Soulseeking

O Cláudio chamou em boa altura a atenção para este texto do Nick Southall, da Stylus Magazine:

Part of me has been wondering, for a while now, whether I simply don't care anymore.
I should contextualise that. In autumn 2003 I got broadband. I also separated from my girlfriend (we're very happily back together now, just so you know). Alone and lonely too, I started an accidental crusade (because I had nothing better to do, probably) to hear everything I possibly could. So I downloaded. I searched. I queued. I browsed the files of strangers. I looked for and tried to listen to everything any other writer at Stylus recommended. I hung around I Love Music far more than is healthy, making mental checks of every name, past and present, that seemed to have any degree of significance or interest attached to it. I was a music journalist, of a sort, and I needed to have an opinion, and that opinion needed to cover anything and everything, because otherwise... I tried to crowbar my mind as wide open as it would go, and then some, and cram everything in there. And I mean everything. Wire, grime, Cabaret Voltaire, Colleen, the Warp catalogue, Britney Spears, Timbaland, those old Can albums I hadn't bought and couldn't be bothered to pay for until they were remastered, Ludacris, Dave Douglas, Bubba Sparxxx ('no, I need to download the American version because it's more postmodern when he segues into "Cry Me A River", don't you understand?'), old dance tunes I remember from being a kid at the disco, rare stuff by groups like Orbital where I own every album and most of the singles anyway but needed that never-released remix of the Equinox theme, Disco Inferno's EPs (just try finding them on eBay), The Zombies, 13th Floor Elevators, Mountain Goats, The Zephyrs, Jay-Z, Cannibal Ox, Madlib, Sugababes, Guns N Roses, Basement Jaxx, dozens and hundreds of others that I forget... (I even thought about downloading some Metallica, just to piss Lars off, but didn't.)

O texto continua, como é óbvio. E é precisamente nessa continuação -- vale a pena perder alguns minutos a ler até ao fim -- que são levantadas algumas questões curiosas, com as quais muitos de nós já nos defrontámos. Leiam também os comentários ao próprio artigo ou a discussão no Forum Sons.