June 21, 2011 - It was a crazy fast ride home - but that road gets lonely when all you have to talk to is yourself. No cell coverage, disconnected, I found I had to... read. Newspapers when I stopped (and Canada has great ones) or listen to CBC (great, real radio), where I learned that the Bush Administration (II) actually tried to dig up dirt on bloggers in an eerie reflection of the last days of Richard Nixon... It took getting out of the country to discover this, though it finally made the news in America yesterday. Not music, but worth reflecting on. Will we remember? Will we care?
I am struck by the age we now live in. We correspond in 140 character bites (sadly, with photos as we have recently learned, not counting against the number of characters regardless of size - which in that instance doesn't appear to matter), we e mail and text. Finding ways to say things in shorter and shorter phrases and iterations. We dumb down the language, replace "you" with "u" and have to learn whole new social niceties (does no period at the end of the sentence in a text mean she does not care? Why does it take more than a day to get a response, have I done something wrong?). I crave letters and once (have I written this here) wrote daily. Fortunate enough to go to Oxford, I'd wake up early and walk to a tea or coffee place, cards in tow, and write two or three in the morning and at least another in the afternoon after lectures or tutorials. I received nearly as many (the envy of the mailroom) and felt as though I was in a golden age of thought and correspondence. I wrote long letters often, exploring ideas that were budding in my head of the inherent nature of man, new music, politics and philosophy. There is something about the written word - not subject to cut and paste PCs - that forces you to consider your words, craft them. I miss that.
I still carry a stack of cards with me, a concession to that past but rarely find the time to pick up a pen and write them... I find excuses, and as often as not I call, e mail or text the intended recipient making my news old long before it gets there. Perhaps I will try and write again, maybe there will be a few less texts, fewer e mails for a bit... We can write a revolution... Of course I'll put that off at least until I've posted this on line...