Frisson is the word used to describe a sudden feeling of excitement, apprehension, or a thrilling shiver, often experienced as a physical sensation like goosebumps, skin tingling, or shivers down the spine. It’s the sort of feeling I get when someone, like an athlete breaking a world record, or something, like a song or piece of art, is so amazing it makes hairs stand up on the back of my neck and in that moment I become totally captured by the intensity.

As I get older, I find I experience these frisson moments less often. With age comes experience and with experience comes wariness; like I’ve seen it all before. And a bitter hankering for the past; making an album isn’t what it was, I tell myself. It used to be an art form, where musicians locked themselves away in Rockfield recording studio for months to create monsters of majesty like Bohemian Rhapsody. A computer, synthesizer and drum machine couldn’t create that.

But it’s not just the beauty and brilliance that induces frisson. It’s also the human endeavour involved. It’s knowing the effort it takes to become that good; the self-sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears. Not only the natural ability, but the 10,000 hours of dedicated practice needed to achieve world-class mastery, according to Malcolm Gladwell.

There’s a fable about a cricket fan who dies and arrives at the pearly gates. As St Peter lets him in, he finds himself walking out to the crease at Lords, the fans cheering loudly as he takes up position as England’s opening batsman. He hits a six off the first ball and the crowd goes wild. Surely this must be heaven, he thinks. The same thing happens with the second ball. And the third, fourth, fifth etc. After thirty overs of sixes, he asks the captain if he can retire. “Where do you think you are sonny?” comes the reply. “This is hell my friend. You keep on hitting those sixes.”

I think of this as I watch a pro golfer make a perfect shot, read an amazing poem or book, or watch a maestro violinist play Beethoven’s violin concerto. Or even when I see the Sex Pistols playing God Save the Queen on a barge on the Thames in 1977. Brilliance, all of it. Frisson inducing. Human created.

Which brings me on to my point. Frisson is under threat on two fronts.

Firstly, there’s today’s world of extreme’s driven by hype, the continuous news cycle and social media, all blunting our emotions. Chris Rea sang about his anger at news coverage before the watershed making his little girl cry in You Must be Evil. Well, the kids don’t cry any more as they watch it on their screens twenty-four hours a day. As people and stories vie for attention in this me, me, me world, everything has to be the biggest, the worst, a crisis, the world’s first, or drastic in some other way. Sometimes it’s true. But when it is, it becomes normalised very quickly. For example, everyone seems pretty used to the idea of AI wiping out humanity in the next ten years already, and that risk was only really made pulic last week!

On the subject of Artificial Intelligence, it’s this that’s second front killing frisson. How much art is now assisted by AI, whether it’s music, painting, writing, or robots making sculptures. I used to be amazed at some of the photos and some of the images created by, well, creatives, but who can tell anymore whether someone has hidden, camouflaged in a hide in the woods for days to get that picture of an owl in flight, or whether it’s artificial?

Have we become too thick skinned to appreciate wonder, or magnificence? Have we all seen too much on screen to appreciate reality?

And is AI depersonalizing brilliance?

There’s one thing we can all do about this, and that’s identify and support those creative geniuses who strive for perfection, inspire us, and bring hope and calm in this tormentuous world. Long live frisson!