philip sherburne

A suggestion or two for Simon and Karl. Admittedly there are two problems being discussed here: "a type of anxiety over the amount of fantastic art, music etc out there, the fact I have missed out on so much" is one thing, and then "the thought that potentialy my favourite track is only out there..." is another.

The first I'll call autodilettantophobia, which is a condition I know well (known in the vernacular as "pie-in-the-face syndrome" or "foot-in-mouth disease"); it crops up every time I have to write about something for a "serious" magazine, especially of the fine art variety. Fortunately my editors there are too busy Learjetting off to some biennial or other to read my confession of unworthiness here.

The second condition, that sort of yearning faith mixed with doubt, is probably the universal condition of the obsessive record buyer; when you make that committed crate-digger a certified hack who receives as many freebies in the mail as he or she buys, it intermingles the yearning faith and doubt with the unmistakeable bitterness of the professional. Anyway, for this condition I offer these possible prognoses:

The anxiety of effluence
Information overloss
Aesthnosticism
Mo' promos mo' problems

And for Jon, there's only one solution:

Interns!