Tag: Mary

Reality bites

It’s Sunday. Jamming Sunday.

Singer-musician-owner of Van’s Unforgettable was kidding, after a round of live and unrehearsed performances that we should just play a commercially released CD  since we at times failed at recalling certain lyrics.

He had a point. The age of automation and atomization is here.

Each of us, with headset and  in private should just entertain ourselves.

IN THE COMING DECADES WE WILL EXPERIENCE A KIND OF NEUROSES THE WORLD HAS YET  HAD A CURE FOR.  Knowing everything yet not knowing anything.

Spying on everyone yet not knowing anyone.

Data rich, content poor.

Socially connected, but emotionally isolated.

Like the song by the Foreigner, “I want to know what love is…why don’t you show me”.

Mobile and cloud computing, with semi and soon full automation assembly, will lower the costs and increase personal computing power. Yet no eye- contact, no time for organic relationship.

The lost art of  the start : “Hi, my name is….”

In the 60’s, the anti-war group was cool “Hell No WE won’t go”.

In the 70’s, the me decade.

In the 80’s, the politicization of religious America (as a reaction to Iranian Islamic revolution). The We there was meant for many splintered groups, not just the Moral Majority.

In the 90’s, chip speed gets faster while at the same time, we  “got mail”.

So instead of getting inter-connected, we end up with the atomization or re-individuation this time mobile-enabled.

By 2020, we will have lived in a world utterly foreign to our parents.

The narcissistic propensity comes in full circle. First, in looking at his reflection in the water that Narcissus felt in love with himself.

Then, the witch looked at the mirror (who is the fairest of them all).

Now, it’s the crystal – Samsung or Apple – screen which is our digital mirror or still water.

People are using mobile phones to put on make-ups, to take pics of themselves etc…

To “friend” and “Like”.

Mostly, as a recent study by Solis, to project onto others that which happened to be theirs in the first place.

Sort of Paris-Hiltonian world. “Nobody f… with my family and gets away with it”.

She is our new “Godfather” personified:  famous and furious.

Lethal combo.

Sex symbol and icon of a new age. The age of virtuality. Of 4-hr work week. Of instant access and gratification.

The Orwellian world has arrived, except this time, it’s so democratized that you don’t recognize it.

So put on a CD. Click on play, replay and instant replay.

Puff, the magic Dragon. No wonder music has also evolved, from Peter Paul and Mary (communal 60’s) to Madonna’sMaterial Girl (greed is good) to Gaga, At the edge of Glory.

Who cares about attempts at creativity, or our feeble memory. The chips will do all our memorizing and processing. All we have to do is “amuse ourselves to death”. Sit back, relax, and take a pill. Protest not. And even if you do try, you won’t know how. The machine and the men behind it have it all figured out in their races to world’s domination. Wake up checkers in this new attrition war. This time  it’s neither cold nor hot. Just virtuality vs reality. A fight to the death – the mother of all realities.

Strange sounds, familiar shores

Instead of “I woke up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me…” like Paul McCartney,

I woke up to strange sounds these days: peddlers who use “low tech” au parleur (bull horn) mounted on bicycles or tri-cycles (selling boot-legged CD‘s). In fact, it was my first time got chased by pleasant sound from behind (most of the time, it was emergency vehicle with a sense of urgency). By music here, I mean, not Beatles‘, but Slow Rock (nhac Sen), lamenting heart ache and heart-break.

In the evening, you can hear metal belt sound for in-home massage ( I have never tried).

I miss those wood-on-wood sound of a noodle peddler.

Those were the best snacks a boy could wish for. Speaking of Vietnam childhood and music.

Steve Jobs and friends were listening to music with headsets so they could do it while laying down.

One of his signature photos was an empty room with just a lamp, with him sitting cross-legged.

Very Zen-like. Minimalist. Pure simplicity in design.

He went on to take classes in calligraphy (even Reed College curriculum was still too restrictive for his type).

The sum of all these experience gave us the I-pod with ear-plugs, and later on the I-phone and I-pad.

Studies mentioned that babies could hear before birth.

If this is true, I must have heard an early scooter, a vendor on wheels, someone trying to get the grill going, or a rooster announcing a new day.

Dawn in Vietnam and dusk in the US. (You can experience similar feel, let’s say by traveling down Mexico, but then they got the same time zone as in the US).

Sharing the same Moon.

Sharing the same hope, fear and dream:

Will my kids grow up “con nha lanh” (teachable), and not into drugs.

Will they stay or leave for strange shores?

Will they listen to our voice, those familiar sounds, or they will just “follow the money” and “hearing voices”.

In the end, especially in our flat world, the sound of jet engine and popping soda cans will bring us home from any strange shore.

For a moment there at my friend’s party, we danced and jumped to a familiar tune (sound), felt our hearts go on beating (The End of the World) and saddened “when you say, ‘goodbye'”. The day can’t go wrong when you “get up to the sound of music”, let’s say in “Beautiful Sunday” (when you said, you love me, hey, hey, it’s a beautiful day). Or at night, when soothing sound you first heard while inside Mummy’s womb was that of the noodle man’s peddling.