In any case, before breaking to read your Sunday Pages, I was just sitting here journaling and thinking about how to describe a curious experience I had while hiking in the hidden hollers where I now live in Appalachia.
What I am pondering -- something which your own musing amplifies -- is that words as a collective thing have been fed into the currents of our modern day machinery, and as such have lost currency; the value of words in a world stuffed with words is decreasing.
Yes, the mystical weird experience I had in the woods might defy symbolism, which is really all words are -- squiggles of standardized, encodified meaning -- but that words increasingly have less value in this world, is it because they have less meaning? Do the have less utility?
To wit, your observation of how time has gone from lengths to blobs, it makes me wonder if what is happening now is a growing conscious awareness of the compression of all experience into the present, and so words can no longer sufficiently shape our relationship to time.
Words we do use are shorter than ever, misspelled and flung into punctuationless texts. I suppose this is indicative of there being less space to travel in between us all, as the awareness of All grows deeper and more vast.
The falcon can no longer hear the falconer, but perhaps the new technology won't require us to hear and speak.
It seems to me that technology is alarming us into the realization that there is more to perceive than what we have settled for by accepting the Status Quo's shunted insistence that 5 senses are enough.
Words themselves might be the technology that is on the brink of irrelevance. I don't know, but it was what was on my mind when your missive came along...
Always a mind warp, lots to process for an oldie, whose childhood was defined by radio, teens by tv, 20’s by both, 30’s by tv, cameras and space-age gadgets, 40’s by Walkman’s, and all that came before, 60’s by VCR’s, calculators and computers, 70’s by laptops, and more technology than I ever knew existed. Life started changing by the nanosecond. I often thought about peasants of old whose lives changed little over their short life span. Don’t know if we are blessed or cursed. Love the poems, they say so much with so little verbiage.
So much food for thought here, Greg! As you know I love Radio. For me it is a true connection point - the seeming randomness of what song plays at a certain time. I was having a conversation with a new friend a few years ago, and she was asking me if I was worried about 5G. I told her that I was not worried at all. I relayed to her that when FM radio really took hold, all the adults around me thought it was the beginning of the end of the world. I loved it because the sound was amazing and all of these new stations began popping up and playing the music I love. Shout out to Edwin Armstrong - here is a interesting article on the history of FM radio, which also shows that Corporate Greed has had its' hand in the amplification of all technological advancements: https://radiofidelity.com/the-history-of-fm-radio/
I was an early adopter of both the iPod and iPhone and now I wonder if that technology has been a blessing or a curse. I was in France in July 2010 and was the only one with an iPhone since it had not been sold in Europe yet. Met one American man with an iPad. How times have changed.
Brilliant. You'd think we'd prize equilibrium -- but it seems we have no say in the matter. We're somewhere on the steepening curve but who's to say where? Children of acceleration, wondering where the asymptote is and what happens when we reach it.
I share Robin Broshi’s sentiment that what’s going on in our lives—like child rearing and establishing a career—and being in the military—fundamentally affects how we view what’s going on in the world and how we recall it later. For me the blur seems to span at least a couple decades, but it seems like the blur relates to how my present memory of that era is affected rather than my perception at the time. Are historians, being inescapably human, any more objective than, say, I am?
Sunday Pages: "Radio"
Sometimes your insights are so sharp, they hurt.
In any case, before breaking to read your Sunday Pages, I was just sitting here journaling and thinking about how to describe a curious experience I had while hiking in the hidden hollers where I now live in Appalachia.
What I am pondering -- something which your own musing amplifies -- is that words as a collective thing have been fed into the currents of our modern day machinery, and as such have lost currency; the value of words in a world stuffed with words is decreasing.
Yes, the mystical weird experience I had in the woods might defy symbolism, which is really all words are -- squiggles of standardized, encodified meaning -- but that words increasingly have less value in this world, is it because they have less meaning? Do the have less utility?
To wit, your observation of how time has gone from lengths to blobs, it makes me wonder if what is happening now is a growing conscious awareness of the compression of all experience into the present, and so words can no longer sufficiently shape our relationship to time.
Words we do use are shorter than ever, misspelled and flung into punctuationless texts. I suppose this is indicative of there being less space to travel in between us all, as the awareness of All grows deeper and more vast.
The falcon can no longer hear the falconer, but perhaps the new technology won't require us to hear and speak.
It seems to me that technology is alarming us into the realization that there is more to perceive than what we have settled for by accepting the Status Quo's shunted insistence that 5 senses are enough.
Words themselves might be the technology that is on the brink of irrelevance. I don't know, but it was what was on my mind when your missive came along...
Powerful and sad
Always a mind warp, lots to process for an oldie, whose childhood was defined by radio, teens by tv, 20’s by both, 30’s by tv, cameras and space-age gadgets, 40’s by Walkman’s, and all that came before, 60’s by VCR’s, calculators and computers, 70’s by laptops, and more technology than I ever knew existed. Life started changing by the nanosecond. I often thought about peasants of old whose lives changed little over their short life span. Don’t know if we are blessed or cursed. Love the poems, they say so much with so little verbiage.
So much food for thought here, Greg! As you know I love Radio. For me it is a true connection point - the seeming randomness of what song plays at a certain time. I was having a conversation with a new friend a few years ago, and she was asking me if I was worried about 5G. I told her that I was not worried at all. I relayed to her that when FM radio really took hold, all the adults around me thought it was the beginning of the end of the world. I loved it because the sound was amazing and all of these new stations began popping up and playing the music I love. Shout out to Edwin Armstrong - here is a interesting article on the history of FM radio, which also shows that Corporate Greed has had its' hand in the amplification of all technological advancements: https://radiofidelity.com/the-history-of-fm-radio/
I was an early adopter of both the iPod and iPhone and now I wonder if that technology has been a blessing or a curse. I was in France in July 2010 and was the only one with an iPhone since it had not been sold in Europe yet. Met one American man with an iPad. How times have changed.
Bravo to you and to Lindsey. You nailed it, to mix metaphors.
Both, I think.
THE DEATH OF SILENCE
SAD
ENJOYED THE TWO SHORT POEMS.
In another life maybe i'll be smart enough
to understand all you wrote.
Homo Habilis
From the Serengity
Not another human in sight
Brilliant. You'd think we'd prize equilibrium -- but it seems we have no say in the matter. We're somewhere on the steepening curve but who's to say where? Children of acceleration, wondering where the asymptote is and what happens when we reach it.
I share Robin Broshi’s sentiment that what’s going on in our lives—like child rearing and establishing a career—and being in the military—fundamentally affects how we view what’s going on in the world and how we recall it later. For me the blur seems to span at least a couple decades, but it seems like the blur relates to how my present memory of that era is affected rather than my perception at the time. Are historians, being inescapably human, any more objective than, say, I am?
Perhaps the cell phone marks the present ‘Age.’ Life changed.
Billserle.com
What an excellent, nah, a great read today, nah, tonight 🍸! Bravo, 🙌🏼,
I had never heard that poem, and I like it a lot. Thanks!