Missing Everything
Today, I was listening to a Wagner opera - and started wondering how anybody has any time to listen to a 4 hour opera anymore, not to mention listening to it several times, over and over, as many times as needed, until one understands it. Because understanding takes repeated listening, viewing, reading - and not just the cursory, instantaneously, moving-on listening, viewing, reading of someone with a lot of other stuff to comprehend.
Because, as the world gets bigger - and as I find myself with more to read, the less I am able to understand the things that I read at all. Because, the less time I have to process, the quicker I look, scan, discard, and move on. Because who has time to read something or listen to something that ultimately will not benefit knowledge, culture, thought, feeling?
And why should I choose the particular thing that I want to read, listen to, see - over the trash heap of other things to absorb? When trash piles high enough, every gold stone must be passed over for the potential diamond lying three feet away.
I remember when I was young - and the world was smaller, and the internet didn't carry absurd amounts of information - I could sit with a piece of music, or a book, or a film, or a story, or anything that one would want to hold - for hours, days, weeks, months. And replay it in my head, learn from it, savor it, yearn from it. But now I have only time for a cursory glance. Not even to comprehend whatever I see, but to quickly determine whether it is worth seeing at all.
And yet - the more information that exists, the more information that I attempt to process every day, the less I think I understand anything ... because everything I do is just a cursory glance, a cursory read, a cursory thought of the fear of missing something important.
Because, as the world gets bigger - and as I find myself with more to read, the less I am able to understand the things that I read at all. Because, the less time I have to process, the quicker I look, scan, discard, and move on. Because who has time to read something or listen to something that ultimately will not benefit knowledge, culture, thought, feeling?
And why should I choose the particular thing that I want to read, listen to, see - over the trash heap of other things to absorb? When trash piles high enough, every gold stone must be passed over for the potential diamond lying three feet away.
I remember when I was young - and the world was smaller, and the internet didn't carry absurd amounts of information - I could sit with a piece of music, or a book, or a film, or a story, or anything that one would want to hold - for hours, days, weeks, months. And replay it in my head, learn from it, savor it, yearn from it. But now I have only time for a cursory glance. Not even to comprehend whatever I see, but to quickly determine whether it is worth seeing at all.
And yet - the more information that exists, the more information that I attempt to process every day, the less I think I understand anything ... because everything I do is just a cursory glance, a cursory read, a cursory thought of the fear of missing something important.