The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth
(It turns out that I’m stopping for a while. Below is the accompanying spiel ;)
Me and Les (aka The Strunts) once said that The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth. Have you ever felt as though you had been bestowed with Prophetic powers?
No, me neither.
Never the less, our song, written in 2018, looks a little Nostradamist, though I say so ourselves. These days most of the gruesome Billionaire Oligarchs are geeks. So are the software geniuses behind Ai. And so are all the human gargoyles running the social media platforms. Not to mention the music streaming leeches.
Nothing inherently wrong with being a geek. But it seems that when the geeks are running the show, when they get too much power, things go wrong. Things could be going very wrong.
Yes, I’m afraid that I’m having one of my periodic meltdowns over my relationship with the Digital World. The world in general perhaps. “Too Much Of Everything” to quote again from my Strunts musical history.
I feel the need for a break from that world. But a complete break? Almost impossible. I don’t think so. Yet it feels that anything I personally throw at the digital world is a puny handful of hundreds and thousands, tossed into a giant ocean of hundreds and thousands. Does it feel that way for you too? Or maybe you’ve got a more pragmatic, realistic take on all of this. To be fair, sometime I do too.
But most of the time, it feels like the people in my life, especially the ones who I only, or mainly, have contact with online, become lost or blurry to me in this pixelated vastness. I become lost and blurry to myself as well.
And, yes, this happens even with the people in my real life. Just like you, probably, I can sit in a room with real physical beings, whom I know and even love … and spend time on my iphone.
When push comes to shove, it should all be about people. I like them. I am one. But I feel a little less motivated to spend time with them (even with YOU!) in this more confused, new world. The waters seem muddied. And to my mind, there is something very wrong about that.
Originally, this whole Homesong thing was about real people, live, in the room music, and learning to stay human in the midst of a growing digital matrix. It was one of my “Big” ideas. And it really mattered to me. And now I’m struggling to realise or be motivated to realise that vision on even a small scale. Something wrong with that too. It went online.
Yesterday I read these thoughts from a character in a novel I just started:
”Only people who don’t know what the hell to do with themselves start decluttering, for want of being able to set the world to rights” (from The Accordionist by Fred Vargas)
And those words felt a little close to home. It’s not an existential crisis. Lots of things about my life, as hopefully comes across, that are Fandabidozi. But I’m feeling like a break of some kind from a lot of my digital existence, in order for a little bit of reflection. But ultimately with the aim to come back in a way that feels a bit simpler and clearer. To me anyway.
For the record my “online content” goes out, to varying degrees, on:
Facebook
Youtube
Feetunes.com (my website)
Bandcamp
Spotify (And hundreds of other digital streaming services that hardly even aware of through Distrokid)
iTunes
Squarespace (this website)
Mailchimp
Whatsapp
Signal
Some of these “platforms” I genuinely hate. But I have never achieved a helpful, effective and happy way of using any of them really. And there are far too many of them.
And that is the digital world as a “creator” you may well point out. Suck it up, as they say.
Or not.
If and when I find a way to simplify in a good way, I’ll definitely be back. But for now I’m going to give this blog a break. It’s been great to be honest. You’ve been great. And I’m very, very, glad I’ve done it.
I’ll still be posting my monthly songs on my website, and staying in touch, with most of you I hope, through email and whatsapp in some way or other. I may in this period quit Facebook, for good this time. I did once before and came back for more. FB has got some good aspects. But the bad ones do my head in, and are far out weighing the good, to my mind. I think I’ve only stayed on for this long through some misinformed fear of losing touch with people completely.
I didn’t know how today’s blog was going to end. I wasn’t even sure I was going to stop doing the blog, when I started writing earlier. But I think I’ve talked myself into it.
Thank you so much for reading. And not just reading, but getting in touch with me to respond. That contact will be the biggest loss to me for a while at least.
All the best. And my love to you in the meantime. I mean that.
David aka Fee aka A Human Being.