking: there are actually lots of things that I like better when they’re mediated through someone with a point of view. Thus: Nick Hornby published a collection of columns he wrote about books he’d bought and books he’d read, and it was officially the best thing that happened to me last summer. It helps that Nick can reliably elicit a chuckle and a half per page, but I felt like I’d read all the good bits, and skated lightly over the stodgy bits of the things he’d read. It was like getting dessert without having to eat my veggies, and given that the proportion of carrots to carrot cake in my reading diet is getting really out of hand, that was a Very Good Thing.

I haven’t had a tv for a while now, and I don’t miss it, mostly because I experience secondhand programming through televisionwithoutpity.com; it’s a case of secondhand being very definitely not second best. So, for example, I don’t care at all about American Idol – I don’t even care about Australian Idol – but host-of Ryan Seacrest as a cross between Frankenstein’s monster and Dorian Gray? Heh… Who’da thought a karaoke competition habitually won by outfits rather than singers could work better without sound or visuals?

Oh yeah. Remember the slow bits in Spiderman 3? (Which ones, you say? All of ‘em.) Now imagine sitting through them with the phrase ‘Evil Space Licorice’ running through your head. Way better, right? OK, I rarely go into a movie without being able to give a pretty good précis of the major plot points. But I’m happy to give up being surprised in favour of being able to greet Spidey’s nemesis like an old friend. Dana and David come to the movies with me and they're good people to hang with.

It would be nice to have a point to make here. Maybe something about experiencing God through other people? The importance of both creation and interpretation? How 'bout: I'll bake for mixtapes!