Three pieces of music about COVID-19
May. 19th, 2020 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: what it says on the tin, (mild) death, amnesia]
I am disturbed by how disturbing this *isn't*. I absolutely cannot hear any of the ugliness or emotion or narrative or relatability that Siderea and her commenters are discussing: this just sounds like background noise to me. My capacity to appreciate music is *greater* than for visual art, but apparently not great enough.
---
*This*, on the other hand, is within my ability to comprehend.
Within, I stress, *my* ability.
There are a lot fewer young children at work now--even *our* customers make *some* concessions to the plague: these days they usually send one or two people to order for the group--but I do still see them occasionally, and I am usually struck with the painful awareness that *nobody is going to _tell_ them*. I know very little about the 1990's: if you grow up in a situation where literally *everyone* but you knows something firsthand, where nobody else has ever needed to be taught it, you generally don't get taught.
This is *exactly* the kind of song that outlives everyone who knows what it means. And those who do not remember history...
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This post was originally going to be *two* pieces of music about COVID-19, but then Mom was watching Youtube on the living room TV (whose prosthetic brain is old enough that we cannot find any adblockers that support it), and this...thing...comes up before her foraging tutorial:
That's right: a No Frills ad consisting of a two-minute rap about appropriate grocery-shopping etiquette in a time of COVID-19.
My *initial* reaction was to roll my eyes and put my earmuffs on, but upon reflection I think this song is actually very valuable (edit: and I'm pleased to see that the Internet Archive has actually preserved it! not just the metadata like they usually do for Youtube, but the video itself!). It is *intensely* the thing that it is; it encapsulates so much about its circumstances. Movie-makers of the future, *please* use this in your set dressing for your historical movies about the plague of 2020.
I am disturbed by how disturbing this *isn't*. I absolutely cannot hear any of the ugliness or emotion or narrative or relatability that Siderea and her commenters are discussing: this just sounds like background noise to me. My capacity to appreciate music is *greater* than for visual art, but apparently not great enough.
---
*This*, on the other hand, is within my ability to comprehend.
Within, I stress, *my* ability.
There are a lot fewer young children at work now--even *our* customers make *some* concessions to the plague: these days they usually send one or two people to order for the group--but I do still see them occasionally, and I am usually struck with the painful awareness that *nobody is going to _tell_ them*. I know very little about the 1990's: if you grow up in a situation where literally *everyone* but you knows something firsthand, where nobody else has ever needed to be taught it, you generally don't get taught.
This is *exactly* the kind of song that outlives everyone who knows what it means. And those who do not remember history...
---
This post was originally going to be *two* pieces of music about COVID-19, but then Mom was watching Youtube on the living room TV (whose prosthetic brain is old enough that we cannot find any adblockers that support it), and this...thing...comes up before her foraging tutorial:
That's right: a No Frills ad consisting of a two-minute rap about appropriate grocery-shopping etiquette in a time of COVID-19.
My *initial* reaction was to roll my eyes and put my earmuffs on, but upon reflection I think this song is actually very valuable (edit: and I'm pleased to see that the Internet Archive has actually preserved it! not just the metadata like they usually do for Youtube, but the video itself!). It is *intensely* the thing that it is; it encapsulates so much about its circumstances. Movie-makers of the future, *please* use this in your set dressing for your historical movies about the plague of 2020.
