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........