Idle Thoughts on the St. Matthew Passion and Millennial Software -- 4/2/24 (Pt. II)

Continued from:

It rains on a Tuesday. The building complex, although it has its charm, looks particularly utilitarian in the gray of this steady downpour. I have a large window before me. The Insignia monitor, mounted with brackets to my office wall, displays the 3D cube and UI components for media playback as rendered on the slim version of the PS2 that I have had since its release in 2004, when I was 12. No small parts of the code responsible for what I observe and hear was worked on in an office building in Tokyo on days that likely looked like today. The PS2 and the music I hear are alike in that they are the result of complex human efforts of coordination. They are unlike in every important aspect I can think of at present. Contemplation of these differences blows my mind in the way that mandalas do. Bach’s music was supported financially by a feudalistic political structure that was often at odds with the message of the passion. The PS2 was supported by economic, political, and technological forces that were far more in line with its medium and particular expression.

Much as I would like to look up and slowly come to understand over several successive cups of coffee the history of Sony’s operations, in particular at the interval when they had the greatest influence over my life, that would, again, require the internet and divert me from my task. Not nostalgia, which rives much of the triumphant corporate brand theme in media, but the strangeness of what the intrusion these brands into my life, as well as the loss of structure in society that allowed these to grow, marks my theme. In just the same way that stained glass, ministers, a liturgical calendar, an impressive choir screen, of the kind displayed in New York’s Met, and a choir, organized an important element of many individual’s experiential or intellectual life in Bach’s time, the object of manufacture worked upon by an army of Sony employees organized a portion of the intellectual and experiential life of many millions from my cohort, mostly to our detriment. There is no purpose in longing for a different societal mode. Our lot in life is to make meaning out of what is available to us.