Multiple Degrees of Connection

 

Tonight I went to see About Us at the Tower of London. A half an hour light show with music, taking us from the beginning of the universe, right through the bit of a mess humans have made of things, it was a lovely way to spend the evening (we saw it twice!).  I went with a friend I had met on the internet, someone I would never have met in the olden days.  For all its faults, life is still better in so many ways now we have the opportunity to reach out through the airwaves to find our ‘tribe’.   I count among some of my best friends people I met on fan forums for Green Wing over 15 years ago now. 

I was thinking about a  different type of connection earlier though and the great algorithm challenge of getting out of the box that systems have allocated for you.   As a theatre going lover of literature, the arts and classy dramas and a rapidly ageing music collection, I was being presented with plenty of the stuff I know I like, but how do you get access to something different and new once you have been sorted and labelled?      Things can get a bit stale if the box doesn’t get opened to let in some fresh air every now and again.

Well over the last 6 months I have noticed I have  been presented with a load of new and interesting connections in music, film and tv and it’s starting to seep into my theatre options too.  I had an hour on a train today without a book and little signal so I did a mind map of what had flowed from my watching Heartstopper (twice).  Firstly Netflix decided I might be an LGBTQ+ teenager and so offered me lots of different film and tv that had been buried before, plenty of it very good (although, inevitably some crap too).  Then I listened to the soundtrack on Spotify and as if by magic I started being offered music being made in the last few years and artists I had never heard of.  

Didn’t stop there though.  Because I now have some new actors with careers to google I have found even more theatre and music I hadn’t known about before.  I also found some new fan forums  and through them I found new cultural references I had been missing because I am too old, and also discovered I quite like Taylor Swift and how good she is for Kitchen Karaoke (who knew!). But I also found connections back to the things I already love and care about.  My personal web has grown in size and complexity and that makes me very happy.  

Just wondering what I should do next to keep finding the way out of that box before it closes in again?