Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican sage and songster, took the time to walk from his hotel to my village, where he chatted with a small group of young men. He may have had a day off from his shows in the capital. I remember thinking “What a gentle looking soul he is”. I know I was struck with awe to the extent that I don’t remember what I asked him, but he was all positive encouragement for aspiring musicians and young people in general. I was definitely budding with my own guitar strumming and songwriting, and he was showing me the path. I swore “On my life”! Look up the song “On my life”.

Screen time is out of control.  More and more I find myself parking the screen in order to get in touch with the kind of information that is usually not found on a screen.  The screen has its own agenda these days, which looks like my agenda, and that creates an unhealthy tension. Screens are not my first choice for education or entertainment, but screens are front and centre with no relief in sight. Screen time comes and goes like night and day.

Screen to greet and screen to meet,
But I'll be damned if it ever replaces the beat of guitar music.

To be perfectly honest I should have picked one member of my family and painted a picture for someone to use to engage their Sherlock Holmes instincts so they can serve that person up on a platter. Gee whiz! Another mystery solved!  No chance of that.

A family member

I have, like the average person, family members that fall into categories right across the board. I just want to make the point that I have reason to rejoice at the memory of my many family member musicians.  I have reason to puzzle over the embellished tales my family member can tell when the audience is right.  I often think, “When all else fails, there’s always Wotsizname”, and when everyone else has bought into the project the sky lowers when it is Siskeptic’s turn. My family member is nobody’s twin, not a centaur, no one-eyed Polyphemus, a genuine Caesar and brash and loud fisher who has my unending love.

I was born within a five minute walk to the Atlantic ocean, and getting to the beach was not only a shared joy it was good for our young bodies. A couple of fresh water ponds nearby also provided walking and swimming opportunities, and yet I never became a strong swimmer. Being a grown and flexible person, I walk when there is no ocean, and where there is an ocean, I swim. Sometimes the ocean is not a part of any physical exercise besides hearing the sounds, smelling the surf, and seeing the sights.

This pairing of time and place is a good reason to explore the vital connection between time and place, two things that imprison us.  I have to imagine that for some creatures neither time or place are not as traumatic as for humans. I have felt out of place for four years, and the geographic disorientation I experienced during that time – the points of the compass were out of place – cements my appreciation of being out of place and being right on time. For more see my https://eejoseph.com/2023/10/06/out-of-place-and-right-on-time/

I have enough years on this planet to remember life before Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Google and Apple and mobile telephones. I also have enough sobriety to take strategic breaks from personal computing power, and I am acquainted with how to use books to gather information and do the kind of research that matters in my life. I will not be wringing my hands over life without a computer, even when the demand for all citizens to be computer literate and connected is universal. It will be a good thing to have nothing to sell or buy when the vast majority of humans will be identified as salespersons.

Life is vibrant today without computing power. To be a participant in the marketplace of the future is to be a victim of the lords of rapacious merchandising.

Dull and unimpressive