Take Two, and a Cultural Return to Simplicity?

I'm giving this thing a second attempt. I'm hoping to actually keep up with it this time and write something of substance at least weekly. We'll see how it goes. While I swear I often think substancy thoughts, I rarely take the time to write them down, and it's exactly this need to slow down and get a thought recorded or at least mulled over thoroughly that I'm aiming for.

Perhaps it's just my own craving for simplicity and stability that's coloring my world view, but it seems that the west is making a cultural movement towards simplicity and the classics. The world and society we currently live in is too overwhelmingly busy and complex, especially in urban centers, that it seems almost necessary that our collective soul is crying out for a little peace and sanity.

I've noticed more and more in songs on the radio lately that while we have the technology and chops to make extremely complex, erratic music, and the general public now has the ear to understand that kind of music, we're moving back towards simple rock and roll aesthetics, especially in the rhythm sections, which I believe most people register most strongly when listening to most types of music. Perhaps it's the similarity to a heartbeat. Perhaps it's the way we can feel it as well as hear it. Perhaps it just calls out to our natural rhythms. I've been listening to Coldplay's Violet Hill and The White Stripes Icky Thump lately, and while I know for a fact that these musicians have done more complex stuff in the past (yes, even The White Stripes have rarely actually relied solely on a single beat on the floor tom for such a significant portion of the song, and as much as Jack shows his chops on this song, he's holding back from his usual mess of garage-fuzz scales and near-metal-solo antics.)

As my friend posted on his blog a little bit ago, fashion is going the same route. Simple. Covered up. Conservative. Old School. Simple.

Art went this way a while back in the 80s with the black squares and primary colors, and as much as I love Mondrian, these movements were so conceptually dependent and complex that it did nothing for most viewers. Nowadays, graffiti and poster art, especially silk screening, are in vogue, and these mediums necessarily call for simplifying the subject and blocking colors into bold, telling shapes.

I'm hoping we're starting to apply this to social relationships and affairs as well. Perhaps now that Wall Street's falling we'll go back to affording what we buy. It also seems we're starting to fall back from the 70s sexual revolution and monogamous relationships and even marriage seems to hold some worth again. Even most conservatives, and even liberals, of my generation are gravitating towards Libertarianism, a call for less complex government interaction and a smaller government organization with more clear, defined, limited roles.

Society cycles through these aesthetic leanings. Individuals do as well. My own craving for stability comes towards the end of a period of almost kamikaze-style engagement in worlds I never had access to and dreamed about when I led a quiet, secluded life. But at the end of five years, I feel the need to slow down a bit, quiet down, and focus. I've planted the seeds I needed to plant, and now no longer have to run around building connections, proving myself, and exploring the different tracks I wanted to run down. I can now sit back, do my work, and seclude myself once again, at least a little more, because of this comfortable position I've gained.

Life and society aren't going to get any less complicated, busy, or erratic, but it seems our culture is starting to grasp at simplicity in the few ways it can now. The aesthetic climate is changing, and I like it.