over saturation

[bunnyben]

i'm feeling over saturated with so much music, books, films etc i have bought in the last however many years i've not even touched. is it me or is everything too easy to get hold of now? i miss my paper round days- aprox £11 per week- enough for one new cd

[jack white]

can you have 'over saturation'?

BB, i'm reminded of a great moment in the seinfeld pilot;

George: Your stuff has to be done by now, why don't you just see if it's dried?

Jerry: No no no, don't interrupt the cycle. The machine is working. It knows what it's doing, just let it finish.

G: You're gonna overdry it.

J: You, you can't "overdry".

G: Why not?

J: Same as you can't "overwet". You see, once something is wet, it's wet. Same thing with dead: like once you die you're dead, right? Let's say you drop dead and I shoot you: you're not gonna die again, you're already dead. You can't "overdie", you can't "overdry".

so surely once something is saturation, you can't saturate it even more?
i've been to an online dictionary & there does exist a "supersaturation" but i think it's slightly different to what you're experiencing BB.


but anyway, to answer your question: every once in a blue moon i feel weighed down by my possessions, my media & 'entertainment'.
there is a massive backlog of music i've to get thru - my 'downloads' folder is sitting @ 132GB which is just gluttonous (tho it's been larger). i will endeavour to get thru all of it this yr (some of it i have listened to, just have yet to back-up most i haven't heard before & a lot of it's in Flac).
i've got books & dvd boxsets i've foolishly borrowed off friends, stacked on top of my own book & film purchases some of which are unopened/not watched/not read.
it's gotten to the stage now where there is a single route thru certain rooms in the house, weaving in & out of towers of stuff. like john cusacks apartment in High Fidelity except instead of vinyl it's cd's, cd-r's, blu-ray's, dvd's, books & videogames.


but i am a culture junkie. it took me a while to realise my higher purpose in life. it is to devour as much pop culture/crap as i can before i kick the bucket & it's all gone forever.
u gotta live while you can.
i <3 entertainment.

[toomilk]

I see the merits in your claim Jack, but I definitely feel like it is possible to get "over-saturated" with media. I myself have been buying records in quantities I would have previously thought insane. I'm starting to feel as if I'm consuming media like a monster - quantity almost becomes equal to quality, which is a horrific, horrific thing. Music/books/films I have liked in the past year or so feel like they don't even start to compare to my "all-time-favorites"...but is that due to me not devoting enough time to them or the quality of the art itself? I'd like to think the former.

That's why I'm going to attempt (I say "attempt" because it's going to be difficult...and I don't think I have much of a chance of completing it) to cut off buying music and books until I've fully "consumed" all of the unlistened/unread media I have. I'm going to take the music side one step further and say that I will not purchase any new music until I've listened to every vinyl LP I own.* I don't think this will be too big of a task: I own about 400 LPs and I listen to about 7 a day, so that would take around three months. Just use a place marker and listen to only the next album filed alphabetical-chronologically (filed by artist name, then year) of the marker.

It'll hopefully refine my tastes as well and maybe get rid of some LPs I don't care for. Or maybe it will make the quantity side obliterate the quality side and result in the complete opposite of what I hoped it would. Who knows? All I can do is try it...


*Of course, I would break this rule for the new Spiritualized or a good price for an album I don't have.

[simonkeeping]

I hear what you're saying BB. I feel the same way too. I certainly don't buy half as much music as other folk on here but with the dawn of downloading I find myself almost in a situation of collecting/hoarding alot of albums/files that I will probably never listen to. Even stuff I buy goes into the drawer and maybe a few weeks later I'll listen to it it (to be fair that only really happens with impulse buys). I've bought albums I've never heard, its crazy! Especially when at the end of each month Im broke. But then again on the flip side I do like occasionally having a bit of a spending spree. I do long for those days when like you said you'd save up some money and go and buy something you REALLY want. For me when you buy things like that they mean alot more to you than another glut of 4-5 albums you bought just because you can.

Before Christmas I got into a habit of listening to stuff I've not heard in years. My itunes has something ridiculous like 60 days worth of music so it was nice to revisit stuff I'd forgotten about. Was actually really good fun too, working out what shall we put on now...

[bbbhenko]

i also tend to get supersaturated w/ music at times... in essence, i believe this happens to me since browsing/buying (especially vinyl) in record stores is probably one of my most favourite pastimes. in other words, i tend to put myself in situations where, if there's nothing that i really want, i will find something to buy anyway. this means that at the same time as i am accumulating really nice music in my collection, i am also acquiring 'fillers' that i tend to listen to much less (and sometimes not at all!).

btw, kind of made me think about that me and my brother used to argue about the fact that there seems to be a neverending stream of music (new and old) to discover and that one is unlikely to hear everything that one would find amazing within a single lifetime. i used to find this reassuring ("there will always exist superb music that i can discover") but he used to find it stressful ("i will never be able to discover all the superb music that i would have loved")...

[angelsighs]

totally emphasise with this thread. sometimes I really do get overwhelmed with music and I don't have time to listen to it all (and unlike a lot of people, I buy all my music properly rather than download it, with the obvious exceptions of bootlegs, so I don't have as much a constant stream as some).. whereas when I was a teenager, I'd save up money to buy an album and it was a really important purchase, that you had to live inside and out until you got your next album.
every now again though I'll do a catch up, and really dedicate some time to music. this is easy enough as I have a fair amount of free time, and only myself to worry about. the situation would be worse if I had a girlfriend or kids

the fact that we have easy access to so much culture now is a blessing and a curse.. now you can order pretty much whatever you want from amazon, or go hear a song straight away on youtube or spotify. we really are overwhelmed a lot of the time... does this mean a lot of people just consume culture on a surface level (breadth rather than depth?)... maybe it's contributed to the way pop culture has been watered down and made shallower- things have to be cruder and less subtle to grab your attention (or with a certain 'hook' of marketing or somesuch)- and songs have to be compressed and brickwalled so they sound punchy and immediate.

also, when was the last time you knew an entire albums lyrics by heart?

I've got an amazon wishlist as long as my arm, and as soon as I think I'm getting on top of it I discover more new bands.

but it's up to us how we use it I guess, I don't think we should complain. it's up to us to take our time and set limits, and find the good stuff.
I'd rather have too much stuff available than not enough, and let yourself and people whose opinions you trust, be the 'gatekeeper'

I'm of the opinion that a good record collection is defined by what is not there, as much as what is...
I've got a friend who downloads ENTIRE DISCOGRAPHIES of artists he wants to investigate, then he gives each track like 10 seconds to impress him until skipping to the next one.. it's a method of listening that I can't abide.. I like to take an educated guess on which album is the best to start with an artist, then listen to it in full to get the flow of the whole thing, before investigating the catalogue further, bit by bit, depending on what aspect of their sound appeals to me the most

I'm even worse with books. (because you can't consume them in 80 mins tops, they take hours of dedication) there's a fair few sitting on my shelf unread, meaning pangs of guilt when i walk past.. but then I keep buying more.