Removing the agony of choice
WE have established over a long period of time, beyond reasonable doubt, that anything that is any good is in constant danger. We will be reminded of this again tomorrow night when RTE shows Giles, a documentary about John Giles, which should be excellent in itself, but which will remind us that he is no longer a member of the RTE panel, for reasons that are beyond all understanding except by repeating the lesson: anything that is any good is in constant danger.
We are reminded of it by the recent announcement that Carl Corcoran will no longer be presenting The Blue of the Night on Lyric fm, a job he has done so well for such a long time. Too well it seems, to avoid the danger that lurks everywhere, when the opportunity arises for something good to be replaced by... well, something else.
There is almost no area of life untouched by this phenomenon, from the declining quality of your favourite chocolate bar to the dumbing down of a once-great sitcom, to the latest small but interesting addition to the list, the fact that there is no “red button” for Irish viewers of the BBC’s otherwise fine coverage of Glastonbury.
I do not know or care how this has happened. I know only that this thing which had once been good, an intrinsic part of my Sky package, is now no more. I did not even know it was in danger, probably because I could not conceive of any circumstances in which someone, somewhere, would decide that this minor convenience would in future be denied to the citizens of this country.
Indeed it was so minor I only used it once a year, for Glastonbury. And perhaps it was the very smallness of the difference it made to my life, that persuaded me there was nothing to be concerned about here, that no matter what else life might bring, I would always be able to select from at least six different samples of the Glastonbury fare.
No doubt there are TV wizards out there who are chortling about this in a superior way, because they know of some method whereby they can get all the red buttons they want, 99 red buttons indeed if needs be, by fine-tuning or by re-configuring or by hacking into something or other. I just don’t want it that bad. But I didn’t want it to go either, and yet in its absence I came to realise another truth about the nature of existence. Left with just the main coverage on BBC Two and BBC Four, I found that I was perhaps a little more at ease with the proceedings in general. That a certain anxiety had been taken out of the experience, the nagging sense that somewhere else at Glastonbury, something far better might be happening.
Therefore we had an unusual instance of something good — the red button — being extinguished, leading to something else which was itself quite good, or at least not too bad at all.
The lack of choice, I found, was strangely liberating. When television started in this country, we were tormented by thoughts of what we were missing on the BBC, now that we have a multitude of channels at Glastonbury we are still tormented by thoughts of what we are missing on the BBC.
And yet when we are forced by some outrageous executive decision to choose from just two stages at Glastonbury, we find that this calmness starts to come over us, a feeling of acceptance, a sense of one-ness with whoever is on the Pyramid stage. And thus we may emerge stronger, even wiser.
So I am here to tell you that The Foo Fighters are no good. I lost all hope when Dave Grohl started saying “f ***” in a “defiant” way, as if this made him some kind of a subversive. And when he seemed to be measuring the quality of the show by the length of the performance, I thought of all those we had lost in the wars to abolish the 20-minute drum solo.
Radiohead I found quite inspiring, true artists. I would worry for them.