July 18, 2005

Falling Off the Pop Culture Bandwagon

Filed under: Art and About Me — admin @ 4:42 pm

The parent of one of my son’s friends recently moved here from out-of-state. Upon learning that I was a Bay Area native, she asked me, “How do listen to new music around here? All of your radio stations play oldies.”

I opened my mouth simultaneously planning to get defensive and offer her the call letters of a station or two that would meet her needs. But I ended up saying nothing. The truth was, I didn’t know a radio station to recommend and I didn’t have enough evidence to be defensive. There could very well be someone playing new music but they are not programmed in to my memory buttons on the car radio. For the most part, I am out of touch with current popular music.

This realization took me by surprise. I know I have young children and “Sesame Street’s Greatest Hits” is the Top 40 play list in my house. But those few moments I’m in the car by myself, I thought I was listening to enough different stations to keep up with the music scene. My true realization was that although the stations I listen to sprinkle in a new song every once and a while, I usually turn the channel to see if one of the other stations is playing a song that I know. I have become my mother.

Flashback: Fourth Grade. I am just beginning to key into popular music. Within the past year I have bought my first record albums, an eclectic mix of Dolly Parton, Styx, Rick Springfield, Blondie and Danny Kaye sings Hans Christian Andersen. My mom listens to the radio while she sews in another room. She is listening to music from “her era.” It does not appeal to me. I analyze why she does not listen to contemporary popular music and run my theory by her. I hypothesize that she used to be hip and happenin’ and then for some reason, at some point in her life, she turned off the radio for an extended length of time. When she turned it back on one day, she didn’t like what she heard. Mom agrees that this theory was probably valid. I vow never to let that happen to me.

And now it has. As I think about it, music is the least worrisome indicator for me of how my radar for the popular arts scene has been shut off. Other artistic outlets for me, which I used to find very important no longer, exist in my daily life.

I don’t watch any broadcast television. I do read the newspaper, so I know about hugely successful shows like “Desperate Housewives” or “The Sopranos,” but I have never seen them. I don’t even have a desire to see them.

I don’t read any bestsellers, save for “Harry Potter.”

I rarely go to movies because there is hardly anything that compels me to go to the trouble of setting up a babysitter and saying goodbye to my hard-earned money in order to see a movie that has more than a 50% chance of wasting my time. I used to be selective in my movie viewing, but also very experimental and willing to take risks. Now I go for the sure-bet only.

I have continued to keep in touch with the theater world, but even there I have switched focus. I used to have a cursory knowledge of what American theater was up to but I put energy into keeping up with what was happening in the British theater which I found more exciting. I had a chance last week to look at a London theater guide and discovered that my global interest in theater has yielded to domestic offerings.

I guess this is the artistic manifestation of the maturation process. I know I can tell you a lot more about the Contra Costa and San Francisco visual and performing arts scenes than I could 15 years ago. I have read some darn good books, even if there is no I can talk to about them because no one else has read them. My bent toward edutainment on television is more than satisfied by the myriad cable channels producing informative and captivating programming. Quite frankly, I don’t miss the movies. If I see only one movie a year, and it is a movie like the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, then that one movie can hold me for months. Especially with the advent of DVDs.

People tell me I’ll get back to pop culture once my kids stop watching Barney and start keying into what their peers do. I’ll be curious to see what happens to me then. I don’t want to be clueless about the pop culture they find nurturing, but I have to realize that keeping up with the times may be more of an intellectual exercise for my brain while my heart seeks more compelling avenues. This could get very interesting.