BUT IS IT A COINCIDENCE?


In my day, young man, we had only three channels . . .

Yesterday I was compiling two of the mekons' best albums onto a CD for an Army-reservist friend who's currently overseas helping out with that bullshit war. Together, Fear and Whiskey and Edge of the World clock in at a little over 75 minutes, leaving four minutes to fill on the CD. I decided to close out the disc with the mekes' sublime cover of Gram Parsons's "$1,000 Wedding," which, with some judicious editing, would just fit. Or so I thought. After slimming the track down as much as I thought decent, the disc was still slightly overlong. Though my principles rankled, I took the knife -- the software, actually -- to Edge of the World 's final track, "The Letter." It's a mournful tale of lost love, and it ends with Susie Honeyman playing her violin over a train conductor's announcement that the train is approaching Leeds, the end of the line. My description doesn't do it justice, but it works. With a surgeon's cold precision, I sliced away some of those glorious closing phrases.

Hours later, I was out for a run, listening to an episode of This American Life from 1996 called "Other People's Mail." My favorite of the show's three acts, which addressed the lengths to which the postal service goes to prevent improperly addressed mail from being lost, ended with an excerpt from "The Letter."

Amazing coincidence? No. Ordinary coincidence? Not even. I discovered the mekons through This American Life. The mekes' co-founder, co-frontman, and primary creative engine, Jon Langford, is an occasional contributor to the program.

There's a lesson in this somewhere, maybe even a warning. As technology continues to increase our ability to select the information that reaches us, will we use that unprecedented freedom of choice to filter out information that contradicts what we already believe? We do this already, don't we? Isn't that what talk radio is? When I hear "The Letter" only hours after I'd heard it in a completely different context and think this event a coincidence, is it like looking in my closet and marveling that all the clothes just happen to fit me? In my day, young man, we had only three channels . . .

Posted: Sun - March 28, 2004 at 11:08 AM        

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