I see you--the oil painter and the photoshop wizard. The jazz musician and the virtual DJ. The clarinet and the macbook Pro.
I hear you--the man with the guitar, the lyrics and the voice, as well as the depth of the bass booming out of the speakers that can never be replicated by that same guitar, the party that never has to stop for human exhaustion, the complexity of sound available in our age.
I feel you--I believe myself to be a representative of a generation on the cusp--we have known both relatively technologically free lives as children as well as completely technologically inundated adult lives, our most formative years. The generation above us plays instruments and struggles to text message. The generation below us knew how to use a computer before they knew how to walk. They abbreviate the english language in expectancy of efficiency, multi-task management, the dull glow of a computer screen imprinted on our faces.
I run the gauntlet. I am giving it my whole-for-all attempt at experience. I am whomp-whomping with the best of them, raging all night to electronic music fueled by extension cords and hallucinogenic drugs. And, at the end of things, I can only hear a banjo. I can hear a mountain stream. I feel the dirt beneath my feet and the people at my side and they always, always take the cake, trump the techno.
As per most everything in life, the dance we perform on the stage of the double-edged sword of technology is similar to the dance we must perform in everything else in life--take it with a grain of salt, maintain your distance and your humanity, and observe its potential to create more beauty, more opportunity, more depth in your life. Acknowledge, also, its potential to strip you of the simple beauty of human interaction, the nit and grit beneath your fingernails, to take you away from a real, direct and truthful human experience and overwhelm you with the grass-is-greener advertisements, fear mongering, subliminal messaging and general thereisjusttoomuchhereicantseeanythinganymore nonsense.
The world is at our fingertips. I have an iphone and, on it, I can research the frog i find underneath a leaf in a field on the side of a mountain without carrying pounds of field guides in my backpack. I can look up words that i don't recognize and perserve the the alarmingly homogenized English language.
I can see pictures of all my loved ones, my soul mates who are spread out all over the world, and I can instantaneously share experiences and emotions on a whole new level. It is a beautiful thing, it is efficient and intelligent and exciting and, lets fucking face it people, could all disappear at any given instant.
A hologram of Tupac rapping onstage at Coachella.
A recording of Bob Dylan reading poetry.
Creating a photograph on a computer screen, fingers flying body still dancing.
Creating a photograph in a dark room, chemical scents, body motion, a dance in the dark, sensory exposure.
Body still.
Body moving.
Heart still.
Heart moving.
To all things there is something beautiful.
Use caution, grant time.
Keep your head, know whats real.
your hands
your feet
the land
the sky
the sea
your heart and your
soul.
It is the modern age. I leap into her with skeptical arms and a appalachian upbringing.
"get your head out of the clouds and your feet back in the dirt my friend."
-Devil Makes Three
love.
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