bubble

Bubble

by Bob on September 19, 2008

Some years ago, before the internet and cell phones, I wondered, if I didn't call anyone at all, just how many of my friends and relatives would call me at all.

The results of the experiment were very sad for me.

The same is true for email these days. I think I shall re-cast the experiment using email which is really a measure of one's social entropy. If I don't send any emails indefinitely very few if any people will write. Maybe even it's a measure of societal worthiness. One is as a pharmakos as in ancient Greece. Outcast.

So if I don't send out any email to anyone, will anyone ever notice and write or even think that I might have been run over by a car or dropped dead ? Or care ?

As Paul Simon sang in his 1986 prophetic song and video "Boy in the Bubble" from his award-winning album "Graceland", these are the days of miracle and wonder. Yeah like ...

These are the days of miracle and wonder,

This is the long distance call,

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all,

The way we look to a distant constellation

That's dying in a corner of the sky,

These are the days of miracle and wonder

And don't cry baby don't cry

Don't cry,

Very prophetic and moving and a wake-up call. I can't resist the entire lyric set from the song (*). Someone ought to have listened to the wake-up call. Now everyone's in their own bubble, except old-fashioned me. Or I'm just traveling hyperbolically to everyone else's crystal ball with which mine doesn't intersect. Sadly.

- - - -

(*)

The Boy in the Bubble

by Paul Simon (1986)

It was a slow day,

And the sun was beating

On the soldiers by the side of the road,

There was a bright light,

A shattering of shop windows

The bomb in the baby carriage

Was wired to the radio,

These are the days of miracle and wonder,

This is the long distance call,

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all,

The way we look to a distant constellation

That's dying in a corner of the sky,

These are the days of miracle and wonder

And don't cry baby don't cry

Don't cry,

(Pause)

It was a dry wind,

And it swept across the desert

And it curled into the circle of birth,

And the dead sand,

Falling on the children

The mothers and the fathers

And the automatic earth,

These are the days of miracle and wonder,

This is the long distance call,

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all o-yeah,

The way we look to a distant constellation

That's dying in a corner of the sky,

These are the days of miracle and wonder

And don't cry baby don't cry

Don't cry

(Pause)

It's a turn-around jump shot

It's everybody jump start

It's, every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,

Medicine is magical and magical is art think of

The Boy in the Bubble

And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe

These are the days of lasers in the jungle,

Lasers in the jungle somewhere,

Staccato signals of constant information,

A loose affiliation of millionaires

And billionaires and baby,

These are the days of miracle and wonder,

This is the long distance call,

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all o-yeah,

The way we look to a distant constellation

That's dying in a corner of the sky,

These are the days of miracle and wonder

And don't cry baby don't cry

Don't cry don't cry

oooooooooEmmmmmmmmmmm........