This week, Pieces gorged on Futurism at Tate Modern, marvelled at how much better Kate Bush sounds on vinyl, and discovered the joys of cardoid microphones. All very geeky. Do we care? A little bit...
I was sitting eating some brilliant homemade soup (potato and vietnamese coriander – suppose it could have been a bit more middle class, but not sure how, not to bite the hand that fed me) at a friend’s house last week, when he said something pretty innocuous that nonetheless came as something of a revelation. “I’ve still got your book and CD”. Now, it’s not that much of a big deal that this friend had these things. But those seven words made me realise how much of a habitual lender I’ve become over the years. As soon as I’ve finished reading or listening to things I really like, I’m desperate to get them off my hands. Maybe the reason this particular moment caught my attention so vividly is that the book in question is one of my favourites from the last year (The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross – read it now if you’ve ever thought you could be interested in twentieth century music), and the CD is one of my favourites ever (a collection of early New Orleans funk). In spite of my intense attachment to these things, they haven’t been in my possession for at least half a year, probably more.
The knock-on effect on my life at home is surprisingly significant. It means that at any one time more than half of my favourite things (given that a hell of a lot of my favourite things are books and/or CDs) are not in my possession. My bookshelves are full of a combination of books that I either haven’t read yet or don’t really like so much, even though I may still really like them. Thanks to Spotify I don’t need to worry so much about lending music, but until someone makes every books available to download (and when someone comes up with a viable way of consuming them that doesn’t involve staring at a headache-inducing screen for hours on end) I’m stuck with this malady. Of course it goes the other way, and I’m really grateful for the fascinating book on animals that are nearly extinct (which I really should give back…) and others that I have lying in neat dust-free piles – another symptom is that I treat others’ things way better than I do my own. This has all made me realise that when the time comes that all media is available from central hubs and noone needs to own anything any more, I’m really going to miss being able to basically loan my soul out and share it with people I like.
It’s also got me thinking about how my situation fits into the wider world, where people lend each other more than just books and pens. Even though it doesn’t quite seem like Capitalism is going to melt slowly and caramelise any more, we’re still living through a time where lending and borrowing are tricky things to talk about in terms of money. Obviously despite Shakespeare’s (well, ok, Polonius’) oft-quoted advice to ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’ whole countries built there economies on the assumption that it’s ok to borrow against future earnings and potential success. Just last week, Florentino Perez, the new president of Real Madrid Football Club (stick with me, non-football-fans, this won’t last long…) justified spending a world-record 80million euros on Christiano Ronaldo by claiming that "Shirt sales will fund the deal". Borrowing, rather than lending, has become a tool to manipulate money markets, and indeed all kinds of markets including those for Real Madrid football shirts, to produce millions of multiples of small profits that together make a big profit.
What has always puzzled me about this situation is that it makes it incredibly easy for anybody to make massive amounts of money. All you have to do is convince someone to lend you enough cash, at a low enough interest rate, to be able to invest in enough money-making schemes (and these can be as wonderfully brilliantly profitable or as gut-bustingly hard work and low profit as you want) to turn that money into more than you started with. Most business people will insist that it’s possible to make a conscious decision to make a lot of money and become stinking rich, and they’re partly right: if you’re happy with creating wealth by basically playing a game where you match big numbers with small numbers in the right order, then it’s yours for the taking. So why isn’t everyone doing it?
I like to think it’s because humanity has an inbuilt safety mechanism: one that makes at least a protion of the population realise that for everyone to survive at least some of us have to actually make things. If every farmer suddenly decided, you know what, fuck it, I’m sick of digging leaf mulch into my tomato beds every morning, I’m gonna get a fat bank loan and invest in millions of Tesco shares and sell them at a fat profit in a year’s time, the world would starve. It would be so easy for them to do it. But they don't. Safety mechanism at work. Please don't let it get rusty any time soon.
This week's Piecesounds mixes it up a bit with some live poetry alongside the one and only...well see for yourself. Click below to mash up your ears big style.
1. Gary Numan - Airlane
2. Cyndi Lauper - Money Changes Everything
3. Tammi Terrell - I Can't Believe You love Me
4. Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy
5. Morrissey - You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side
6. Django Bates - Once A Penguin, Always A Penguin
7. Antony & The Johnsons - Aeon
8. Leonard Bernstein - Serenade II (Allegretto): Aristophanes
9. Buddy Rich - What Is This Thing Called Love?
10. The Cookies - Girls Grow Up Faster Than Boys
11. The Walkmen - No Christmas While I'm Talking
12. Walter Lowenfels - All Our Valises Are Packed
13. Fela Kuti - Mister Follow Follow
14. The Flaming Lips/Stardeath/White Dwarfs - Borderline
http://open.spotify.com/user/blownawish/playlist/543P5UzIESHwtbJSk1HRyI
Enjoy!
See you next week for more.
Pieces x
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