Uploaded June 2011 | Updated September 2026, 3 minutes ago
The quotation I used was abridged; here is the full version:
To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it's because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that's where phrases like 'deadly dull' or 'excrutiatingly dull' come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing's pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly...but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets' checkouts, airports' gates, SUVs' backseats. Walkmen, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can't think anyone really believes that today's so-called 'information society' is just about information. Everyone knows it's about something else, way down. - David Foster Wallace
The quotation was posted on John Green's tumblr last week (http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com) and this video has been ruminating in my head ever since.
It's also partly inspired by this wonderful thing: youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs
Also, thanks to everyone who has subscribed to get me up to 102 subscribers - love you all. I'll likely be making a video about that in the near future.
And if you've got this far, now might be a good time to mention that I have a twitter - it's @katieatlarge.
And finally finally, I'm planning on making 1000 paper cranes this summer. If you want to help, drop me a line!
See you soon! :)
The quotation I used was abridged; here is the full version:
To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it's because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that's where phrases like 'deadly dull' or 'excrutiatingly dull' come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing's pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly...but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets' checkouts, airports' gates, SUVs' backseats. Walkmen, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can't think anyone really believes that today's so-called 'information society' is just about information. Everyone knows it's about something else, way down. - David Foster Wallace
The quotation was posted on John Green's tumblr last week (http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com) and this video has been ruminating in my head ever since.
It's also partly inspired by this wonderful thing: youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs
Also, thanks to everyone who has subscribed to get me up to 102 subscribers - love you all. I'll likely be making a video about that in the near future.
And if you've got this far, now might be a good time to mention that I have a twitter - it's @katieatlarge.
And finally finally, I'm planning on making 1000 paper cranes this summer. If you want to help, drop me a line!
See you soon! :)
