Someday apropos
Thursday, 14 June, 2007
I am one piece away from finishing the editing for “From the Dean”. Well, that's a bit of a lie; I still have to read through all 71 pieces again to check I didn't make any silly mistakes. But nevertheless—one piece! Yay me! This morning to avoid all distractions I deliberately didn't open my mail program and just edited steadily until it was almost all done. I vaguely remembered reading this on someone's blog ... oh look, it was the ever helpful Dave who linked to 43 Folders! It made such a difference not having those interruptions and really feeling like I could just get into it without being pressured by all the other stuff I had to do.
Had a good conversation with Emma at the end of the day when it was raining and peak hour and I didn't want to go home yet. It made me think that perhaps Getting Things Done and Dealing With All the Masses of People in Your Life will be the biggest issues for my generation. (Our generation, if you're around my age. Which, this year, will be 29 which is a boring age in that it's a prime number and therefore has no factors. I preferred being 24 [most number of factors] or 27 [33!], and I'm looking forward to being 32 [25!] and then 64 [26!] and maybe even 81 [34!] ... and I suppose 36 and 49 aren't too bad ... but 30 is comparatively tame and I don't understand why people celebrate it. Sorry, let's get off this tangent.) Our generation is probably the first to connect with others via technology in a myriad different ways—mobile phone, email, mailing lists, newsgroups, chatrooms, forums, instant messaging, blogs, MMORPGs (if we are that way inclined), etc. In the past, the only options were face to face, telephone and letters. Now our communication options have exploded and, as a result, I think we know five or six times as many people as our parents did. Even if our parents are churchgoers and have been Christians all their lives.
When I think about the different people groups I've come into contact with over the course of my life, there's my family (of course), Ben's family, primary school, high school, UOW, ECU, CBS, UNSW, FEVA, Moore College, four congregations' worth of churches, the Australian Christian Cartoonists community, my blogroll, friends of my parents (or offspring of the friends of my parents), Matthias Media, CASE, New College ... and the list just goes on and on and on. Obviously you can't keep up with everyone—some people are just going to get left behind and some relationships are just more important to you than others. But the fact that technology draws us closer together means that the natural barriers of time and space are eroded so you're forced now to make the choice, and the choice is hard. Increasingly we find ourselves having to choose between two very good things—both godly, both interesting, both fun, etc.—but both impossible to do. And so we choose knowing that, unlike Choose Your Own Adventure, we can't go back and see what would have happened had we taken the other road. And that's what kills us.
At least with Christians there's always heaven. There, time and space are no longer barriers, and relationships are of primary importance anyway.
Aargh! Time is running out! I need to go to bed!
Bron posted this wonderful cartoon yesterday.
David Hockney thinks that iPods are responsible for a decline in visual awareness. It's even responsible for people dressing badly (???). I think that people will always be more visual than aural; if anything, it's wonderful that iPods have made people more aural. I would have thought radio was a dying form and yet there are people out there who are hugely into podcasts so that programs that probably wouldn't get to be aired and would never be discovered by people (like A Praire Home Companion and Coverville) are now more accessible. As for the badly dressed people, well, that has to do with the current state of fashion: baby doll and sweater dresses make anyone look like a sack of potatoes.
Finally, video game music played by symphony orchestras is bringing a whole new audience into concert halls. And it's changing the culture too. Once upon a time I got told off for sketching the cellists while we listened to Mendelssohn. (I think it was Mendelssohn. Don't remember). Now,
Noisy, appreciative whoops and more applause greet each new title: Castlevania, Silent Hill, Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, Lost Odyssey. Sequences from video games are intercut with close-ups of the musicians on the giant screens; eager young faces gaze intently at the screens and the stage. The atmosphere is relaxed. People chat to their neighbours, chew gum, tap their feet, slurp bottles of water, applaud and laugh at their favourite bits, take lots of digital photos and occasionally nip out to the loo.
The ghost of that famous line by Ginsberg comes to mind. What a cliché.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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Hi Karen. What you said about having to choose and not being able to go back and find out if it was the best choice, never being able to keep up with people, it is such a truism. A scary one, but one which is nonetheless true. Thank goodness for heaven!
Amen to that, Hannah!