Tag: YouTube

Digital Fog

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Many people smirk when they tell you “I don’t do social media.” They are above it. One imagines they spend hours in blissful contemplation over a good book, or perhaps engaging in what we used to quaintly describe as “writing” but is now known as “content creation.”

Maybe they glance up from their book occasionally, go online and look around. If they don’t like what they see they hunker down and try to tune out the monotonous drone of discourse that is not so much arguing over concepts as it is preaching to the choir. It’s not debate, it’s a pep rally. If you dare to say something on social media which irritates your fan base, you will soon hear plenty back at you. There is ample pressure to conform.

I’m learning some Handel keyboard pieces that he wrote when he was about nineteen. He and Bach were contemporaries and from almost the same part of what is now Germany. It’s hard to imagine one spot on earth turning out more pure musical genius than those two possessed.

I imagine there was a lot of pressure to conform back then when they were young and just making their way, but somehow I don’t think they let it get them down. They were alive with musical ideas, bursting with creativity, and they didn’t need focus groups and research studies that counted “likes” in order to forge ahead. They must have been as delighted by their creative output as we are today.

So we don’t need massive societal support to successfully be ourselves. We don’t even need dialogue. Bach once walked several days to hear a famous organist play. There were no recordings, no radio, no iTunes. None of that is necessary to reach great artistic heights.

If this whole Internet comes crashing down, the world will not be a worse place for it. It will simply be different. Songs will be written and performed, stories read and recited, dramas enacted, all without digital help. The blind English poet laureate John Milton used to compose his verses during the day and when his daughter came to cook him dinner at night, he would narrate to her his output for the day and she would write it down. Even late in life his mind was that sharp.

The digital fog that pretends to be so much will reveal the true nature of things after it’s been burned away.

Possibility at My Fingertips

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Today I’m starting to record little one-minute shows for my new YouTube channel. If I can stumble across the right formula and then learn how to publicize it, I might end up with a job I enjoy that makes money. Stranger things have happened. I might prosper and enjoy life at the same time.

 

Of course, the ability to enjoy my life as it is right now has always existed, though I was unaware of the fact that happiness is a decision we  make more than what happens to us. I only learned that recently. Too bad I wasted so much time waiting for circumstances to change so I could finally know contentment. In that way, I was like most Americans, hoping that something I purchased would change my life for me.

 

This YouTube thing might not pan out, but that’s OK. I’m flexible. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to seduce 13 year olds across the world into watching me on their cellphones. Maybe I’m not the kind of person who can go viral. I can live with that.

 

 

My Tummy Hurts

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When I have an upset stomach, I don’t sleep well. My dreams are troubled, and the conundrums I’m wrestling with in dreamworld aren’t as easily understood or deciphered as a simple upset stomach. Likewise, in my waking hours I am constantly trying to blame or fix whatever I think is troubling me, but there I may also be way off base. The cause of my dissatisfaction may be hidden, or not what I think it is.

 

When I’m happy or content, I don’t waste a lot of energy wondering why, but when I’m not, then I start inventing complex scenarios. Sometimes it seems like YouTube is awash in people who are convinced that whatever they’re experiencing is somebody else’s fault. If only the Illuminati hadn’t started World War II and the Rothschild banks weren’t in charge of our political system, then I might stand a chance at being happy. But since they are, I’m doomed. We’re all doomed.

 

Seems like everyone with an online presence has got at least an upset stomach that’s causing them to dwell on the negative.

 

The problem with poo-pooing all conspiracy theories is that some of them are right on the money. One has to make great leaps of faith to believe even part of the 9/11 Commission report. The official explanation for what happened that day reads like a highly implausible tale invented on the spot by a madman.

 

We’ve seen this kind of thing before. Convenient how Lee Harvey Oswald, the supposed lone gunman in the Kennedy assassination, was gunned down only hours after his capture. Not much time there for a proper interview. There have been so many obvious false-flag events that have been unmasked after having served their purpose to justify invasions of sovereign states that it would almost take more effort to prove the reasons we bomb those weak enough to be bombed are real than not. Experience tells us we should assume we’re dealing with subterfuge unless proven otherwise.

 

But everybody likes to think that they’re sane and the people who they find most annoying are nincompoops. I like to post 9/11 conspiracy posts on Facebook, and then am amused by people who respond with “I’m so sick of reading this nonsense…” Then don’t read it, my man. Nobody’s forcing you to read my posts, much less comment on them. I suppose you’re either better informed or saner than I am. By all means, show me another picture of your cat. After all, this isn’t the nightly news. It’s Facebook.