This week, Pieces suffered a cultural overload – Shakespeare, proms, libraries; if it had all been consumed by one person instead of three it would have probably led to some kind of breakdown.
This last week has seen a flurry of anniversaries relating to the Apollo 11 mission to land two people on the moon. On the moon. That’s really far away. Sorry to point out the obvious, but every time I think about it at the moment my mind starts to boggle. Here’s the thing: there’s a plan to take people to the moon again, by 2020 or something, but I’m not excited by it at all. It’s a bit like watching a big blockbuster movie with loads of CGI explosions: now that computers can do pretty much anything for us, there’s not really any thrill any more. Of course we can send a person to the moon: whatever the problems and difficulties, we can chuck a computer at them and everything will be fine. But 40 years ago, people were walking on the moon. 40 years ago, when people drove clunky dirty cars and steam trains had only just been taken out of service on British railways. It’s just staggering – and for someone like me who was born a really long time after all of this, it’s amazing that it has that much of an impact hearing about it and watching footage. But it really does; it’s like reading about sea voyages around the world (and even better because there’s less inherent imperialism and colonialism…).
A big part of the excitement surely comes from the well-documented primitivity of the technology that was available to the space program in the late 60s. To me, its not even statistics about the computer power in the spacecraft or whatever gets thrown around all the time. It’s thinking about what was available to an ordinary person at the time. Right now, I’m typing on a computer that’s pretty powerful, that can probably do a lot of the things that would be required to get someone to the moon again. That’s not me showing off my computer (anyone who’s ever seen it clunk and grind into action will no there’s really nothing to show off about…), it’s just a sign of how attitudes to technology have shifted since 1969 because what’s available is so much more sophisticated. Rewind 40 years and the most complex piece of machinery in your standard family home would probably be either the car or the television set. Imagine watching Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon’s surface and knowing that the stuff that got him there is only a few steps up from the car on your driveway. Whereas a computer can do anything it’s programmed to do, it takes imagination and a lot of adventure to get a dumb petrol-powered box to the moon.
As well as the thrill of watching what’s basically a big hunk of metal with no brain somehow fly a perfect course to a tiny object thousands of miles away, the moon landings show us that it is actually possible to achieve great things by being humble and quietly brilliant. Once you get past the big Kennedy speeches about doing things because they’re hard, and the All-American we’re-gonna-beat-your-asses cold-war approach, you’re left with three men in a spaceship, on a mission. Of those three men, it was apparently ‘Buzz’ Aldrin who was originally chosen to take the first step on the surface of the moon. But he was switched with Neil Armstrong at the last minute. The reason? The leaders of mission control felt that the softly-spoken, modest Armstrong would be better equipped to handle the pressures and notoriety of being the first man on the moon. So he did. And he’s spent 40 years being a nice guy, or just generally not showing off about it. No-one has a bad word to say about the guy.
Above all concerns about machinery and gung-ho bravado, the achievement that really sticks in my imagination is the imagery of a mission for all mankind. Obviously, it’s naïve to think for a second that the concept of landing a man on the moon wasn’t dreamed up as a riposte to Russian cosmonauts beating American astronauts into orbit around the Earth. But bearing that in mind, what a wonderful thing to be able to watch footage of men on the moon and have them talk about a ‘giant leap for mankind’ – not America, not ‘the free world’, but mankind. Just once, we were all able to say that, whatever its origins, something had happened that was actually, truly, attuned to the human craving for exploration without the destructive impulse that usually pollutes it. What a great thing.
Anyway, enough of the cheesy schoolboy star-eyed wonder. On to this week’s playlist, which features not a single moon-related song. Unless I’ve missed a really subtle link, in which case feel free to let me know and you’ll get a prize. Or something. Click the link below to hear all of this:
1. Steve Reich - Electric Counterpoint III: Fast
2. Roy Ayers - Can You Dig It?
3. Public Enemy - Who Stole The Soul?
4. Helen Shapiro - Tell Me What He Said
5. Dinosaur Jr. - Pieces
6. Francis Poulenc - Sonata for Two Pianos: II. Allegro
7. Paul Simon - The Coast
8. Panda Bear - Bro's (Terrestrial Tones mix)
9. Lionel Richie - All Night Long
10. Psychic TV - Just Drifting
11. Radiohead - Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)
12. The Boo Radleys - Martin, Doom! It's Seven O'Clock
13. Randy Newman - The Great Nations Of Europe
http://open.spotify.com/user/blownawish/playlist/38J1Zmf6bvgUX9xZe1KgU9
See you next week for more.
Pieces x
No comments:
Post a Comment