Making It Up As I Go Along #400

Searching for Substance
My four hundredth Making It Up and I’m not really sure what I think of that. I actually probably felt better about my blog two hundred updates ago than I do today. And the first year or two felt much more exhilarating than now as well. My first few years of blog writing, well, at the time the first few years were group e-mails... but in those first few years, I felt a connection with people. People wrote to chat after my update. I reconnected with some cousins and got a different perspective of the lives of some of my uncles, aunts, and friends.

Family gatherings can often become scripted. With the same shared smiles and same shared conversations... none of which seems one hundred percent authentic. My first few years of writing and sharing what I wrote seemed to bring some more honesty and openness. Not just from me... but given to me. I learned things about cousins, uncles and aunts that I never before knew. Family barbeques often get overshadowed by the weather and job interview style questioning... “Are you seeing anyone?”... “Do you like your job?”... “Do you watch American Idol?” There is too much distraction with the size of the gathering to get into anything of more substance than these one off question and answer periods. “Are you seeing anyone?” can become a substantial conversation. But when there are a dozen people preparing supper, no one topic gains anymore than about three minutes of back and forth.

With my original writing, I’d often have a half dozen e-mails back and forth with someone. It may cover several days and there’d actually be learning about each other coming from it. By the end of the e-mails, the conversation may have nothing to do with what I had written about. But my writing seemed to act as a starting point. And the learning grew from there.

I started to reconnect with cousins who I see a couple of times a decade. Much of that has gone by the wayside. Same goes with friends. Where once I felt like my writing kept me connected to several friends living far from me... I feel like that connection has faded and, in some cases, is gone entirely.

So it’s not that I necessarily crave praise or a feeling of importance from my writing. But I do want to feel like it matters on some level. And getting to know people... what they’re really like... underneath the facebook facades and 140 character twitter style proclamations... that brought meaning to me.

Today, I am pretty sure there are some posts I’ve made that have been read by fewer than five people. And I get a meaningful response about a half dozen times a year. Not that I’m begging for a forced response now. I’m just explaining why I felt better about my blog two hundred updates ago than I do now.

And having mentioned facebook earlier. It’s a community I grow ever more tired of. Where I have mentioned here that I miss the meaningful connection where you actually get to know what a person is like... Facebook is the anti-meaningful connection community. Let’s make the world as superficial as possible. Cryptic status updates that, if you try hard enough to solve the hidden meaning, you often find that the hidden meaning wasn’t worth trying to solve in the first place.

And then it goes to the other extreme. Where, in one instance, you get to learn how your facebook friend loves shoes, an hour later they may post intimate feelings and secrets for all to see. Gone is the personal, deep conversation. Replaced by a wall post that screams for sympathy and huggy emoticons.

I enjoy facebook on many levels. I get to see pictures of certain friends and family. I get to play a few games. And I get to see a general point of view of several people that I’d probably never see otherwise.

But I hate facebook on many other levels. Getting to see the shallowness... pettiness... and silliness of people that, in the same manner as with the positive levels, I’d probably never have seen otherwise. Those general points of view you get to see from several people... well... thanks to facebook... that’s all you see of those people. Facebook has become such a major form of connection that many people are making real life connections that have about as much substance as facebook. While others use it as a public means of psychiatric help.

There is very little healthy middle ground in facebook. Superficial strangers... or deep end lunacy. That’s 98% of facebook.

So with so much disconnect. Or, in some cases, wishing for disconnect. This week, I reconnected. With the past.

My final part of Christmas came yesterday. My main gift from mom and dad... and old style radio/record player now sits in my living room. And I reconnect with the warmth and intimacy of music by way of vinyl.

I remember being a kid, laying on the living room floor with album sleeves in front of me and liner notes pulled out next to them as music engulfed the room in a blended form that is lost when coming via CD.

The sleeve and liner notes would take on the importance of charts and maps for a sea faring captain, plotting his course. The sleeve’s art work... something to be studied and memorized along with the music. Every minute detail examined. Often times a favourite corner of the sleeve would coincide with a favourite lyric on the album. Something discovered at just the moment that those lyrics are played. And it stays with you.

And other times, when you’re reading the lyrics as they’re sung to you. Reading them as if they were a discovered parchment that help you clarify meaning. You’ve heard the song a thousand times... but sometimes, reading the lyrics on liner notes, there on the living room floor, opens your eyes to a whole new world.

Downloading a song on iTunes just doesn’t offer this. If the history of music only consisted of iTunes, there would never have been a Dylan, Lennon or Young. They’d have been musical prophets preaching to emptiness.

Good, meaningful music can not be absorbed through the rush of iTunes. Hearing a bit of a song on the radio, and then searching it out for download only brings a bit of the musical experience to the listener.

Musical poets have to be absorbed. And there’s no better way to absorb music, than on a vinyl album while you lay on the floor, studying lyrics and artwork.

Christmas ran long this year... and ended in a musical bang.

MONDAY...
— On my new team at work. Went alright tonight with Christine, Anne-Maire, Mark and I... plus Roz.

TUESDAY...
— Tough day at work. Slow and tiring.

WEDNESDAY...
— Computer troubles continue and I’m bringing it to Atlas for a look. A new computer purchase may be in store.

THURSDAY...
— Get the computer back. Atlas gave it a good cleaning (lots of dust inside, stopping air flow). It’s so much more quiet now. The fan not having to rev hard. Hopefully that’ll do the trick.
— Buy some records before work. Go to Value Village and get three albums for $7. Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne, and Bruce Springsteen are on board, awaiting the record player to arrive.

FRIDAY...
— Pretty quiet day. I’m not feeling the best. My stomach is a bit out of wack and headaches. So I stay home and lay low.
— Computer is working fine. I think Atlas did it.

SATURDAY...
— Record player is here. Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” is the first record to break it in. Really nice to hear that old sound again.
— Lovely Bones with Sarah and Phil tonight... goes ok for a while and then a few stupid things make it a 2 of 5... maybe 2.5.
— Montreal beats up the Rangers and Vancouver looks good against Chicago. A good hockey night. I do the Vancouver game on PVR... nice being able to go out and still catch the game.